Jim Mather, of the SNP Growth Commission, is addressing the Scottish Independence Convention tomorrow in Glasgow

BACK in August, the SNP formed a Sustainable Growth Commission, under the chairmanship of Andrew Wilson, with a wide-ranging membership seeking inputs from many sources.

I am delighted to serve on the commission and welcome the chance to work with talented people and globally renowned thinkers on the question of how best to steer a better and more successful future for Scotland.

The commission has the dual brief of refreshing the economic case for independence post the experience of 2014 and since; and examining a strategy for sustainable growth that could help Scotland immediately or as part of the independence case.

In fulfilling that brief, we are taking a very open, evidence-based approach. As a result, it’s already clear that Scotland is a very bankable proposition that can be funded and can succeed and, in the process, can improve the life-chances of everyone in Scotland. The starting point is challenging but the status quo is a greater risk.

Our commission rejects any future that limits Scotland to being locked into the current limited UK economic model that sub-optimises our potential in terms of economic and population growth and the development of the confidence and resilience needed to allow everyone in Scotland to enjoy higher levels of fulfilment and well-being.

That resolve hardens, when we face the specific challenges that come from the fact that UK economic stewardship perennially optimises London and the South East at the expense of other parts of the UK.

And this could become even more marked, as we confront the additional costs and disruptions that will emanate from the UK’s rudderless moves to exit the EU, given the importance of free movement of people and access to the single market for Scottish businesses and their employees.

So the commission accepts that circumstances present Scotland with a very challenging starting point, but are working on each and every one of the specific challenges in a systematic and thorough way, dodging no issue, addressing every question and seeking answers that have been proven to work.

We are doing so: positioning ourselves as a small open trading nation that willingly embraces interdependence, trade, competitiveness, internationalism and the need to build our reputation for probity and integrity in our national finances and in our relationships at home and abroad.

In practical terms, we know that we can follow the lead of those others and learn from their mistakes to deploy all the ingenuity we can muster, our ability to foster interdependent links abroad, our inter-connectedness at home and our diverse civic-nationalism that wins us friends, allies and talent, in order to plan alternative and superior strategies for Scotland.

We do all of this motivated by our acute awareness that, on the money front, the only way to sustainably fund public services is to have an economy that performs well, producing the resources that we need to sustain the just and fair social democracy, to which most people in Scotland aspire.

To that end we are well served: for that objective was at the heart of the Economic Case that Andrew Wilson and I trawled round Scotland between 2002 and 2007. Indeed, it was also at the heart of the Scottish Government’s Working Together Review and it remains at the core of that Review’s successor-body: the Fair Work Convention.

I believe that this combined legacy will be used by the commission to offer Scotland, its organisations and individual workplaces direction to help them create the inclusion and fairness that will increase intrinsic motivation and fulfilment and allow both people and organisations to endure and grow.

The world is watching and if we stick to and promote Scottish values and answer all reasonable questions with well-researched responses and commitment then we can make real progress and win many more hearts and minds, who accept, as we do, that national and personal destiny and well-being are topics that must not be delegated to others.

Consequently, if we are asked to choose again we will do so with more facts, detail and planning than any country that was previously faced with such a choice.