Tuesday, October 15, 2024

This is an ARCHIVED article at baff.org.uk. Information and/or links may well be out of date.

The Scottish Government's consultation on arrangements for the independence referendum closes 11 May 2012. Anyone can take part. You can complete the consultation online and you can even take part anonymously, although we do not recommend this.

The separate consultation by the UK Government's Scotland Office has already taken place. BAFF took part in that consultation, and our views were quoted in the UK Government's published summary of the consultation results.

Given that beyond question there are service personnel on both sides of the referendum debate, our focus as with previous elections is to encourage eligible members of the armed forces community to make sure they are properly registered, and then make their own voting choice with confidence that their votes will count.

Beyond the scope of the current consultation about how a referendum should be run, we are developing a non-partisan plan for the referendum itself and will be consulting our members about that.

For example, we would want to avoid the referendum becoming divisive within the armed forces community. Voting either way in the referendum must not be portrayed as disloyal, and no-one should feel constrained from continued armed forces service iof their country, irrespective of their own personal views on the independence/separation issue.

Irrespective of whether you agree with our position on the referendum arrangements, we would welcome your participation in the consultation. Please consider mentioning service personnel voting issues as a concern to you.

The Scottish Government consultation can be found here:

The BAFF response to the Scotland Office consultation is now available to all, without any need to log in to the site: