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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now wrangling over the legality of a referendum on Scottish independence, much of it this week. Well First Minister, Alex Salmond, will publish his government’s consultation document ahead of talks with David Cameron but in a speech he will also say that England will be better off without Scotland, gaining a friendly neighbour rather than a surly lodger. In a moment I’ll be speaking to Mr Salmond but also watching the discussion are our Twitter commentators, they are today Oliver Wright, Whitehall editor at the Independent newspaper, the Sunday Mirror’s political editor Vincent Moss and Kevin Schofield, political correspondent at the Sun, they provide their reactions via Twitter which you can read on the side panels. You can follow on our website, skynews.com/politics as well and you can join in using the hashtag #murnaghan on Twitter. Let’s say a very good morning the First Minister, Alex Salmond, who joins me from Aberdeenshire and Mr Salmond, good morning to you, when first of all are you going to eventually meet David Cameron to I suppose thrash things out face to face because there has been a lot of flack flying between Westminster and Edinburgh?

ALEX SALMOND: Well I’d meet him as soon as possible. I have actually asked to meet him six times over the last six months and he has now just agreed to have the meeting but I’d meet him any time after we published the consultation paper, I’d meet him at the end of this week or next week. Incidentally, as far as the flak flying, I think that has only been in one direction. There has been a lot of rather injudicious things said by Westminster politicians about Scotland but when I make the speech I make in the Hugo Young Lecture on Tuesday, I’ll be talking about a new and better, adult grown up relationship of equals between Scotland and England, and believe me I’ll be a lot more positive about the future of England than people like David Cameron have been hitherto about the future of Scotland.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So would you support calls, I see Simon Hughes from the Lib Dems today is talking about an English parliament, would you support any English people in that aspiration?

ALEX SALMOND: Yes I do, I think that is a thoroughly sensible and probably quite an important development. What is an adult grown up relationship between our countries? It means that both countries can be self-governing. You won’t have Scottish MPs attempting, and usually failing incidentally, to tell England what to do and you won’t have Westminster politicians telling Scotland what to do. We’ll raise our own money, we’ll direct our own spending, we’ll still have a great relationship but a relationship of equals. We’ll share a monarch, we’ll share a currency under our proposals, we’ll share a social union but we won’t have diktats from Westminster for Scotland and we won’t have Scottish MPs poking their nose into English business in the House of Commons so I think an English parliament, but more than that, a grown up relationship of equals between Scotland and England would be good for Scotland and I think it would be good for England as well.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: And is the fact that you have chosen to say these things on Burns Night pure coincidence?

ALEX SALMOND: Well the consultation paper will be launched … I am actually doing the Hugo Young Lecture the day before Burns Night although that’s part of the Burns Celebrations which go on for a long time Dermot, but certainly on Wednesday I’ll be announcing the consultation document, a consultation with a community of Scotland, about how we plan to organise the referendum and Scotland’s future for the autumn of 2014 and that will be a genuine consultation which will reach out to all parts of Scottish society, it’s a huge issue and a great debate for the country and I’ll try and set a tone so that we can have that debate in a manner which will do Scotland credit.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: What has most got your goat? You mention there the injudicious things that have been said, that have been coming your way from Westminster, what has most got your goat amongst those?

ALEX SALMOND: Well, I suppose to use humour and it is best to find them funny. For example the story, the source from Whitehall that if Scotland becomes independent they would steal our pandas from Edinburgh Zoo and remember of course that we have more giant pandas than we have Conservative MPs in Scotland. What a lot of nonsense! The other sources that said we couldn’t use the pound if we chose to do so and Scotland became independent. Sterling is a tradable currency, you can’t stop anybody using sterling but why on earth would you want to stop Scotland using sterling. Then there was William Hague, and I think he takes the biscuit, he said that independence would destroy the Scottish health service – we actually run our own health service in Scotland already and as we have seen from the reports this morning, I’d be rather more worried about the future of the English health service being run from Westminster than the public, Scottish, national health service being run so well from Scotland.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: What about the defence forces though? You said a couple of days ago the cuts that are taking place in the overall budget at the moment would leave Scotland more or less with the shape of an independent defence force. Do you really think you could continue to run Typhoon aircraft and large ships?

ALEX SALMOND: The point I was making is the SNP policy for 20 years has been that we would protect the defence establishments that we inherited at the time of independence as opposed to subjecting communities to the sort of uncertainty that we’ve seen in the UK Defence Review. As to whether Scotland could sustain one naval base and one aircraft base, can I point out that Norway has seven aircraft bases, a country the same size as Scotland and Denmark has three. But the point I was making about the protection of communities, because when communities accept armed force bases whether it be the air force or the army, then they have got a right to expect a long term commitment and that is the long term commitment that a Scottish government would give which so sadly hasn’t been given by Westminster. But in terms of a debate, Dermot, when you get senior politicians apparently in all sobriety, who talk about a Scottish defence force being some sort of gendarmerie, now would they say that about the Danish defence forces or the Norwegian defence forces or the Swedish defence forces? Of course they wouldn’t, that seems to be insulting pejorative language that they save up for Scotland. Folk in England aren’t like that at all, most people in England think if Scotland wants to become independent then fair enough, as long as they raise their own revenue and govern their own spending, but Westminster politicians have this habit of regarding Scotland as some sort of property and get very upset at the idea that Scots might be impertinent enough to believe that we can run our own affairs like just about any other nation in the world.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But they do have concerns about things like defence when it comes to the nuclear deterrent and the fact that Scotland houses the entire Trident submarine base in Faslane, something that you as part of SNP policy would like to see go, with all the resultant costs in terms of jobs and indeed decommissioning it.

ALEX SALMOND: Well clearly an independent Scotland wouldn’t want to have the largest concentration of weapons of mass destruction in the continent of Europe but you know, I am not saying it to be awkward about that, I’m sure that the government in England wouldn’t want its nuclear weapons to be based in Scotland, I can’t imagine that would be the case. Nobody wants to produce any disruption, that’s a point of negotiation but clearly an independent Scotland will not have weapons of mass destruction. That’s a reasonable position for us to take, what is unreasonable is the Defence Secretary saying we’ll land you with the bill for the clean up costs. Come on, you can’t have weapons of mass destruction based in Scotland for the last sixty years and then tell the people of Scotland that we’ll give you a bill for the clean-up costs, that’s daft language, it’s not a very mature way to look at things and I’ll be trying to set a tone both in my speech in London on Tuesday and when I launch the consultation document on Wednesday, which rises above sort of scaremongering nonsense and sets a positive tone for Scotland and a positive tone for people in England as well.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So many people just reorganising their view on Scotland if it became independent, it’s not just in Westminster is it? It’s in Madrid as well, you’ll have been reading today I’m sure that the Spanish are concerned that if Scotland – and you may have a view on this – that if Scotland became independent, left the EU and had to re-join, therefore that would send a signal to areas of Spain such as Catalonia and the Basque Country that they could do the same too and therefore Spain said that they would block any application from Scotland.

ALEX SALMOND: Well, that’s not true, Dermot. Reread the story and you’ll find the source of the story is not anybody in the Spanish government, the source of the story is a senior government minister in the United Kingdom government. It is another silly scare story. Scotland is not going to be an accession country to the European Union, neither is the rest of the UK incidentally. What we are, are countries who are already part of the European Union and we’ll negotiate our position from within the European Union, as incidentally was confirmed by EU officials in the French news agency comments earlier this week. That is an other example, is it not, of Whitehall officials not content to talk down Scotland themselves but are trying to do it by proxy by saying what they believe another government elsewhere attitude would take. I think we have got to rise above that sort of daft scaremongering and come to a much more sensible debate on how we conduct our affairs in these islands. My position is that it would be best for Scotland and better for England if we do it as independent countries and a positive relationship of equals.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Where do you stand right now on overseas territories? I don't know how it would work again with an independent Scotland but I’m thinking about the Falklands, would you like to see them as robustly defended as David Cameron is saying?

ALEX SALMOND: I think most people would say that the people in the Falkland Islands have a right to self-determination, I don’t question that and David Cameron says he’ll assert that. The only thing David Cameron seems to question occasionally is the people of Scotland’s right to self-determination and obviously we have got a joint interest in that but these things are part of a joint history and a joint obligation and clearly that will carry forward but if there’s a question of upholding the right of people to self-determination, I’m very much in favour of that, I just think it should be applied to Scotland as well.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: I’ve got a last one for you, Mr Salmond, with Burns Night in mind, I’m not sure we can fully attribute it to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, but he is reported in one of the papers as saying that Scotch whisky would not be promoted in British embassies any more as it is such a big export industry.

ALEX SALMOND: Well two things about that. Scotch whisky I think is a £4 billion export earner and obviously it is going to be an incredibly important part for Scotland. The idea that people drink whisky world-wide because it’s served up in British embassies I think is almost as laughable as the panda story. Another thing is that we hold, that’s the Scottish government hold receptions in British embassies at the present moment promoting whisky and other things, incidentally they charge us for the receptions and charge us for the whisky so perhaps if William Hague would like to write off the bills that he’s been charging us, then we’ll take him a bit more seriously in future. But I’ve got an exclusive for you, Dermot, people internationally will still be drinking Scotch whisky in the most enormous quantities when Scotland becomes independent.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Hold the front page! Thank you very much indeed, Mr Salmond, Alex Salmond there in Aberdeenshire.

ALEX SALMOND: Incidentally, Dermot, Burns once said that freedom and whisky gang together.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well there we have it. I was just commenting on the weather there as well, every time I speak to you it’s fantastic weather up there. It must always be. Alex Salmond there, the First Minister of Scotland.