KEEPING the United Kingdom united will be the main issue at Britain's next general election, the British Prime Minister, Mr Major, said yesterday.
In an unprecedented address to Scottish MPs at Dumfries in southern Scotland, Mr Major vowed to fight Labour's plans to transfer powers to new assemblies in Scotland and Wales.
"The union is one I care passionately about a United Kingdom is greater than the sum of its parts," Mr Major told a meeting of the Scottish Grand Committee, a regular forum for the discussion of Scottish affairs.
Mr Major, the first British prime minister to address the committee, prefaced his constitutional remarks with the announcement that Liteon Technology, a Taiwanese electronics firm, would create 1,000 jobs in central Scotland.
Liteon will build a plant making visual display units on the site of an abandoned steel works site close to a new factory set up by another Taiwanese company, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, with which Liteon already has close links in the Far East.
Mr Major said Liteon's £50 million investment in "Silicon Glen", the heart of Scotland's electronics industry, would add significantly to the 3,000 jobs created by Chunghwa.
When both plants are complete they will provide more jobs than the steel works once did. He said inward investment was coming to Scotland because it was offering a low cost environment and a well educated workforce.
"It would be an act of folly to put the Union at risk," said Mr Major, who must call an election no later than next May. "I make no apology for wishing to keep the United Kingdom united."
The Labour spokesman, Mr George Robertson, welcomed Mr Major's surprise decision this week to return the Stone of Scone, a symbol of Scottish kings that has been in London's Westminster Abbey since it was stolen by England's King Edward 700 years ago.
But he added. "This gesture goes no way towards satisfying Scotland's demand to settle and run its own affairs within the UK. Scotland wants change and is not going to take no for an answer.