AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would have greater opportunities to tackle the nation's entrenched health inequalities than the status quo, according to an eminent public health expert.

Professor Phil Hanlon, professor of public health at Glasgow University, pointed to Denmark as a small country with less of a divide between the wealthy and poor and suggested a Yes vote would give Scotland similar potential. However, speaking ahead of a debate about health and the referendum at Glasgow's Aye Write! book festival, he also cautioned that policies - such as taxation - would have to be used to create greater fairness and this would not necessarily be palatable to the population.

Professor Hanlon said: "What is certain is that under the current circumstances and trajectory inequalities concerning both the social economic gradient and health are likely to continue to increase. There is no force that would cause a narrowing at present. Rather, the forces are causing a widening."

He described Scottish families hit by the decline of manufacturing as laying in a "no man's land where there is no particular future," saying: "under the current UK regime there's not even an addressing of these things." But he said he had not made his own mind up about which way to vote, noting the harder question was not could an independent Scotland make a more equal society but "would it?"

A Better Together spokesman said: "The Scottish Parliament already has responsibility for tackling problems with our health service and reducing inequalities, so the Scottish Government could take more action today. If we leave the UK then the money we have to invest in our NHS will be put at risk, because we would be overly dependent on volatile North Sea oil revenues."

The Herald Debate: Sick Man of Europe or Health Pioneers? is being held in the Mitchell Library tomorrow, 7.30pm-8.30pm as part of the Aye Write! book festival. Professor Hanlon will be joined by Raymond Tallis, co-editor of NHS SOS and Dr Linda de Caestecker, director of public health for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.