Scotland's Salmond rules out early independence poll - Reuters UK

LONDON | Sun Oct 16, 2011 6:32pm BST

LONDON (Reuters) - Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond ruled out an early vote on Scottish independence on Sunday despite an opinion poll showing rising support for the move and calls from political opponents to do so.

In May, Salmond's pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) won a majority in the country's devolved parliament and pledged to hold a referendum on independence within five years, some 300 years after England and Scotland were unified.

According to a UK-wide poll published in the Independent on Sunday newspaper, 39 percent of respondents said they thought Scotland should be an independent country compared with 38 percent who disagreed.

In Scotland itself, support for the SNP's plans have surged with 49 percent backing independence, and 37 percent opposed, the paper said. A poll in May had support for independence in Scotland running at just 29 percent.

All Britain's major political parties including the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who make up London's coalition government are opposed to the break up of the union.

Prime Minister David Cameron called on Salmond to hold an early referendum earlier this month, accusing him of trying to create a unstable relationship between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

However Salmond, in an unprecedented position of power after his SNP became the first party to win a majority since Scotland got a devolved parliament in 1999, rejected an early poll.

"I made it clear we would hold a referendum in the second half of the parliamentary term," he told Sky News.

"That's what we said we would do and that's what we intend to do and no amount of blustering from the prime minister is going to change that view."

The current Scottish parliament controls health, education and prisons, and Scotland also has its own legal system.

The bulk of its funding comes from a 30 billion pound grant from the British central government, but Salmond has said an independent Scotland would be entitled to the lion's share of North Sea oil revenues.

"Among ordinary folk in England, there's a substantial amount of support for the idea Scotland wants to stand on its own two feet and make its own way in the world," he said.

"We had generations of being ordered about from Westminster. That's gone now."

(Reporting by Michael Holden)