THE SNP’s Roadmap for a Scottish Green industrial strategy is “laughable,” a Labour MSP said today, after the plans were launched.

The former Westminster SNP group leader and investment banker, Ian Blackford MP, commissioned the report, inviting retired senior civil servant Sir Martin Donnelly and London Business School’s Professor Dominic Houlder to lead the work.

The study recommends a focus on higher education and “alternative energy” in any future strategy, as well as a Scotttish industrial strategy council which would be directly accountable to the First Minister.

Mr Blackford said: “There is a massive opportunity that exists in academia that’s not been exploited.”

He stated that he believed there was a “high degree of meeting of minds” between the First Minister and himself on the report, but added: “This report is an independent report.

“It is about how we get the economy in Scotland moving.

“We have talked in the report about some of the things we could do under the devolution settlement but we do highlight some of the things we could do if Scotland was independent.

“I think what the SNP will do is ensure that we have the answers in terms of growing the economy in a sustainable way.

“Here is a roadmap. Here is a plan. And on the back of that there will be a discussion about independence.”

But Scottish Labour’s Richard Leonard remained unconvinced, telling the Star: “It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.

“This report suggests establishing a Scottish industrial strategy council when there is no industrial strategy. So at its very heart is a con trick.

“Any industrial intervention by the SNP government is in their own words on a “case-by-case” basis. 

“They have no economic plan, no industrial strategy and certainly no intention of tackling the hugely unequal relations of power in the economy.”