There’s some interesting footage circulating today of a referendum debate for women that took place last week. Many people have focused on No-campaign representative Cat Headley admitting that a “Better Together” leaflet made some highly misleading claims about an independent Scotland’s ranking among the world’s wealthiest countries, but we covered that back in May so we won’t go over it again.

The bit of the meeting that caught our eye is at 1m 36 in the clip above.

It comes from Labour’s shadow education minister Kezia Dugdale:

“When it comes to why Westminster hasn’t been helping in putting forward the arguments or the numbers for what things cost, I’m afraid that’s because the Edinburgh Agreement which Nicola signed with them precluded any pre-negotiation. It was in there. absolutely to the letter of it, you can Google it tonight, you can pull it up, you can see that they agreed that they would not have any pre-negotiation ahead of a Yes vote.”

At this point Nicola Sturgeon, also on the panel, interjects while shaking her head, saying what appears to be “I signed it.” Dugdale responds:

“I’m telling folk they can go and Google it, I’m not telling them what the letter of the law is, they can go away and have a look at it for themselves.”

And indeed you can. The Edinburgh Agreement is conveniently archived in this site’s Reference section and can be located here, so it’s easy to check Ms Dugdale’s claim. And what you’ll find is that there is no mention whatsoever of pre-negotiations in the Edinburgh Agreement.

The words “negotiate” or “negotiation” don’t appear at all in its 13 pages, nor is there anything else that could possibly be interpreted to imply such a preclusion.

The Agreement is a short document, just 30 paragraphs long and dealing entirely with the technical conduct of the referendum itself and the campaigns surrounding it. The only part of it that refers in any way to the period after the referendum is the line “The two governments are committed to continue to work together constructively in the light of the outcome, whatever it is, in the best interests of the people of Scotland and of the rest of the United Kingdom.”

At 2m 43s in the same clip, Kezia Dugdale tells the audience to “Question what you’re hearing, do your Googling and come to your own conclusions”. It’s advice that we heartily endorse, especially if you’ve just been listening to Kezia Dugdale.