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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Tomorrow the Prime Minister, David Cameron, will meet Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, to agree terms for a referendum on Scottish independence. The Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has been heavily involved of course in the negotiations and I am glad to say she joins me now from Glasgow. A very good morning to you, are you cock-a-hoop, have you got everything you wanted?

NICOLA STURGEON: Well of course the deal is not concluded until the First Minister and the Prime Minister discuss it and approve it tomorrow so their word is the final word if you like but the negotiations that I’ve been conducting on behalf of the Scottish government with Michael Moore, the Secretary of State, have been constructive discussions and I am certainly of the view that the outcome we’ve reached guarantees a referendum made in Scotland and that was the objective we set out to achieve and I’m happy that we’ve done so.

DM: But it sounds like it is going to be a straight in or out or whatever, one question, and originally didn’t you want a devo-max option, a halfway house in there?

NS: Well we never said that we wanted a second question on the ballot paper, what we did say was that that shouldn’t be ruled out and a preference was that that was a matter that should be decided by the Scottish parliament but you know, in any negotiation both sides have to make compromises and that’s what happened here but I’m satisfied that the referendum will be made in Scotland if you consider issues over the timing, the question, the franchise, all issues that at the start of the year David Cameron was making noises about Westminster controlling all of these things, will now be determined by the Scottish parliament. I think that is a very good outcome.

DM: I just wanted to ask you in terms of the polling at the moment, there is a hefty majority against you, do you think in the two years you’ve got to campaign you can turn that round?

NS: Oh yes, absolutely, I’m very confident of that. If you look back to just a few months before the last Scottish parliament elections the polls put the SNP some ten or fifteen points behind Labour. We went on in that election to win a majority in the Scottish parliament, the first party ever to do so in the lifetime of devolution so yes, I’m confident. I think the game has changed considerably in the last couple of weeks, we now know that there is a Tory-Labour consensus to roll back the progress of devolution and whichever one of these parties is in government in Westminster, we know that they want to take away people’s bus pass, they want to take away free personal care, free prescriptions, things that are the big achievements of the Scottish parliament so the good thing about getting the process issues out of the way, which we’ll do tomorrow, is that we can get on to that substantive debate about why Scotland would be better as an independent country.

DM: Well you have just answered one of my questions there in that answer about some of the things that would remain or change if you were in charge of an independent Scotland but to win that referendum there is a list almost as long as your arm of questions being put to you and others about what an independent Scotland would look like. Let me just put one to you which seems to be high up the agenda and that is the issue of European Union membership. You are adamant aren’t you that you wouldn’t need to reapply in spite of in actual fact being a new country?

NS: Scotland is already a member of the European Union, Scottish people are already …

DM: The UK is a member of the European Union.

NS: I think it is preposterous that the European Union would not want oil rich, fishing rich Scotland to remain in membership so I am absolutely confident about that but if you look at some of the newspaper headlines today, the real threat to Scotland’s continued membership of the European Union is perceived within the UK because Michael Gove in particular today is clearly saying they are ready to leave the European Union. Over the next couple of years we will set out all of the answers to the questions that people rightly are asking about independence, we will make abundantly clear what people will be voting for if they vote yes but of course the responsibility also lies with those advocating a no vote to say what voting no will mean. As far as I can see it will mean the continued dismantling of our welfare state and the continued squandering of Scotland’s resources.

DM: Okay Nicola Sturgeon, thank you very much indeed. I can say without fear of contradiction, we will be debating this much more over the next two years.