Scottish Independence - the thorny question

The debate about possible independence for Scotland appears to be kicking off in a big way, since the SNP announced the date it wanted to hold the referendum (Autumn 2014).

Personally, I would hate to see an independent Scotland because one of the attractive things about the U.K. in my opinion is the way that different cultures live together and work together and come together in times of need.
As a nation, the British are made up of very different peoples and that has been one of our great strengths over the years.
It also seems rather counter-intuitive. When many communities and countries are uniting to provide them with greater power and a greater say in the world, the idea of splitting nations down into smaller parts is ridiculous. The U.K. has a great deal of influence within Europe and the Commonwealth. If Scotland broke away, it certainly wouldn't enjoy anywhere near that level of influence.

So what is the solution? Apparently most Scots do not want complete independence (which is one suggested reason for SNP placing the referendum so far in the future), but I think a much larger proportion would like greater powers of autonomy.

I have a solution, a possible idea that should appeal to everyone within the U.K. and would enable everyone to remain part of the U.K. itself:

A Federal United Kingdom
I think the solution should be a more federal set-up where each of the nation states has an assembly (or parliament) that has complete autonomy *apart* from those issues that are identified as requiring federal rather than national jurisdiction - such as defence, foreign policy and issues around our currency for example. In this case each nation's government would contribute to the costs, administration and running of those federal bodies.

The Parliaments (Lower Chambers)
Each parliament would have primary responsibility for governing its nation. In England this would be the House of Commons at Westminster. Each leader of the elected goverment would be the First Minister
It would also oversee any federal legislation passed by the Upper Chamber.

The House of Lords (Upper Chamber)
In its current form this would be scrapped and would become the Federal governing body, with distinct purposes -
- To pass legislation on and management of federal concerns and to provide the UK government based upon the largest number of elected representatives as the House of Commons currently does. The leader of the largest elected party would remain the Prime Minister and the cabinet would have to include the First Ministers of each of the national parliaments.
- To oversee legislation passed in the national parliaments.

This "oversight" function would be used as a safety net in the way the House of Lords currently does. If one of the Lower Chambers created the legislation it would then go to the Upper Chamber for oversight.
if the Upper Chamber was the source, it would need to go to each of the Lower Chambers for oversight.

The source chamber of the legislation would need to win the vote by a simple majority to pass it.
However the Overseeing chamber would effectively then vote to block (reject) it. But in this case a larger majority (e.g. two-thirds) would be required for it to be rejected.