According to the Mail on Sunday, UK Government have privately approved a plan to allow Scottish websites to end with .scot instead of .uk. Plans to let Wales go it alone with ‘.wales’ and ‘.cymru’ have also been approved.
However the UK Government has refused to allow the devolved administrations in Holyrood and Cardiff to use the domain name .gov.scot or .gov.cymru and are insisting that these bodies retain the existing .gov.uk. The Mail on Sunday reports that UK government ministers is refusing to permit the use of the domain .gov.scot for fear of giving a boost to the independence campaign.
English Conservative MP Andrew Percy, who was recently in the news as one of the MPs who were assaulted by Falkirk Labour MP Eric Joyce, reacted angrily to the announcement, saying that it was “nonsense”. Mr Percy claimed that the UK government had “caved in” to the SNP on the issue.
Mr Percy said: “Scotland hasn’t even voted yet on whether to go independent and all this is doing is giving First Minister Alex Salmond’s Nationalists a huge propaganda coup.”
There has been a long campaign in Scotland for the creation of a top level internet domain for the country.
First Minister Alex Salmond has given his backing to the plan, saying: “The time is ripe for the worldwide family of Scots to have their own domain, reflecting an online community defined by a shared commitment to Scottish identity, culture and economic promotion.”