Scotland could be damaged if the country fails to move on from the "dividing line" that was created by the independence referendum, Scottish Green co-convener Patrick Harvie has warned.

While voters last month opted to stay part of the United Kingdom, Mr Harvie said there was still a "window of opportunity" to change the nation.

But he warned that after the result of the referendum, this would be harder to achieve as he cautioned it could be "damaging for Scotland" if the country was to "obsessively focus" on the referendum result.

While the majority of voters backed the Union, 45% of those who took part in the ballot wanted Scotland to become independent.

With a new commission, chaired by Lord Smith of Kelvin, now beginning the process of considering further devolution, Mr Harvie stressed the need for Scotland to move on from the ballot.

Mr Harvie said: "There are many people who are still very proud of being part of the 45% who voted Yes. And there are some who are finding it difficult to accept it wasn't a win.

"But I think it's important to say that this dividing line between the 45% and the 55% is one that we are going to have to move beyond. Focusing too much on that is going to become increasingly meaningless."

He continued: "That dividing line is one that isn't relevant for us as individuals any more and it isn't helpful for the party and I think it would be damaging for Scotland as well to obsessively focus on that dividing line for the future"

While he accepted the referendum had resulted in a No vote, he stressed that "even so, the window of opportunity for change is still open and we need to keep pushing it open".

The Glasgow MSP added that the vote against independence meant that "we might need to work harder to give it the fullest expression" but he added: "That possibility is still there and a party like ours has got the ideas and the creativity to help make that happen."

He spoke out as he addressed that largest ever Scottish Green Party conference in Edinburgh, after the party saw its membership more than treble to 6,300 in the aftermath of the referendum.

Mr Harvie told activists that the party was full of "new energy, enthusiasm and talent".

Speaking about the party's massive growth, he said: "It's hard to overstate how much of a moment this is. If you were a member of the Green Party a month ago, you are the old guard now."

Mr Harvie also warned that if the three main Westminster parties failed to live up to their vow, made in the days before the referendum vote, to transfer substantial new powers to Holyrood, they would be betraying the people of Scotland.

He spoke about the "incredible compelling engagement" the country had seen during the referendum, which had a record high turnout, but said if that was "followed by a traditional political party stitch up, we will have betrayed the trust of the whole electorate".

Mr Harvie added: "That's something that I don't think we can allow."

But he said on new economic powers, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats "seem at the moment to be rolling back their positions" and were "forgetting the much more radical forms of devolution that were promised in the closing stages of the referendum".

He argued Scotland needed control over economic and welfare policies, saying: "We need Scotland to have the ability to set its own economic direction, that means borrowing policy, it means that ability to decide the balance of taxation, not just the proportion of taxation that comes from income tax or anything else. We need the ability to set industrial and employment policy, we need the ability to set the direction for Scotland's economy in a way that's right for Scotland's circumstances and accords with Scottish voters' values, that's what we need.

"And we need the opportunity to build a welfare state that is worthy of the name. What we have in this country is no longer a welfare state, it's not designed for human welfare and well-being, it's designed to bully people into low-paid work, subsidise that low-paid work. And as for those who can't work, or who can't find work, or can't find enough work, devil take the hindmost.

"That is not a welfare state, that is a humiliation state and we need the ability to build a welfare state that is worthy of the name."

With a UK general election taking place in May next year, and elections to Holyrood the year after that, Mr Harvie launched a new crowd fund appeal to build a fighting fund for those campaigns.

He said in next year's Westminster elections the Conservatives would offer "yet more attempts to indulge the privileged and assault everybody else in society" as well as "scrapping our human rights, our hard won and vital human rights and destroying our public services and leaving us with an ever meaner and harsher society".

But he said Labour was now "the tragedy of a party that looks in the mirror and sees the images in its own face where once there was a radical movement", adding that they were "unable to offer a coherent alternative to the austerity agenda".

Meanwhile he claimed the Liberal Democrats, who are currently in coalition government with the Conservatives, would "do a deal with anybody, just for the chance to hang on" in power.

Mr Harvie also spoke out against Ukip and its leader Nigel Farage, describing it as the "nauseating sight of a wealthy, right wing merchant banker" promoting his party as the anti-establishment choice.

"We can't allow these people to be the story of next year's election," the Green co-convener said.