ALEX Salmond has urged the Remain side to “leave the scaremongering behind and make the positive case” for Britain staying in Europe or it could face defeat on June23.

In the first TV debate in the EU referendum campaign before a BBC audience of young voters in Glasgow, the former First Minister criticised both sides for “dividing Project Fear between themselves” with the Treasury fearmongering on the economy and the Leave side on immigration.

Stressing how he did not believe George Osborne’s “apocalyptic” vision of what Brexit would do to Britain, the Gordon MP, arguing for the Remain camp, pointed out how in the Scottish independence campaign the Yes side began at 28 per cent and ended up at 45 per cent by accentuating the positive.

“The Remain campaign can’t afford to lose one per cent a month otherwise they will lose over the next four weeks,” declared Mr Salmond.

“To win a campaign, to motivate people, you’ve got to argue a positive case; leave the scaremongering behind.”

But the moderator, Victoria Derbyshire, pointed out Project Fear won in 2014, telling Mr Salmond: “It works. You lost.”

The former FM’s comments came just days after Nicola Sturgeon, his successor, warned the chancellor to drop his “fear-based campaigning”.

Much of the debate was focused on migration with passions raised in the audience over the issue of housing and the shortage for first-time buyers.

Liam Fox, the Conservative former Defence Secretary, arguing for Leave, stressed that the key issue was not about stopping immigration but controlling it. “If you have an uncontrolled figure, you put pressure on public services.”

Diane James, the deputy chairwoman of Ukip, also arguing for Leave, said: “If we can’t control the number of people, if you can’t control demand because you can’t control supply, you are forever in a spiral downwards.”

She linked the migration issue to the NHS and the desire to have qualified doctors in Commonwealth countries coming to Britain to fill vacancies but who were being denied entry to the UK.

“Why not have someone from the Commonwealth who speaks our language?” she declared. This sparked a quizzical response from Remain supporters in the audience. Mr Salmond interjected: “If I wanted a qualified doctor, then a qualified Lithuanian, Danish, French one would do just fine.”

Earlier, the debate about migration dominated the In-Out debate with the publication of new figures, showing a 10,000 yearly net increase to 184,000 in people moving from the EU to the UK.

But the Remain camp stressed how the official statistics and a new report by the Social Market Foundation [SMF] highlighted how 240,000 EU nationals worked in the UK public sector and that Brexit could cause “catastrophic” staff shortages.

The SMF research claimed nearly nine in 10 EU workers in the UK would fail to meet visa requirements and would face losing their jobs in the event of Brexit, presenting a "serious challenge" to thousands of firms.

The research found only 12 per cent of the 1.6 million EU citizens working in the UK would meet visa requirements under the policies applied to people from the rest of the world.

Nigel Keohane, co-author of the SMF report, said: "Our research shows the reliance that UK employers have on EU workers…Our analysis of the potential effects of applying the current visa policy for non-European workers to EU workers and other potential strategies reveals the potential scale of the effect on UK employers."

In response, Brexit-backing Tory MEP Daniel Hannan hit back, saying: "The In campaign are trying to distract from the out of control immigration system that we are locked into while we stay in the EU.

"If we vote Leave we will be able to take back control of our borders and create a fairer immigration system that prioritises the skills that we need here in the UK and stops the open door policy which puts pressure on public services," he added.