UNCERTAINTY over the referendum is blighting Scotland’s economy according to a controversial report.

London-based forecasters Capital Economics’ annual outlook yesterday suggested that lagging productivity rates in Scotland could reflect “concerns about the looming independence vote.”

Official figures earlier this week showed that Scotland’s GDP had risen by one per cent in the last fiscal quarter, but the report’s authors dismissed the news as “a bounce-back from a weak performance” in the months prior, with an annual growth rate of 2.6 per cent compared to three per cent across Britain as a whole.