l THE LibDem chief whip has endorsed a plan to review the impact of a coalition with the Conservatives.

Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, said the move will help party members "sell" the achievements of the LibDems to voters.

The plan, backed in a vote at the LibDem spring conference in Inverness, will establish a commission of party members, MPs and MSPs to evaluate progress in Scotland two years after going into office with David Cameron's Tories.

Carmichael said the LibDem role in government is often misunderstood by the public, who often do not hear about the policies the party has managed to put into practice.

He said: "You never hear that because we're not telling you. That's what we've got to do, that's what this commission offers the opportunity for."

l MEANWHILE, at the Welsh LibDem conference, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has stressed his party needs to keep their heads held high – despite having to undertake "difficult decisions" while in government.

Since the LibDems entered into coalition with the Conservatives, the party has seen its popularity fall.

As well as taking a hammering in last year's local elections in England, it lost seats in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. But Clegg said the LibDems were making a positive difference to people's lives.

The 45-year-old said that the UK had suffered "an economic heart attack", and there was "no magic wand that will make everything better overnight".

l UP to £4 billion of annual green energy subsidies could be at risk if Scotland becomes independent, Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, below, has warned.Moore rounded off an energy-focused second day at the Liberal Democrat Scottish Conference in Inverness with a repeat of his warning that the independence referendum is deterring investment.

Earlier, Energy Secretary Ed Davey said England would struggle to hit renewable energy targets if Scotland votes to leave the UK, and that Scotland needs English consumers to help pay for the renewables.

Meanwhile, former party leader Charles Kennedy, who has been appointed by Moore to be the LibDems' "point man" in the anti-independence campaign, has suggested that England may need to create a second Green Investment Bank if Edinburgh wins a hotly contested bid to become the base of its UK headquarters and then subsequently becomes the capital of an independent Scotland.