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New Scottish independence bill announced

A consultation gets underway next week on plans for a second Scottish independence referendum, the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed.

Nicola Sturgeon
A consultation gets underway next week on plans for a second Scottish independence referendum. (AAP)

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Source: AAP


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Scotland will publish a fresh independence referendum Bill for consultation next week, part of a strategy to ensure that Scotland's voice is heard in the negotiations to take Britain out of the European Union, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced.

"There is no rational case for taking the UK out of the single market and there is no authority for it either," she told delegates at her Scottish National Party conference on Thursday.

She said it would be an act of "constitutional vandalism" to try to ignore Scotland's parliamentary voice on the issue.

Scots rejected independence in 2014 by 45 to 55 per cent. Scotland voted to keep its EU membership in June, but faces leaving the EU because the United Kingdom as a whole voted to leave.

She told SNP activists: "When Scotland does come to take this decision again - whenever that might be - we must not take for granted how anyone will vote.

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"It will be a new debate, not a re-run of 2014. We must not assume that people's views - yes or no - are the same today as they were two years ago.

"Instead we must engage the arguments with a fresh eye and an open mind. The case for independence will have to be made and won."

But she said if the choice is between "an inward-looking, insular, Brexit Britain governed by a right-wing Tory party obsessed with borders and blue passports at the expense of economic strength and stability" and a "progressive, outward looking, internationalist Scotland", then it is a case that "we will win".

Sturgeon insisted insisted there "is no rational case" for taking the UK out of the single market, and that the Tories have no mandate to do so.


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