Alex Salmond wants 'equal relationship'

Alex Salmond today called for a "positive relationship of equals" between Scotland and England under his independence plans.

The Scottish First Minister hit out at "injudicious" comments from pro-union Westminster leaders - and claimed Prime Minister David Cameron snubbed his calls for a meeting "six times over the last six months".

The Scottish National Party (SNP) leader also branded calls for an English parliament debating laws which affect only English voters "thoroughly sensible" and demanded "a new and better, adult, grown-up relationship of equals between Scotland and England".

He said: "We will share a monarch, we will share a currency and, under our proposals, we will 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."

He added: "There have been a lot of rather injudicious things said by Westminster politicians about Scotland.

"I will be a lot more positive about the future of England than people like David Cameron have been hitherto about the future of Scotland."

Mr Salmond, who launches a consultation on Wednesday about how the 2014 referendum will run, blasted claims Scottish taxpayers would be forced to fund cleaning up waste left behind if Britain's nuclear Trident submarines had to quit their base at Faslane on the Clyde under SNP plans for a nuclear-free Scotland.

"Clearly an independent Scotland wouldn't want to have the largest concentration of weapons of mass destruction in the continent of Europe," he told Sky News' Murnaghan programme.

"What's unreasonable is the Defence Secretary saying, 'We will land you with a bill for the clean-up costs'.

"You can't have weapons of mass destruction based in Scotland for the last 60 years and then tell the people of Scotland, 'We will give you a bill for the clean-up costs'.

"That's daft language."

Mr Salmond pledged to "rise above that sort of scaremongering nonsense" and also dismissed claims Scotland could be forced to abandon the pound if electors voted for independence.

He said: "Sterling is a tradable currency. You can't stop anybody using Sterling, but why on earth would you want to stop Scotland using Sterling?"

PA