THE SNP is set to consider an emergency motion on the “ludicrous” Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures at the upcoming party conference.

The annual GERS report published by the Scottish Government – which came out on Wednesday – estimates the difference between what Scotland raises in taxation and what is spent on its public services.

It’s a hot topic of conversation in the independence debate, with Unionists arguing that it shows an independent Scotland would fail – although this has been debunked by economists such as Professor Richard Murphy.

With the final agenda for the conference now confirmed, one SNP member has told The National that an emergency resolution on GERS is set to be put forward on September 1.

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Jacqui Jensen, a prominent SNP activist and part of the Believe in Scotland steering group, said the GERS figures were “a ludicrous proposition”.

“I’m not in favour of publishing GERS, I was disappointed that it happened. And I’m not the only one – the chuntering across the Yes movement about this is loud," she told The National.

“It doesn’t represent Scotland in any visible way. It talks about us in terms of a deficit and what we owe across the English infrastructure as well, and that is not fair.”

She added that in previous years, there was “talk” about including deficit from the now-axed HS2 project – which was never intended to reach Scotland – but that “the government was talked out of it”.

Previous SNP conferences have asked party leadership to find an alternative to GERS or to stop publishing it, although no progress was made then.

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Jensen said she hopes the emergency resolution will “go some way” to addressing the issues around GERS, but that improvements need to be made in how conference resolutions are followed up on.

“One of the things I would really like to see is that when resolutions are passed at conference, if we don’t have work done on it then at the following conference, we have a follow-up on why.

“I would be happy if conference was kept informed, I think that would be great.”

But what would an alternative to GERS look like?

Many in the independence movement have called for an alternative to GERS, with Murphy calling it “nonsense” and inherently biased against Scotland.

Jensen has instead proposed a “Scottish GERS”, which would look at what Scotland’s position would be “if we were an independent country now” and didn’t have to account for part of the deficit of England’s infrastructure.

She suggested a deeper look at the role of North Sea oil and gas and renewables in Scotland’s economy.

“We should be looking at what position our renewables would then put us in if we had a value on the open market for that, and what would be the value of our oil and gas on the open market to Scotland,” she said.

“I do think a forward look would be fabulous.”