SNP lays out plans to leave the UK

The Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, will today lay out a plan to establish his party in power and take Scotland out of the UK within three years.

The Scottish National Party leader will tell delegates at their conference in Aviemore that the leaders have adopted a "three-stage approach to government", which they hope will culminate in a referendum on independence in 2010.

The SNP has spent the past week squabbling with Westminster over a spending settlement it claims compares poorly with the amounts granted to the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalitions that ruled Scotland after devolution in 1999.

Mr Salmond claims the comprehensive spending review, announced by the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, this month, granted Scotland only an extra 0.5 per cent for next year compared with 11 per cent annual increases in recent years.

Mr Salmond is trying to use the spending battle as a central plank of the case for full independence over the next three years.

In his first speech to the SNP annual conference since the party won the Scottish parliamentary elections in May, he will claim he has managed to set the direction for his administration, "giving the people of Scotland confidence... and a sense of a new purpose and ambition for our country".

An SNP spokesman last night said the second stage of the strategy deals with delivering on promises, starting with next month's Budget, which will set the spending framework for the next three years.

Conservative leader David Cameron was reported last night to be backing a plan to strip Scottish MPs of the right to vote on English matters at Westminster.

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