MICHAEL Moore last night demanded an end to the "damaging uncertainty" caused by a delay to the independence referendum after the Weir Group, one of Scotland's leading firms, expressed its concern at Alex Salmond's preferred autumn 2014 timescale.
The Scottish Secretary seized on remarks from Keith Cochrane, chief executive of the Glasgow-based FTSE-100 engineering group, which followed on from fears raised by SSE, the utility formerly known as Scottish and Southern Energy.
Mr Cochrane stressed certain questions had to be answered "as soon as possible", including those about the referendum process and the structure of an independent Scotland.
Last week, Perth-based SSE said the referendum "increased risk" which will be "taken into account in making final investment decisions".
Mr Moore said: "As yet another business raises questions about independence, it is clear that the referendum continues to cause damaging uncertainty."
John Swinney, the Scottish Finance Secretary, said he welcomed Mr Cochrane's remarks "in which he said politicians in both the Scottish and UK Governments require to answer questions and indicated support for Weir's headquarters remaining in Scotland".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article