The mantra of the undecided voter in the independence referendum is ‘I want the facts.’  People are naturally distrustful of politicians and governments who clearly have an obvious agenda. Right from the beginning of the referendum campaign, when you talk to people on the doorstep or on the street they want an impartial body to give them the pros and cons of staying in the UK or going it alone.

And they got exactly that.

This past week the respected and, crucially, independent Institute for Fiscal Studies gave its weighty verdict on what leaving the UK would mean for Scotland. It was not telling Scots how they should vote – far from it. It was simply laying out the facts that people have been searching for since it became clear they would have to make this momentous decision.

So, what did it say? Well, it is clear that the choices a separate Scotland would have to make would be stark. The Scottish ‘fiscal gap’ that would have to be filled would be twice as large as the one that the UK will face. In fact, the best estimate would see Scotland having to fill a gap of £3bn, the worst around £10bn. On that most optimistic scenario, the IFS says that a separate Scotland would have to implement either an eye-watering eight per cent cut in public spending, hitting schools and hospitals, a nine per cent hike in the basic rate of income tax, hitting already hard-pressed families – or the worst of all worlds, a combination of the two.

Now, those of you acquainted with the IFS will be used to the government announcing its spending plans and then the IFS responding. However, this past week things were slightly different. The day after the IFS report came out and dominated the headlines, Alex Salmond was out hinting at tax cuts, on top of those he’s already announced for big business in a paper that talked a lot but said very little. Instead of admitting the obvious challenges caused by the rise in the number of elderly people, the fall in the number of people of working age and the natural decline in North Sea oil, the nationalist response was to deny that there are any problems.

But it wasn’t a pithy line in a press release or TV interview that rebutted the first minister’s point most effectively, rather it was the very building in which he was speaking. The majority of the new Dundee University science building that our first minister was speaking in was funded out of UK taxpayers’ money. The pooling and sharing of resources across the UK ensured that Scots can have a facility that allows our scientists to do what they do best, continue the proud scientific legacy that has given the world everything from penicillin to Dolly the sheep.

However, when just a few weeks ago the point was made by the respected and renowned scientist Hugh Pennington that our place in the UK is crucial to our scientific research and development, the nationalist response was dismissal and a grand assertion that everything would be all right on the night.

So, the message to those who want the facts before they make this huge decision: when it comes to independence, you can believe the experts or you can believe Salmond. Worth bearing in mind in the coming days as he prepares to launch his long -awaited independence white paper …

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Ross MacRae is communications officer at the Better Together campaign and writes the Better Together column for Progress