Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said there won’t be another Scottish independence referendum in her day if she wins the Conservative Party leadership battle to become the next UK prime minister, according to Bloomberg.
The Scottish National Party is pushing for a new referendum after losing the 2014 vote, citing the UK’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union as justification. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has announced plans for an “advisory” referendum in October next year and has asked the UK’s High Court to rule that her regional government can go ahead with the vote without the UK government’s approval.
“The SNP lost the 2014 referendum and Nicola Sturgeon is now leading a campaign of deception aimed at the UK itself and breaking up the Union,” Truss told the Sunday Telegraph. “But I am absolutely clear that there will not be a second Scottish independence referendum in my lifetime.”
Her rival for the top job, former finance minister Rishi Sunak, has unveiled a new campaign promise to tackle backlog in the National Health Service by fining people who miss their doctor’s appointments. Under his plan, patients would be given the benefit of the doubt if they miss an appointment and then fined £10 if they miss another, he told the Sunday Telegraph.
During his time in Boris Johnson’s cabinet he was frustrated that “the government’s focus was much more on spending money on public services”, he said.
As prime minister he would make public service reform a condition for new investment, Sunak said.
“I don’t think it’s right to continue to invest record sums in public services without getting more reform, more efficiency, more value for money and really better outputs for the public as a result,” he told the newspaper.
Conservative Party members eligible to vote in the leadership contest will start receiving their ballot papers this week, with the result announced on September 5.
Source: Capital
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