Last time around, I blogged a few thoughts on the Scottish independence debate from the perspective of the education sector - one of the key industry sectors here at SGH Martineau.

Another is the manufacturing sector, and so I asked Adam McGiveron, who heads that sector for us, for his thoughts.

In June, the Scottish government released a report, snappily titled 'Reindustrialising Scotland for the 21st Century: A Sustainable Industrial Strategy for a Modern, Independent Nation'.

The report advocates that a 'Yes' vote would create more jobs in manufacturing, through the ability to design a tax system which encourages companies to hire more workers and which offers financial allowances for capital investment in manufacturing.

Indeed, Alex Salmond has said that an independent Scotland could boost domestic manufacturing by 30 per cent.

With both Scotland, and the UK as a whole, desperate to boost domestic growth as a whole and the manufacturing sector in particular, the question is a simple one: Are the prospects both sides of the border enhanced, or reduced, if the two sides go it alone rather than together?

According to Adam, the key question will be how this is viewed from outside the UK.

With much of UK manufacturing reliant on overseas investment, especially in the automotive sector, the crucial issue is whether global companies from countries like India, China and Japan will be attracted by the investment prospects in a brand new country with a limited track record of government and, if not, whether the rump UK is perceived as a smaller and less influential country and therefore a less attractive base for European operations.

With the UK economic recovery still fragile and global competition for investment intensifying, it would surely be incumbent on both the Scottish and Westminster governments to work hard to sell compelling, and complementary, visions of Scotland and the rump UK as attractive investment locations in their own right.

The danger is that each is reduced, and overseas investment finds a home elsewhere in the EU.

The stakes are high.

And when it comes to manufacturing jobs, there are two key industries in Scotland where much of the debate has been focussing.

Scotland has a vibrant renewable industry, which currently supports around 11,000 jobs.

The offshore wind potential in particular is huge. But Scotland, and the UK as a whole, has struggled to match this with manufacturing jobs. And where the global manufacturers have been persuaded to set up shop in the UK, it generally hasn't been in Scotland.

For example, earlier this year, Siemens announced plans to invest £160m in wind turbine production and installation facilities, in Yorkshire.

But more crucially, the growth in renewables in Scotland has been on the back of generous subsidies from Great Britain consumers.

The GB-wide renewable subsidy schemes will need unpicking if Scotland goes its own way and it will be Scottish consumers who are likely to face the cost of funding Scottish renewables.

And then we have the controversial topic of nuclear energy, and the Scottish government's opposition to the nuclear submarine base at Faslane.

The No campaign has been quick to point to the loss of Scottish jobs if the submarines are sent packing to a new base south of the border.

The Yes campaigners counter that Scottish jobs will be created as the base is reconfigured as a conventional naval base.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Defence has held out the prospect, following a No vote, of basing all Royal Navy submarines on the Clyde by 2017 - increasing civilian jobs from 6,700 to 8,200 by 2022.

Indeed, defence has become one of the main battlegrounds in the independence debate, with the refrain "UK warships are only built in UK shipyards" heard regularly from sources in Westminster.

There are many manufacturing jobs at stake - look no further than last month's announcement by the MoD of a new £350 million contract for three offshore patrol boats to be built on the Clyde, securing more than 800 Scottish jobs.

In many ways, it's not just economic wellbeing that's at issue here, but national security - high stakes indeed.

Andrew Whitehead is the senior partner at Birmingham and London law firm SGH Martineau.