TREASURY big guns George Osborne and Danny Alexander insisted yesterday that Scotland would not be able to join a sterling currency union in the event of independence.

The Chancellor and his Lib Dem deputy responded yesterday when an unnamed minister’s comments appeared to imply that a deal could be done to let Scotland keep the pound and Britain keep Trident submarines at Faslane.

A joint statement by the two senior Treasury ministers said: “The Scottish government are proposing to divorce the rest of the UK but want to keep the joint bank account and credit card.

“The UK would not put its taxpayers at risk of bailing out a foreign country and its banks. Parliament wouldn’t pass it and the people wouldn’t accept it.

“Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.”

Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond acknowledged that Trident would be part of any post-independence talks but also insisted currency union was off the table.

Mr Hammond told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “The Trident base at Faslane is hugely important to Britain’s defence.

“If the Scottish people were to vote for independence there would be a protracted negotiation about many issues and the future of the base at Faslane would be one of those issues.”

But he said, currency union “is not just another item that could be negotiated because there are clear economic reasons why that would not work.”

The three main parties at Westminster have ruled out sharing sterling with an independent Scotland, but an unnamed minister was quoted in the Guardian last week as saying “of course” there would be an agreement on the pound, indicating that a deal could be done with Scotland in exchange for Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet remaining at Faslane.

“There would be a highly complex set of negotiations after a Yes vote with many moving pieces,” the minister was quoted as saying.

“The UK wants to keep Trident nuclear weapons at Faslane and the Scottish government wants a currency union — you can see the outlines of a deal.”

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said the anonymous quote was a blow to the Better Together campaign.

“You would not have had the panicky reaction of the last 48 hours, if the No campaign didn’t realise that their scaremongering has been holed below the water line,” he said yesterday.