A FORMER Scottish Government minister has called for there to be three options in a future independence referendum, rather than two as was the case in 2014.

Alex Neil, who was the SNP MSP for Airdrie and Shotts until retiring this year, told STV’s Scotland Tonight that he believes a multi-option vote would be beneficial for the independence campaign.

Polling earlier this year on the idea of a three-way referendum – to include a devo-max option – was not particularly popular among the electorate.

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Back ahead of the 2014 independence referendum, Alex Salmond had wanted a third option for full devolution on the ballot paper but David Cameron rejected this proposal. It was felt among Scottish Government figures at the time that a third option would have prompted more constitutional reform.

Speaking to the STV politics programme last night, former health secretary Neil said: “The Scottish people should have three clear options.

“The status-quo, independence, or is there anything else on offer from Westminster? And if so, let’s see it up front and let’s be able to analyse what’s actually going to be on offer.”

He went on: “I think most of the middle ground in Scotland is already in favour of independence and I think the advantage of having the third option, it exposes right up front the fallacies of what’s on offer from Westminster as an alternative to independence. And that’s the whole point. To show that out of the three options, independence is by far – economically, socially, environmentally, politically – by far the best option.

“And I think that’s better than being caught out a second time with a Vow that comes along late in the campaign and doesn’t get exposed as the fallacy and the con that it is.

"Let’s face it, we were winning the last time up until about the last 10 days and I believe the key factor in why we lost the last time was that people were conned by the Vow, we must make sure that can never happen again."

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Earlier this year, prior to his retirement, Neil indicated he was considering voting for Salmond’s Alba party as he believed in the idea of a “supermajority” for independence.

Ahead of the May election, he appeared to criticise First Minister Nicola Sturgeon when he claimed there had been “zero progress” towards independence in the last parliamentary term.

The SNP were re-elected with record levels of support and later signed a co-operation deal with the pro-independence Greens.

There are a total of 72 pro-independence MSPs in Holyrood, making up a solid majority of seats, and today’s latest Opinium polling shows support for independence is marginally in the lead on 51%.

The SNP’s support among voters sits at 51% among voters when asked who they would back in a Holyrood and Westminster election, the survey said.