At the moment Scotland is part of the UK. However there is a chance this may no longer be the case in the future. A white paper is to be released that looks into many aspects of the proposed idea for independence. Scottish voters are to get a say in whether they want independence or not, and ministers are currently looking at what could happen if the vote was a yes.
In this situation there would be a question of whether Scotland could keep using the pound. If this were to happen it would need to be agreed upon by both countries. At the moment it looks uncertain as to whether such an agreement could be made.
There are two other options here as well, and neither of these look certain either. The first is that Scotland could have its own independent currency, such as the Scottish pound for example. The second is that it may join the European Union and as such adopt the Euro, even if the rest of the UK did not. Independence would allow for this option, although of course this opens up a whole new can of worms. Would voters want to join the EU? A significant portion of voters in the UK do not, but what is the proportion of voters in Scotland on this same topic?
First Minister Alex Salmond said recently that he fully intended to keep the pound. However Chancellor George Osborne has proved to be sceptical of whether or not this situation would occur. So where would the Scots end up if they did vote for independence?
The answer is that no one knows. There are many pros and cons for the idea of independence anyway, and this makes it difficult to see whether the pound would still be used in Scotland, or whether some other solution would be found. It will be interesting to see whether Scotland does eventually gain its own independence, and what currency it keeps afterwards if it does happen. It seems that no one can be sure of the answers.