An SNP councillor in the Borders has hit out against suggestions that Scottish independence would cut off the English and Scottish border communities, dismissing the claims as “scaremongering”.

Recently, the leaders of Scottish Borders Council (SBC), Dumfries and Galloway Council and Cumbria County Council raised concerns over the prospect of a ‘hard border’ between their communities if customs checks were to be introduced due to independence.

SBC leader Shona Haslam, of the Conservatives, said: “Cumbria and Northumberland are hugely important for the economy here.”

The comments came after former SNP cabinet secretary Alex Neil told ITV Border that if an independent Scotland rejoined the EU, there would be a need for a customs barrier in the middle of Great Britain.

But now an SNP councillor for Tweeddale East has dismissed these comments as “scaremongering".

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Heather Anderson, previously a Member of the European Parliament, said: “What Scotland voted for in the EU referendum was freedom of movement, freedom of goods and freedom of services.

“We’re not wanting to put up any borders. We have absolutely no interest in building borders – we want to carry on trading across all of our borders.

“The UK Government has no agreement on how they’ll manage trade after the two-year Brexit transition period and that is putting us in a vulnerable position.

“If we separate from England we’d presumably have a two-year transition period, and we’d be negotiating things like the border, and we’d be trying to make that as frictionless as possible.

“Scotland is England’s third-largest trading partner, after the EU and the United States of America, so it’s not just that we need England to supply us with goods and services, they’d need to be able to trade with us too.”

The ability to police a hard border between Scotland and England was also called into question.

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Cumbria County Council’s Labour leader Stewart Young said: “Nicola Sturgeon kept implying she would close the border in response to coronavirus, and I saw the people holding ‘Keep England out of Scotland’ banners, but the reality is you couldn’t physically close that border – you’d have to build something like the Berlin Wall.”

In response, councillor Anderson said: “We have to distinguish between checks on goods at the border and the movement of people.

“The customs checks only come in if there’s a protection of standards, like at the border between Norway and Sweden [where people can pass freely but goods are checked].

“We’d be coming from a position of freedom of movement and the level of customs checks would depend on a deviation in standards – Northern Ireland, for example, will keep pace with EU standards in order to avoid needing a hard border.

“If the UK doesn’t keep pace with EU standards then there would have to be checks because we want to maintain our standards and be protected.

“We want access to the biggest free market in the world. We also want freedom of movement.

“We need immigration in Scotland and we need EU nationals to come and get settled status. We are for open borders.

“We’re not building a Berlin Wall, and to scaremonger like that is irresponsible, and it is absolutely not the Scottish Government’s intention to do that.”