Plenary, 04 Oct 2007

Meeting date: Thursday, October 4, 2007

Official Report 756KB pdf

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Broken Promises

The first item of business is a debate on motion S3M-607, in the name of Iain Gray, on the Scottish National Party's broken promises.

Autumn is a reflective and quiet time and, as we head into our short October recess, the nights draw in, the leaves turn and we find ourselves far from the hurly-burly of an election season, it seems opportune to have a quiet moment of reflection, to look back over the 20 weeks that we have spent together and to see how the new SNP Government is doing.

We are entitled to ask such questions because, in the run-up to the election, the SNP was very clear about the commitments on which it asked for the Scottish people's votes. It was even kind enough to tell them and us which of its commitments would be delivered by its Government in the very first 100 days.

However, when we look, we find a string of broken promises and lame excuses. Let us start with police numbers. Page 21 of "It's time to look forward: The first 100 days of an SNP Government" says that, within the first 100 days, there will be

"Publication of plans for 1000 increase in community police".

The next page says that the Government will

"employ 1000 additional community police officers".

That seems admirably clear to me.

However, by the time "Principles and Priorities: The Government's Programme for Scotland" was published, that had become:

"We will work with police forces to increase policing capacity"

by

"the equivalent of 1,000 additional police officers".

I do not really know what that means. Does it mean extra overtime? Does it mean shorter holidays? Does it mean that traffic cops will have to get out of their cars and walk the beat instead? Does it mean having a late retirement scheme, which means that police officers who are ready to retire will not be able to do so? I know that it does not mean what the SNP manifesto said.

That promise has been broken because the Government cannot make its sums add up. Let us keep the arithmetic simple. There are 16,000 police officers now. If another 1,000 are added, there will be 17,000 officers; if that does not happen, that is a broken promise.

They say that if one is going to tell a lie, it might as well be a big one. In exactly the same way, if one is going to break a promise, it might as well be a big promise.

What did the Labour Government call the weapons of mass destruction that were never found in Iraq? [Interruption.]

In truth, I could not hear the member's point of order because it was so ridiculous that it was drowned out by the hooting from members behind me.

It was an intervention, not a point of order.

The SNP's biggest promises have been on council tax. Although I do not agree with it, I quite accept that the Government is clear that it still wants to introduce a local income tax. I also accept that that cannot be done in 100 days—if it can be done at all by a minority Government. Instead, the 100 days document says:

"We will first freeze the council tax".

There are no ifs, buts or maybes in that statement. By June, however, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth was saying:

"I am not making the decision. I am encouraging local authorities to move to a council tax freeze."—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 27 June 2007; c 40.]

That is a broken promise because it could not have been a real promise in the first place; after all, the Government does not have the power to freeze council tax. Did it not know that when it made its promise? Did that lack of powers over local government just creep up and surprise it, or did it make the promise in the sure and certain knowledge that it would be broken?

There are also promises that must have seemed like good ideas in an election campaign but which, from the perspective of Government, are revealed as simply daft. Help for first-time house buyers is a good idea, but what they need is more houses at more affordable prices. A universal £2,000 grant will not provide one single extra house—and, better still, its principal effect will be to increase house prices by £2,000. That promise is being broken because even this Government realises that it was an election bribe that was too cynical and counterproductive to implement. It should simply own up and get on with finding ways of addressing housing issues.

The list of broken promises goes on and on: smaller class sizes; the paying off of student loans, as pointed out in the Liberal Democrat amendment, which we are happy to accept; a criminal justice bill; a drugs commission; and the pledge to cut red tape for business, as addressed in the Tory amendment, which I am happy to commend to the chamber.

However, let us not get bogged down in lists. Instead, we should consider the Government's strategic objectives, such as the greener Scotland objective. There is no bigger issue than climate change and no more urgent matter than cutting carbon emissions. The SNP agrees; its 100 days document says:

"We all have a part to play in meeting the challenge of global warming".

What part has this Government played? Even in these early days, decisions have already been taken. First, it wants to abolish tolls on the Forth and Tay bridges. However, it must also explain how it intends to avoid the 15 per cent increase in traffic volume and the release of 9,000 extra tonnes of carbon each year that such a move will cause.

In the interests of clarity, will Iain Gray tell us whether the Labour Party supports or opposes the removal of tolls from the Forth and Tay bridges?

From the very moment—

Yes or no? [Interruption.]

Order.

From the very moment the Government introduced its proposal, we have said that we will support the abolition of tolls. However, in order to do that, measures must be put in place to address the issue of congestion. Last week, the Government abolished the biggest public transport project in Scotland, which would have removed 1.7 million car journeys from our roads. It also tried very hard to cancel Edinburgh's trams and was stopped only by the will of Parliament.

I believe that this Government is committed to renewable energy. Indeed, last week, the First Minister pointed out to me that the Government has speeded up the processing of wind farm projects. That is true; however, of the four applications that have been processed, the Government has rejected three. Although it has agreed to onshore wind farm developments, they have to happen quicker. In that regard, we should not forget the example that the First Minister has set in ordering a couple of luxury Lexus limousines, which might be hybrid but actually produce more emissions than the cars that they replace. No wonder the SNP has had to break another promise: we now hear that there will be no mandatory annual targets in its climate change bill.

We are reasonable people on this side of the chamber—

I am grateful to the very reasonable member for giving way. Will he confirm whether there are any mandatory carbon targets in the United Kingdom bill that his party is promoting, or is the UK bill along the same lines as the proposed SNP legislation? I want a mandatory annual mechanism; I do not care whether it is a target or—

This is an intervention, Mr Harvie, not a speech.

I accept perfectly that this Government is following the example of our Government in Westminster. The point is that this Government said that it would go further than that—and it is not.

As Patrick Harvie pointed out, we are reasonable people on this side of the chamber. We know that no Government will solve climate change in 20 weeks. However, in only 20 weeks, this Government has done significant damage. That is not an achievement to be proud of.

The Government is demonstrably not doing what it said it would do and yet there has been a whirlwind of activity—we know that, because the SNP has told us so. That is a good metaphor, because a whirlwind forms when storms start to spin, and spin is what we have had. We have a new name and new headed notepaper for the Government. Availability status codes in the health service that had already been abolished were abolished again by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing in May and then abolished yet again a couple of weeks ago. We had a green energy day when renewables generating capacity surpassed nuclear generating capacity, except that it did not, because one is available almost all the time and the other is always intermittent. We have had a skills strategy that did not promise a single extra apprenticeship, college place or vocational course in schools.

A whirlwind dissipates when it hits something real and solid. The SNP whirlwind is hitting up against the realities of government and, sure enough, it is dissipating. The excuses come out as to why the SNP cannot do what it said it would do, but it is doing exactly what we said it would do. We said that the Government would pick fights with the United Kingdom Government at every opportunity, and it has done so. We said that it would blame the UK Government for all its failures to deliver, and it does.

I repeat that, if one is going to make an excuse, it might as well be a big one. The big excuse is the comprehensive spending review. Time after time in the Parliament, we have sought assurances from ministers that services that are vital to the communities that we serve will be protected. Time after time, ministers tell us that they do not know because they are waiting for the results of the CSR. However, the envelope of the spending review has been known since the most recent budget. Are ministers seriously telling us that they have made no working estimate of how much they might have to spend? Either they have made an estimate and they are dissembling, or they have not and they are simply incompetent.

However, the ministers know enough about the CSR to start briefing the press that the settlement will be inadequate, unfair and unequal. That is simply preparation for the biggest and lamest excuse of all. The Government harvested votes using promises that it could never afford, that it never had the power to deliver and, worst of all, that it had no intention of seeing through in government. Rather than take responsibility for that, it now seeks to dish out the blame. The truth is that the Government has twice as much to spend on Scotland as the first Scottish Executive had in 1999—it will have more than £30 billion to govern Scotland. However, this very week, thousands of Edinburgh school students are told that there is no money to provide them with the decent school buildings that they need, want and deserve—in 2007, in our capital city, there is no money for that out of £30 billion. Broken promises and lame excuses: let us have a national conversation about that.

I move,

That the Parliament regrets the SNP Government's failure to implement a range of policies that the SNP pledged to take forward in its election manifesto and its document, It's time to look forward, including reneging on the promise to set out plans to employ 1,000 additional police officers, backtracking on a council tax freeze, failing to implement smaller class sizes in every primary school and not delivering on plans to give £2,000 to first-time house buyers; recognises that the SNP Government is already letting down communities and hardworking families across Scotland, and calls on Scottish ministers to make a statement to the Parliament explaining why they have failed to implement these policy pledges.

Dear, oh dear—that was a long and depressing 13 minutes. The Government hit the ground running, but we have just heard from an Opposition that hit the ground moaning and has not stopped since. Wendy Alexander proclaimed a few weeks ago that the SNP won the election in May because we had seized Labour's agenda of hope and aspiration. On the evidence of the motion and that depressing and sour speech by Iain Gray, there is absolutely no danger of Labour seizing the agenda back any time soon.

The latest complaint, which we heard yesterday, is that poor Labour does not get enough taxpayers' money to do its job properly. We can probably agree throughout the chamber that Labour does not do its job properly, but if that is down to not having enough staff, it might be a good idea for Labour to stop getting rid of the staff that it already has. Apart from anything else, anyone who Lord George Foulkes thinks is an idiot must have something going for them. I offer some honest and friendly advice to Labour, from a party that I am happy to say spent too much time in opposition: saying sorry for an election loss is the easy bit; what matters is that a party understands why it lost the election and then starts to do something about that. It is abundantly clear from what we have just heard that Labour is still a long way off doing anything at all about it.

In fairness, I can understand the bind in which Labour finds itself, as it has absolutely nothing positive to say. The proof of that is in the motion. We should consider that the debate is Labour's first Opposition debate under the new leadership, but it has not proposed a single idea or suggestion; instead, we have had more of the same whining, baseless negativity that lost Labour the election in the first place.

I want to correct Miss Sturgeon's mistake. The first debate that we brought to the Parliament was on education, which we see as an extremely important issue. That is why we think that it is important to scrutinise the SNP's failure to deliver the policies on which it won the election.

I know that it is fashionable in the Labour Opposition these days to pretend that Jack McConnell was never leader of the party, but that debate on education happened under his leadership, not the new leadership of Wendy Alexander. When Wendy Alexander said that Labour had not had a single new idea in 100 years, I did not realise at the time that she meant to continue that tradition, but now we know.

Will the deputy leader of the SNP concede that, a week ago, her First Minister agreed to my proposal on kinship care in Scotland?

That was already an SNP policy, but we welcome all newcomers to good ideas. [Interruption.] I will move on—we have heard enough whining from the Labour benches for one morning.

The reality is that Labour is going nowhere fast under its own steam. So, bereft of anything positive to say, all it can do is sit and hope that the Government trips up, makes a mistake or breaks a promise. When that does not happen—and it has not happened—the frustration builds up, the desperation clouds the judgment and suddenly we are being accused of not freezing the council tax, four months before a single council has even set the council tax rate. That is clutching at straws.

I say to Labour and in particular to Lord Foulkes that desperation is a really unattractive quality.

I will take an intervention, right on that point.

My question, which arises out of what the cabinet secretary has just said, is: will there be a council tax freeze in this financial year—yes or no?

Yes. When that happens, I am sure that Robert Brown will be the first to welcome it.

If Labour really wants to talk about broken council tax promises, let it try this one on for size:

"We'll reform the council tax to make it fairer".

That is what the previous Labour Government promised, but there was no reform and it delivered a staggering 60 per cent increase in council tax. To quote the motion, "communities and hardworking families" are still paying the price for that the length and breadth of the country. The Government will take no lectures from Labour about the council tax, or, for that matter, about health, education, crime or housing.

Will the member take an intervention?

No. I will move on.

Council tax is not the only Labour broken promise that we can talk about. There are eight years of Labour—and, in fairness, Liberal—broken promises to choose from.

What about crime? A 10 per cent reduction in youth offending is what Labour promised. A 16 per cent increase in youth offending is what it delivered.

Iain Gray specifically mentioned housing. Seven thousand new houses a year is what the Labour manifesto said. In fairness, Wendy Alexander, the then housing minister, downgraded that to 6,000 a few months after the manifesto was published. However, a mere 4,000 a year is what Labour delivered—hence the affordable housing crisis that Labour now has the brass neck to complain about.

What about health? Six hundred more consultants was the promise. In fairness, Labour did not break that promise; it just dumped the pledge when it got a bit too difficult to implement.

Then there was Labour's promise to cut class sizes. Of course, Labour no longer believes in cutting class sizes. To be scrupulously fair, that promise was not even dumped, but just redefined so that maximum class size targets became average class size targets—not that it matters, because it did not deliver on that pledge on either count.

That is the reality of eight years of Labour Government: broken promise after broken promise after broken promise.

Will the member give way?

No.

That is why Labour lost the election. I suggest that Labour reflects just a little bit longer on its own shortcomings before hurling false accusations at anyone else.

In contrast to a failed and failing Opposition, this Government has made action and delivery its watchwords. I make this admission: for sure, we have not fulfilled in our first four months every single one of the commitments in our four-year manifesto. If that is the charge, we plead guilty. However, we have made a fantastic start, and that is how we mean to continue.

For the benefit of those who I am sure would rather ignore the SNP's record of achievement, I will recap just how much can be done when Scotland has a Government with courage, vision, ambition and a determination to act in the national interest. Accident and emergency departments at Monklands and Ayr have been saved; the back-door tuition fee has been abolished; tolls on the Tay and Forth bridges are on the way out; personal care payments have been increased; £40 million and 300 more teachers to start cutting class sizes have been delivered; the international aid budget has doubled; nurses' pay increase has been delivered; the Crichton campus has been saved; free nursery education has been increased; hidden waiting lists have been abolished; and, on the conversation on independence, we are setting the agenda and dragging the previously ultra-unionist Labour Party along in our wake. All in all, that is not a bad start, given that we have been in office for four months.

However, we have much more to do. As Andy Kerr so rightly said just a couple of weeks ago, we inherited a mess, and sorting it out will take time. We were elected on a clear programme for action—a four-year manifesto to make our country wealthier, smarter, safer, healthier and greener—and we intend to deliver it step by step. We will do that by showing leadership and working with others where we can to build consensus and agreement. It will be for others in the Parliament to decide whether they want to help or hinder.

Ultimately, it will be for the people of Scotland to judge. The people of Scotland had eight years of broken promises, low ambition and excuses for doing nothing with a Government that sat on the fence when Scotland wanted to be heard on nuclear power, Trident and the war in Iraq. Scotland rejected Labour on 3 May and this morning we have had a good reminder why. This Government will deliver. It will be held to account not by the Opposition but by the people of Scotland, and we will not be found wanting.

I move amendment S3M-607.3, to leave out from "regrets" to end and insert:

"congratulates the SNP Government for its early action to deliver on a range of commitments, including the abolition of the graduate endowment, the retention of accident and emergency services at Ayr and Monklands hospitals and the abolition of tolls on the Tay and Forth bridges, and looks forward to the government continuing to deliver for the people of Scotland."

I am sorry to start my remarks on a note of disappointment. When I saw the Labour motion for debate, I assumed that the new Labour leader would be taking this opportunity to set out her stall and impress members with her rhetorical flourishes as she laid about the SNP Government for its numerous policy failures. Alas, it was not to be; instead we have had Iain Gray standing in for his leader. I had rather hoped that Wendy Alexander would be leading from the front, but, on this occasion at least, we have been disappointed.

Where is Annabel?

Where is Annabel?

Members are asking where Annabel is. I hate to have to remind them that this is a Labour Party debate, and one would expect the Labour Party leader to be here.

Perhaps Wendy Alexander had good reason to stay out of the debate. It would take an exceptionally well-polished brass neck for the Labour Party to accuse anyone else of having broken their promises in government. At least Iain Gray has the excuse of not having been part of Government for the past four years, having been relieved of his ministerial responsibilities by my good friend David McLetchie and the voters of Edinburgh Pentlands.

As Nicola Sturgeon said, Labour is in no position to accuse anyone else of breaking pledges. The Labour Administration told us that growing the economy was the top priority, but economic growth throughout Labour's period in office routinely trailed that of the UK as a whole.

That was the Administration that told us that it was going to reduce class sizes in secondary 1 and secondary 2 for maths and English to a maximum of 20, but said later that that figure was merely an average, not a maximum.

That was the Administration that told us that there would be public involvement in health service reorganisation, but, nevertheless, went ahead with cutbacks and closures in the face of vigorous local opposition.

That was the Administration that promised us new bands for the council tax, which, thank goodness, it never got around to delivering.

That was the Administration that promised to eradicate poverty and social exclusion, but under whose stewardship the gap between rich and poor actually widened.

Will the member take an intervention?

I am happy to take an intervention from Mr Park, who, of course, is not culpable, having not been part of the Administration over the past eight years.

It is great to have that history lesson from Murdo Fraser, but he should look back a bit further. I remember some of the highlights of the Conservative Government. I was particularly impressed by the 3 million on the dole, the miners' strike and black Monday. Perhaps he would care to comment on them.

As Mr Park knows, the Conservative party will shortly be back in government and we will be able to assess our prospects then.

Just in case the Liberal Democrats think that they are getting off the hook on this one, I remind them gently that they are equally culpable for all the failures of the past eight years.

The subject of the debate is SNP failures. Iain Gray has set out well what those are: the failure to meet the commitment to employ an additional 1,000 police officers which has been watered down; the failure to implement smaller class sizes in every primary school, which we know cannot be afforded; and a failed plan to give £2,000 to first-time home buyers, which has been quietly dropped—although I am delighted that the Conservative party has now offered to help those self-same buyers by pledging to abolish stamp duty on purchases up to £250,000.

There is one other pledge that the Labour motion does not mention but which is covered in our amendment: the commitment in the SNP manifesto to adopt the Better Regulation Commission's one in, one out policy, which means that each new regulation must replace another. The Conservative party supports that eminently sensible proposal. However, the proposal has already been ruled out. Last week, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth told us that the proposal had been ruled out because it was "too simplistic." What a pity that the SNP did not consider whether the policy was too simplistic before it decided to put it in its manifesto. If the policy is too simplistic, what does that say about all the other carefully crafted policies in the SNP manifesto? Are they all to be equally damned and quietly forgotten about now that SNP leaders have the responsibility of government?

I will set out the likely SNP defence to today's charges, of which we have already had a flavour. The first line of defence will be that the SNP cannot carry out its pledges because it does not know whether it will have enough money to do so; it needs to wait until the CSR. However, as Iain Gray said, that position is no different today from what it was in May or at any point in the run-up to the election. If it was in order to make all those pledges back in May, it is simply no excuse to say today, "We don't know if we have the money." That is simply a cop-out, and it shows that the promises are not worth the paper that they were printed on.

The SNP's second line of defence is to say that the Government will not have enough money to implement all its pledges because it has had to pay for the Edinburgh trams. However, it was made perfectly clear back in June, when we had the parliamentary vote on the Edinburgh tram scheme, that this Parliament could not bind the SNP Government and that it was entirely a matter for Government to decide whether to proceed with the Edinburgh tram scheme. That very tram scheme, which it opposed, is now an essential element in the SNP Government's plan to link Edinburgh airport to the Scottish rail network. That line of defence will not wash, either.

This week, the third and final line of defence has started to be spun: the Government will not have enough money to pay for its pledges because Gordon Brown is going to short-change us. Big, bad Gordon is going to be mean to poor, wee Alex and the SNP Government and leave them out of pocket. Gordon Brown is a political opponent of mine but I cannot believe that even he would be so stupid as to walk into that trap. It would be an own goal of monumental proportions, even for this Labour Prime Minister.

However, that line of defence is instructive in relation to what it can tell us about the approach of the SNP. We were told that this new Government was elected on a message of hope and optimism. Even many people who are not nationalists welcomed the tired Labour-Liberal Democrat partnership being turfed out of office in May and new faces taking over as Scottish ministers. We were promised a bright, new future for Scotland with a positive and forward-looking agenda. How quickly the SNP has reverted to type, however. The sunny uplands have been left behind and we have gone back to the old SNP approach of girn and groan and whine and moan. The great big tartan chip is back on the shoulder and all the whinging and cringing about Westminster has returned. The SNP Government will now blame Westminster for everything that goes wrong—even its own failures to implement its own manifesto commitments, which it now recognises were too simplistic.

Scotland expected better than that from this SNP Government. Scotland deserves better than that. Frankly, this is a Government that has already let Scotland down badly.

I move amendment S3M-607.1, to leave out from "regrets" to end and insert:

"notes the SNP Government's failure to implement a range of policies that the SNP pledged to take forward in its election manifesto and its document, It's time to look forward, including reneging on the promise to set out plans to employ 1,000 additional police officers, backtracking on a council tax freeze, failing to implement smaller class sizes in every primary school, shelving the commitment to adopt the Better Regulation Commission's policy of "one in one out" and not delivering on plans to give £2,000 to first-time house buyers; recognises that the SNP Government is already letting down communities and hardworking families across Scotland, and calls on Scottish ministers to make a statement to the Parliament explaining why they have failed to implement these policy pledges."

I note that the SNP amendment talks about abolition of the graduate endowment. That is something on which the Liberal Democrats agree with the SNP, but announcing a thing does not automatically make it so. The Government is doing the same in relation to bridge tolls; with the magic wand of a press release, the tolls have gone. Quietly in committee this week, however, the Government said that tolls might come back for the replacement crossing of the Forth. That is one of many areas in which the Government has been spinning furiously.

At the beginning of this session, the Liberal Democrats said that we would work constructively but not uncritically, and that we will support the Government when we think that it is right, but will not be shy in saying that it is wrong when we think that that is the case. The First Minister said that this is a Parliament of minorities and he was right, but the Government is no longer acting as if it is a minority Government. Many people believed the promises of the SNP and the good intentions that were espoused in the early days after the election, but the First Minister's commitment to be consensual and open to all opinions has simply not been borne out by reality in recent months. Spin has been a regrettable bridesmaid to this new Government. In 100 days, £155,000 has been spent on spin doctors and announcement after announcement has been spun as new action, new funding and new policy by the new Government when, time after time, those announcements have been about existing policies with funding that was already budgeted by the previous Administration.

Parliament has been used in a cavalier way, beyond even the criticisms that were levelled at the previous Government by the SNP. In relation to broadcasting and economic advice, Parliament has been actively bypassed by minister-announced commissions. There is absolute justification for us to scrutinise robustly this minority Government with a majority ego. A group hug followed by some family mediation—which is what is proposed by the Greens in their amendment—is not sufficient.

The Government has sought to distance itself from some pledges but it has not been shy in relation to announcements, such as the one about the national conversation. We have been told today that the conversation is in full swing, but the fine print at the bottom of each of the conversation web pages reads:

"All comments are moderated in advance of being made public."

I was amused to see Sir Sean Connery's contribution to the conversation on 18 September, when he was in wonder at the new Government and marvelled at its achievements—without specifying what they were, of course. His post was followed a little later the same day by a post from Spiderman from Argyll. I am not sure that that is his real name, but he said:

"That's all great, Sir Sean, and we respect you greatly but why don't" you come and join us.......?"

In response to parliamentary questions, the Government has confirmed that there is no end to the national conversation, which means that it will be a sort of modern purgatory, with the nation condemned to presentations about the economy from Jim Mather and his hundred flipcharts. To be fair, the Government needs to be commended for getting James Bond from Marbella and Spiderman from Argyll to contribute.

The national conversation web pages also contain ministers' blog posts on the promises. John Swinney's post says that Scotland could do much better than it is doing and should match the performance of Iceland. The next week, Jim Mather pointed to the "arc of prosperity" around us, indicating Iceland in particular. Fiona Hyslop, just this week, pointed to—yes—Iceland. She said:

"We need only look to Iceland to see the benefits."

Today, I see that the record growth in Scottish exports of 4.4 per cent in the second quarter of 2007 was not good enough for Jim Mather, who said, in a press release, that we need to look to Iceland for a model. That is what I did. I discovered that the macroeconomic forecast for Iceland, which was published this week by the Icelandic Ministry of Finance, pointed to a growth of gross domestic product of 0.7 per cent and a fall in expenditure of 5.2 per cent. That is the Icelandic dream that we should all be following.

On some of the promises that have been made by the SNP about targets, the Minister for Schools and Skills said in a debate on the skills strategy that the era of targets is over. She said:

"The priority of this Government is not to meet targets".—[Official Report, 12 September 2007; c 1632.]

I commend her for her frank admission, of course.

However, 10 days later, the era of legally binding targets in health has begun. On class sizes, on 5 September, the First Minister was keen to confirm that the pledge to reduce class sizes in primaries 1 to 3 will be met in this session of Parliament, before 2011. He was unequivocal—no ifs and no buts. Of course, the ifs and buts came before, and the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning was sitting uneasy in her seat because, on 27 June, in response to a question in the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee on whether the Government will deliver that commitment by 2011, she said:

"We deliberately never state timeframes and say, ‘This will be delivered by a certain date'".

She then said:

"I do not want to give an end date".—[Official Report, Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee, 27 June 2007; c 46.]

Last week, the Minister for Children and Early Years said that the policy would be delivered only with the support of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. However, COSLA has not been told by the Government whether it intends to deliver its policy by 2011. Currently, the Government has given no confirmation to COSLA on that point. Internally, as we know from the Minister for Schools and Skills, Maureen Watt, the Government knows exactly how much is needed. That is what she told my colleague, Robert Brown, on 13 September. However, she is just keeping it a secret. When Robert Brown asked if a bid had been made to John Swinney to enable the class-sizes promise, she said:

"Of course we have made a bid to meet those commitments."—[Official Report, 13 September 2007; c 1757.]

The Government tells us that it might deliver the commitment by 2011 or it might not. It says that it knows internally how much it will cost but that it has not told the councils.

This debate is about the Government's broken promises—poor ministers were imploring the First Minister not to force them to keep their promises. "We can't do it," they told him. "We don't want to do it," they pled. "You must do it," he replied, "but don't give the councils the money."

We hear SNP MSP after SNP MSP condemning public-private partnerships. In a recent health debate, an SNP member said that PPP contracts were pimping out the public sector to the private sector. In the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee on 27 June, I asked the cabinet secretary whether it will

"therefore be possible under this Government for councils to put forward new PPP schemes."

Fiona Hyslop replied:

"Yes, but I do not think that it is a big issue."—[Official Report, Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee, 27 June 2007; c 40.]

We see the same thing in relation to nursery provision. In December 2006, the SNP said that it was time to double nursery provision. However, in March, the SNP said that it would increase it by 50 per cent and, currently, the funding is for a 30 per cent increase.

The SNP said that it will abolish student debt. Now, however, the Government says, "Well, we might just be relieving it." Indeed, on 13 September, the Minister for Children and Early Years conceded that the Government has asked the Treasury whether it has permission to act on student debt.

It is right to hold this minority Government with a majority ego to account.

If the Government commits to delivering its manifesto—there are good aspects to it—we will support what is good and proper; however, when the Government promises the earth, we will join with the 70 per cent of the people of Scotland who did not vote for the SNP. The jury is very much out on its broken promises.

I move amendment S3M-607.2, to leave out from "recognises" to end and insert:

"further notes the SNP Government's reluctance to keep its promise to students and dump student debt by writing off the debt to the Student Loans Company for Scottish domiciled graduates; notes the SNP Government's refusal to meet its manifesto pledge for mandatory carbon reduction targets of 3% per annum; recognises that the SNP gained votes on these pre-election promises to the people of Scotland which they are now failing to keep, and calls on Scottish ministers to make a statement to the Parliament explaining which of these pre-election promises are no longer government policy and why, and which promises they do intend to implement and by when."

Like a lot of other members, I reacted with dismay and humour when I first heard the title of the debate. It is the first Labour debate since the party's new leader assumed her post, and I had hoped that there would be some attempt to present more positive ideas, inspirational leadership and proposals for working constructively in opposition—or, at the very least, for getting used to the idea of being the Opposition. Sadly, that is not the case. The motion highlights the gulf between what people should be able to expect from politics and what, all too often, they come to expect: bitterness, sniping and negativity.

That is not what was expected of the new politics when we first got devolution and proportional representation. People talked about the horseshoe chamber that the Scottish Parliament has, which is unlike the oppositional bear pit at Westminster. It is certainly not what people expected from minority government, which gives all parties the ability to influence. The motion is, therefore, disappointing.

I understand perfectly what Patrick Harvie is saying and what he says in his amendment. However, does he not recognise that there is a world of difference between the aspirations that he has put forward and the reality of what is being done by the Administration? We are not talking about criticism of the Government's inability to do things because it is a minority Government; we are talking about the deception that has been perpetrated because it has promised things that cannot be delivered.

I thank the member for his speech.

Is the motion fair? As a member of an Opposition party, I am happy to consider any motion from any party and to decide whether it is fair and whether I should support it. It could be argued that the SNP overpromised in its first 100 days document. That document gave a list of things that the party could do if it could do everything its own way, but everybody knew that that was not going to be the case. Even with a majority in the chamber, every political party in Parliament must co-operate, compromise and negotiate with others to form a political programme. The SNP knew that, we knew that and most voters knew that.

Will the member give way?

No, thank you.

Aside from asking whether the motion is fair, I ask whether it is understandable. I think that it is perfectly understandable—it is a reaction to having lost power. [Laughter.] That was not intended as a joke; it is reality, and the Labour Party will have to get over it. There is a real danger that Labour members will come across as being disgruntled, cynical and bitter. That negativity lost them the election.

Will the member take an intervention?

No, thank you.

In May, Jack McConnell reminded Parliament that Labour is the largest and most experienced Opposition party that Parliament has had. If it wants to capitalise on that position—as it should—it will need to learn what it means to be an Opposition party.

Will the member give way?

No, thank you.

In opposition, we were used to seeing the previous Government do what we felt was the wrong thing. If all we had done was throw a strop about it, we would have been wiped out along with the Scottish Socialist Party in the 2007 elections. [Interruption.]

If Iain Gray wants to intervene now, I will let him; if he does not, I will continue.

The Labour Party would do well not to provoke the SNP to implement policies that it opposes. I do not want to see the £2,000 payment to stoke house-price inflation any more than the housing organisations do or any more than Labour should. Therefore, in drafting motions, Labour members should be careful what they wish for—they might get it.

In the spirit of the debate, will the member condemn the SNP Government for misleading first-time buyers with a promise that it clearly could not deliver? Will he at least condemn the Government a wee bit?

I do not agree with that policy and, as I said, I do not agree with the idea of presenting a list of policies as though the Government will be able to implement them all—everybody knows that a party that does not have an absolute majority does not get its own way.

Will the member take an intervention?

No, thank you. I have taken two already.

Both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat amendments reproduce exactly the tone of the Labour motion and are due the same criticism. On the policy points that they contain, I do not like the simplistic idea of one in, one out regulation. Furthermore, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is not a simple job. I do not think that any political party has got its head fully around what a society and an economy that are emitting 80 or 90 per cent less carbon dioxide will look like. I say to any political party that thinks we can achieve those deep, swingeing cuts while expanding aviation, building capacity in the road network and removing any vestige of demand management on the bridges for short-term political advantage rather than for serious transport policy reasons, that it will fail to meet whatever targets it sets. The proposed climate change bill, which the Liberal Democrat amendment mentions, is about to be consulted on; I would welcome a few more positive proposals to improve it. The bill will include the measures that Parliament as a whole supports, not just those that the Government supports.

I am sorry to say that the SNP amendment does not attempt to redefine the debate, although it should. The reality that we are facing is a minority Government in a tightly balanced Parliament. If the SNP had approached that new situation by simply introducing bill after bill on its own priorities, without a majority, and had issued ministerial orders on the same basis as well as introducing a budget that addressed only its own priorities, without any negotiation or compromise to build a majority, that would have been a recipe for chaos and conflict. That would have been failure in government; however, I do not believe that that is what we have seen.

Those are the messages that I want to give to the other Opposition parties. I ask the Liberal Democrats to work with us to achieve the best climate change bill that Parliament can produce. Whatever policy differences there are between the Greens and the Conservatives, we share a special bond—I expect a big cheer from the Labour Party on this—because of our uninterrupted experience of being in opposition. The Conservatives should recall the words of Annabel Goldie, who called for an end to

"posturing and petty playground antics"—[Official Report, 16 May 2007; c 21.]

in the new session. They should reflect on that and support the Green party's amendment, so that we can pass a motion that reflects reality.

Finally, I ask Labour members to find a way to accept with good grace the fact that many Labour voters wanted a change of Government and got it. They will not play the constructive part of which they are capable in Parliament if they continue in this style.

I move amendment S3M-607.4, to leave out from "recognises" to end and insert:

"further notes that the previous administration had its own failures, as will every government; recognises, however, the widespread disillusionment with confrontational and negative politics; recognises that in a parliament of minorities, and especially under a minority government, no single party can expect to implement its full manifesto without consultation or compromise; accepts that the current administration cannot claim a mandate to implement every manifesto commitment and that no political party that has served in coalition government was able to do so either; notes the words of Donald Dewar MSP, on being elected as Scotland's first First Minister, that "Co-operation is always possible where there are common aims and values, even though there may be great and dividing differences in other areas"; further notes the words of Annabel Goldie MSP that Scotland "wants posturing and petty playground antics to be left at the door", those of the First Minister that "our overwhelming responsibility is to work together in the people's interest" and Nicol Stephen MSP's commitment to be "constructive and positive", and urges all members to hold the Scottish Government to account but also to work constructively and positively wherever possible for the benefit of the people and the country in the spirit of the founding principles of the Parliament."

I am happy to speak in the debate. I will start with a confession. At first, I thought that it was rather uncharitable and a bit too critical for us to attack the SNP, which has been in power only since May. We all recognise the real challenges that the Government faces and the hard decisions that must be made. However, the problem for the SNP is that it cannot use that defence given its triumphalist, self-regarding and overblown claims about what it is doing. It is in that context of overclaiming and underdelivering that it is entirely legitimate to focus on the gulf between Executive claims and Executive action. I say to Patrick Harvie that the SNP has claimed that it is building consensus but it is doing that behind closed doors instead of working through the parliamentary process.

I will comment on the Executive's approach in an area in which I have a particular interest—housing and communities. As has been mentioned, the motion talks about the first-time buyers grant. That was an SNP manifesto commitment for which, I do not doubt, people voted. However, the Executive's position is not clear. Has it accepted that it is a costly promise that does not differentiate between people who struggle to get on the property ladder and those who do not? In the Local Government and Communities Committee on 27 June, Nicola Sturgeon said that she accepts that she is in a minority Government and cannot automatically have her position agreed. However, if she believes in the policy—I presume that she does, as it was in the SNP's manifesto—it would be reasonable to expect that she might try. She also said:

"By necessity and by desire, we will have to test all our manifesto commitments in the Parliament."—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 27 June 2007; c 22.]

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP cannot use the fact that they are in a minority Government as an alibi; they cannot say, "We would have done this but these bad people won't let us do it." There have been many examples, over the past eight years, of policy coming to Parliament, being shaped and moulded by Parliament and coming out very different at the end of the process. Either Nicola Sturgeon should be honest and say that the SNP now does not believe that the policy is credible, or she should test it through the parliamentary process. If she does neither, our suspicion will be confirmed: like so many other manifesto promises, it was designed to win votes and, having served its purpose, can now be quietly dropped.

The second feature of the SNP Government is its pretending to act. Members may recall the housing supply task force, which was talked up and lauded—of course, we were criticised last week for wanting to set up a talking shop. It has now been confirmed by members of that task force, who accepted that their work would be determined by the Executive's housing proposals and the comprehensive spending review, that they were not told to produce a report or asked to comment on the Executive's housing proposals. They have not been asked even for comments on what the Executive should argue for in the comprehensive spending review or for a view on the future of Communities Scotland as a crucial housing regulator.

Another example is the central heating programme. We are told that there will be a review of it, but yesterday we learned that there is no remit, timescale or even a funding commitment for the central heating proposals.

Will the member give way?

Let me make my next point.

The third charge for the SNP is that it takes administrative action, safe from parliamentary scrutiny, when it suits it. I will give members one small example: the abolition of Communities Scotland. I was told in June:

"We will take time to consider the issues properly, consulting both organisations, trade unions and other key stakeholders, including ensuring that the relevant Parliamentary Committee has an input into the process before the final decisions are taken."—[Official Report, Written Answers, 23 July 2007; S3W-1701.]

On 19 September, Stewart Maxwell then said:

"it is imperative that we reach a decision as soon as possible … If the committee has any other thoughts to tell me about Communities Scotland, I am happy to listen to them and to feed them back into the continuing process."—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 19 September 2007; c 74.]

The reality is that the decision to abolish Communities Scotland, like many other Executive decisions, is defended on the grounds that it is a manifesto commitment and will be done precisely because it can be done administratively. That is the charge: the Executive is behaving like the old Scottish Office. It is, when it can, taking administrative action, unaccountable to Parliament.

The last charge is that the Administration calls itself a Government but will not govern. On the community regeneration fund—an issue that I have raised in the past—Nicola Sturgeon told the Local Government and Communities Committee on 27 June:

"The committee will have appropriate involvement, but I will balance that with a clear commitment to people in the areas involved that clarity and certainty will be provided".

She was asked:

"Can we say that you are determined that funding for those projects will continue?"

She replied:

"Yes … the matter will be a key priority for Stewart Maxwell and me in the summer, so that we can have clarity soon after the recess."—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 17 June 2007; c 28-9.]

Can the cabinet secretary perhaps tell us what she is going to do?

Let me remind Johann Lamont that the delay in the comprehensive spending review is because of the activities of her party of Government in London. If she is frustrated by the delays—as we are—will she take it up with Gordon Brown?

With respect, that is precisely my point: the cabinet secretary should stop looking for alibis and start making decisions. I know—because we did it—that the Executive could put in transitional arrangements to ensure that projects continue while the comprehensive spending review continues.

Let me also tell Nicola Sturgeon that the comprehensive spending review is not something that is visited upon the Executive but something that it shapes and determines by its priorities. It told us in June that it could take a decision but it tells us now that it cannot. It should be honest about what it is going to do to communities.

The charges remain: it is disgraceful that the Executive will not take decisions; it is cynical in the decisions that it takes; and ultimately—I say this particularly to Patrick Harvie—it has absolutely no confidence in its rhetoric on consensus. It will not speak to Parliament about what it wants to do, which is the biggest broken promise of all.

I find it interesting that the first two speakers from the Labour benches are former ministers who failed to deliver and, in Johann Lamont's case, who failed to keep the biggest housing promise of the lot. In 1999 to 2000, the Labour Party promised second-stage transfer to the people of Glasgow and set up the Glasgow Housing Association. She now talks about accountability to Parliament, but Parliament is not entitled to ask a lot of detailed questions about GHA, which has spent hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money. Second-stage transfer is the biggest broken promise in the political history of Scotland. Labour had eight years to carry it out. Johann Lamont last week said that she did not believe that there was any financial black hole. If she could remove it by waving a magic wand, why did she not wave the magic wand when she was a minister?

The reason she did not is that second-stage transfer was neither costed nor funded. Labour knew that at the time, and it made a false promise to the people of Glasgow. We will not be taking any lessons from Labour members on broken promises.

We have had 10 years of Labour in London and nothing but broken promises.

Will the member give way?

I will in a minute, Johann. Contain yourself—I will let you in.

We have had 10 years of broken promises. Remember that when Labour stood for election in 1997 the mantra was: "Education, education, education."

Mr Neil, will you use your microphone, please?

I am delighted to do so.

What is Labour's record? Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. That is a broken promise: it promised to deliver education but instead committed £10 billion to the folly of Iraq—and Labour has the cheek to criticise us.

Let us look at the promises that have been implemented. We have implemented the decision to keep the Monklands and Ayr accident and emergency units open, when we had the ridiculous spectacle of Nye Bevan's party campaigning to close accident and emergency units. Nye must be birling in his grave when he looks at the Scottish Labour Party today.

No he wouldn't—he was cremated.

Not from a sedentary position, Mr Foulkes.

One thing Nye Bevan would not be doing is birling in the House of Lords—that is for sure.

On free school meals, Labour approached the Tories to try to stitch up a deal to scupper free school meals for the poorest children in Scotland. That is the modern-day Labour Party. Labour members talk about broken promises, but they have not only broken promises—they have breached every principle on which the labour movement was founded more than 100 years ago.

The Labour motion says that we have failed

"to implement smaller class sizes in every primary school"

in Scotland—in five months. Labour members promised constructive opposition, which represents not one broken promise but two: it is neither constructive nor opposition. They are criticising us because we have not, in five months, delivered our four-year programme. No Government in history—not even Harold Wilson in his first 100 days—has done anything like what this Government has achieved in its first 100 days.

The reality is that Labour members are jealous. We can see the envy in their faces, when there is announcement after announcement about promises being kept, because they did not think of it first.

Will the member give way?

Will the member give way?

I will take Marilyn Livingstone.

Alex—I would like to ask you a question, as ex-convener of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, which we worked on together. One of your announcements has been to restructure the Scottish Enterprise network completely with no discussions with the relevant committee. I would like to hear your views on that.

John Swinney and Jim Mather have done in five months what Iain Gray, Jim Wallace and Nicol Stephen all failed to do as ministers. They were supposed to be enterprise ministers, but they showed not one ounce of enterprise when they were in office.

The reality is that we have set an ambitious programme. We do not moan and groan like the three old unionist parties. We are about the future and they are about the past, which is why in our first five months we have set the agenda in Scotland. If Mr Brown does not call an election on Tuesday, it will be because he knows that the SNP is going to give him a hammering in Scotland.

I remind members to use one another's full names whenever possible.

If Alex Neil is the future, Scotland has a bleak future indeed.

An Opposition debate provides one of the few opportunities for Opposition members to present their policies or to offer sustained scrutiny of Government policies. Labour has not proposed any new policies or mounted a sustained critique of one Government policy; instead, it has taken a scatter-gun approach.

Even at this stage in the debate, we can reach two conclusions. First, even today, Labour is still very bitter. The outpouring of bile from the Labour members who have spoken and Labour members' sour faces tell us that. They cannot quite believe that anyone else is in government. I suspect that Labour is joined in that by the Liberal Democrats, but perhaps that is less obvious, as they are happy to attack the Government even when they are in government. [Interruption.] Members are right to point to Mike Rumbles.

The second conclusion that it is fair to draw from Labour's motion is that Labour does not do irony. In his speech, Murdo Fraser said that the Labour Party has a brass neck. If that is so, I despair of what decaying and corroded material was used to fashion its brain. Perhaps I am being a little unkind, but it is a bit weak of the Labour Party, which broke many promises in eight years in government, that the motion is the best that it can do, five months into the new Government.

As Patrick Harvie said, Labour seems to condemn the SNP for failing to do in government precisely what it told the SNP not to do in government. That is a bizarre approach to opposition.

Can I take it from what the member just said that he will not vote for the Labour motion?

I will listen to the debate. I am not sure whether Mr Neil's speech helped his case.

We should not be surprised that the Labour Party has made an illogical, ill-thought-out and poorly argued case—after all, it is difficult to break the habits that it acquired in government. Only last month, the Labour Party produced with a flourish the so-called dirty dozen—12 spending cuts that it claimed the new Government was investigating. It demanded that the Government rule out those 12 spending cuts and, at the same time, that the Government double the level of its planned efficiency savings. Of course, all the savings that the Government was asked to rule out were proposed in a report that the Labour Party commissioned when in government. Did the Labour Party in government commission that report with a view to rejecting every recommendation that it made, as Labour members have urged the Government to?

I will remind members of the background to the Howat review. Labour promised to publish the Howat report but did not. The SNP promised to publish it and did. The broken promise there falls fairly at the Labour Party's foot.

The situation gets worse for the Labour Party, because its dire warnings before the election of what would happen if the SNP ever got into government have failed to come to pass—the sky has not fallen in. I remind members that when the roof did fall in—as I remember from bitter experience—Labour and the Liberal Democrats were in charge.

The SNP is wrong not to increase the number of police officers—we oppose it on that—but it is not wrong to try to use better those that we already have. It is wrong not to pursue deregulation more vigorously and wrong to pursue a local income tax.

The SNP may also be wrong to have made some other promises that it made in the election campaign, but that is its problem and not mine. I do not particularly care whether there is a black hole in the SNP manifesto's costings, provided that there is not one in the Scottish Government's books.

None of that suggests that the SNP Government is good. As often happens, the Government benefits from comparison with a poorly performing predecessor.

It is interesting to note how quickly we have moved from blaming everything that is going wrong in this country on the Conservative party—it took Labour only 28 years to get through that phase—to saying that everything is now the fault of the SNP, which has been in government for all of five months.

An effective critique of the SNP Government should not rest on its failure to implement its manifesto in full in five months, or to do things that the Opposition does not think that it should be doing anyway. The Opposition should instead concentrate on a serious, issue-by-issue discussion of where the Government is going wrong, which has been sadly lacking today.

We are told that if a million monkeys are put in a room with a typewriter, they will eventually come up with the collected works of Shakespeare. Today's debate has told us, if nothing else, that 46 Labour MSPs and five months of furious bashing-away at the keyboard have still not produced the semblance of an effective or constructive Opposition.

Derek Brownlee does a great disservice to Labour members by suggesting that they are dour. If he looks at Margaret Curran and Johann Lamont, he will see that they are happy that the SNP's honeymoon has come to an end. The blips have started to appear. On 3 May, more than 1.3 million people cast their vote in favour of the SNP. When they marked their cross in the box, they were clear that the SNP would deliver 1,000 extra police officers. Michael Russell might find that funny, but I am afraid that the people in the constituency that I represent, and in many others throughout Scotland, do not find it funny that those 1,000 extra police officers will not be delivered.

The manifesto did not state in the small print that it would be the equivalent of 1,000 extra police officers. It was clear in the SNP manifesto that it would deliver 1,000 extra police officers, not the return of Rebus and Taggart from retirement, not overtime or the "equivalent" that we see in endowment policy documents. Instead, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, who, like his deputy, is not here today, tried to create wriggle-room for himself during his appearance on a debate on STV by saying that it was stupid of Michael Crow to ask how many police officers would be in place on 4 May 2008. I will therefore put my own stupid question directly to Nicola Sturgeon: how many police officers will be in place in May 2008? How many will be in place in May 2009? How many will be in place in 2010? Perhaps the minister wants to intervene on that point. I am more than happy for her to clarify.

I simply refer the member to the manifesto. He can read it and find the answer for himself.

She is unable to clarify. The minister needs to be unequivocal. Her document states, "It's time to look forward", but the cabinet secretary is not happy to do that when answering questions about the future projection of police numbers. The document makes clear the SNP's ambitions for the first 100 days of government and it is clear in stating that it will deliver 1,000 police officers in communities throughout Scotland—no Rebus, no Taggart; it is very clear. We look forward to seeing that commitment delivered, and we will welcome the opportunity to question the minister on 4 May 2008.

The minister should take a lead from Roseanna Cunningham, who was unequivocal in saying in 2002:

"As Justice Minister I would ensure that the SNP delivered on our pledge to deliver one thousand more police officers."

I would like to hear from Roseanna today. Her words were clear and unequivocal. It is a pity that she is not the justice minister; the people of Scotland would have been well served by that unequivocal comment.

Perhaps I may take issue with Iain Gray, but I will not excite Labour's business manager. My calculation is that 16,234 police officers were in place on 3 May 2007. Therefore, we want to see 17,234 police officers in place on 4 May 2011. Will the minister deliver that, yes or no? Will she deliver 17,234 police officers? No Rebus, no Taggart, no overtime—we want to know how many police officers will be in place. We and the people of Scotland will hold her to account.

The SNP also promised, in what the First Minister has called an ambitious document, to deliver a criminal justice bill as an early action. Will the minister confirm what an early action is? When will the SNP introduce that important legislation? I see that Michael Russell thinks that what I am saying is funny, but I suggest to him that several legislative remedies could be discussed. Patrick Harvie's proposed member's bill could be debated, or perhaps Patrick Harvie could lodge amendments to a criminal justice bill. There could be debates on DNA retention, which SNP members have said that they are keen to explore, and on several other criminal justice issues. However, the SNP Government is terrified of having a debate on justice and on the challenges that people throughout Scotland face. It is soft on crime, and it knows that a criminal justice debate would reveal that.

The SNP Government promised to work with all the parties that are represented in the chamber—I hear Nicola Sturgeon agreeing with that. In fact, the First Minister said in his acceptance speech:

"My pledge to the Parliament today is that any Scottish Government that is led by me will respect and include the Parliament in the governance of Scotland over the next four years."—[Official Report, 16 May 2007; c 36.]

In that context, I welcome the commitment that Nicola Sturgeon has again given. However, the First Minister has a lot to learn if he thinks that he can advise the Parliament by means of an inspired question that he is scrapping community reparation orders. Obviously, he has been away from the chamber for far too long. If he calls that joint working, he has a lot to learn.

The possibility of a general election has been mentioned many times. In the light of the SNP Government's record over the past five months, I say, bring on a general election—and roll on the Scottish Parliament elections in 2011.

What is at stake in the debate is Scotland's promise. It is our contention that that promise is in safe hands with the SNP Government and that what we have inherited is a threat to that promise. However, before I discuss issues that have plagued us in the Highlands, which I represent, let us look a little behind the scenes. Where are those who are accusing us of breaking promises coming from? What did they celebrate at their British conference in Bournemouth? Let us think about that. Gordon Brown is the friend of the super-rich. He always talks about social justice, but he is always reinforcing notions of Britishness, which have been the bane of our lives. He has presided over a tax system that imposes higher marginal rates on working and middle-class taxpayers than on the wealthy, and that penalises all taxpayers who had the bad luck to be born in Britain rather than abroad. He has made Britain a tax haven for the rich, which is one of the things that is stopping Scotland making progress. Considering where Labour is coming from is important when we are thinking about whether we can believe anything that it says. Labour is barefaced in its attempts to sook up to the hedge-fund kings, to excuse Northern Rock and to seek loans from those people to keep its election campaigns on the road. The tax breaks for wealthy foreigners who are behind that are the ruin of an economy that we could build on. That is what is holding us back.

It is important to take those things into account. Hugh Henry accused us of deception. One thing that we know from the past eight years is that Labour has been barefaced in riding roughshod over the ideas of social democracy for our country that we in the SNP hold dear.

Let us consider our economy and our economic promise for Scotland. In the past eight years, the fiasco of the ferry tender issue has plagued the Highlands and Islands. The Government would not stand up for Scotland by going to Europe and saying that ferry tendering was a unique case. Tavish Scott was the Minister for Transport who was in charge of that.

I am not finished yet.

Oh, come on.

Tavish Scott was the Minister for Transport who would not stand up for Scotland. We now have a Government that will do so and that has had to pick up the millions of pounds that it has cost to create all the Caledonian MacBrayne companies—which is, apparently, progress.

I have two questions for Mr Gibson. First, would he break European Union law? Secondly, if he is right, why did the SNP not stop the tendering process the minute that it came into power?

First, like many of the contracts that we inherited, they cannot be broken once they have been made. Secondly, the previous Government could have fought the Altmark judgment, but did not; we will fight it.

The Crown Estate continues to rip off this country and to exploit our geography by taking money from harbour boards and small piers throughout the country. Labour has had 10 years in which to try to curb how the Crown Estate gives out licences and takes in money from fish farms. Things changed slightly after eight years. We now see the barefaced cheek of the Liberals, who lodge motions saying that we must take action against the Crown Estate. What did Labour and Liberal members do in government? Nothing. That is what we are trying to change.

Part of Scotland's promise is its ability to contribute clean energy to Britain and Europe. Above all, that contribution relies on a regime for grid connections that will allow Scotland to compete. Last week, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and I pointed out that the biggest drawback to fulfilling that promise is that it is 36 times more expensive to get a grid connection in Scotland than it is in Denmark. If that is not the kind of thing that has held us back and held Scotland's promise in check, I do not know what has. Such background issues have plagued Scotland's economy. Labour will not attempt to get the masters down the road in London to change the basic rules, so we must ensure that we change them ourselves.

Our promise is that Scotland will flourish under the SNP. Our achievements in five months are setting the pace, but we are just beginning. As our amendment suggests, we look forward

"to the government continuing to deliver for the people of Scotland."

In four years' time, we will have taken great strides towards making Scotland the country that we aspire to have. The broken promises will not be ours; they will be Labour's promises of the past.

The debate has been interesting, but I am a little disappointed that we have only a morning to cover all the issues that the SNP said before the election that it would address, but which it will not now address.

I am delighted to be a member of the Parliament's Rural Affairs and Environment Committee because, among other reasons, many of the issues that come before it directly affect my constituents. I am also delighted that Mike Russell will sum up for the Government in the debate.

Let us consider what the SNP said about our farmers before the election. Its manifesto stated:

"The SNP recognises that farmers who commit innocent errors in their paperwork are made to feel like criminals and that the resulting penalties imposed are often disproportionate to the offence."

However, at the first opportunity in the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, Mike Russell created a new criminal offence for farmers who make errors in their paperwork. Furthermore, farmers who break the new law are subject not only to a fine, but to a term of imprisonment. Officials had to check when I asked them about that. The term of imprisonment is up to three months. No wonder there is disillusionment with politics when the SNP does such things.

Will the member give way?

The minister must learn that it is protocol that when a member asks to intervene, the speaker gives way, but not if the member refused to give way during previous debate. I will not give way on this occasion.

What a pity.

I say to Patrick Harvie of the Greens that the complaint is not that the SNP minority Government is unable to implement its policies. That is not the issue. The complaint is about the deliberate deception that there has been on issues—such as farmers and paperwork—where the SNP has done the opposite of what it promised during the election campaign.

Let us look at another of the SNP's broken promises.

Will the member give way?

I promise that I will come to Brian Adam in a moment.

In its manifesto, the SNP promised to lift the burden of agricultural regulations. We have heard a bit about that already. The SNP stated:

"In government we are determined to deliver lighter and effective regulation. This commitment will include a policy of ‘one in, one out' so new regulations replace rather than add to old regulations."

That is fine and dandy—great stuff, if only it were true. Hardly a Rural Affairs and Environment Committee meeting goes by without a sheaf of new regulations from the minister. I have sought to annul—

Will the member give way?

As I said, I will give way to you, Mike, if you give way to me. I will now give way to you.

I ask the member not to use the second person or first names.

Mr Rumbles talks about his noble fight to ensure that the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee backs him on this issue and suggests that he represents a view that has unanimous support in the chamber. Will he tell us what the result at each of the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee meetings at which he has put the matter to the vote has been? In case he has forgotten, he was the sole person to oppose any of the measures to which he refers.

Last night the minister said to me that since 1964 no one has managed to have such regulations annulled, so the results to which he refers are not surprising.

Richard Lochhead promised to write to the committee with information on exactly how many regulations have been removed as the new ones are added, but guess what? The committee has received no notification of the regulations that the minister has removed. I wonder why. Surely it cannot be that the SNP has failed to do what it promised.

Will the member give way?

I will do so in 30 seconds.

No wonder there is disillusionment with politics. In the north-east—I now come to Brian Adam—the SNP promised us a 50m swimming pool. During the election campaign, Brian Adam told us that he would deliver that. Are we getting it? No. The previous Executive put in place funding for the western peripheral route around Aberdeen, but the first thing that the SNP Government did was to remove that funding. The SNP is centralising neurology services in the central belt and cleft lip and palate surgery in two centres in the central belt. Alex Salmond promised to end central belt bias, but the facts prove otherwise.

I remind Mike Rumbles of what he promised the electorate in 2003, to be delivered between 2003 and 2007. Will he care to explain to us why a dental school is not open in Aberdeen and why, when he promised that the Aberdeen bypass would be complete by 2010, it had to—

Order. Interventions must be short and to the point.

I am not surprised that Brian Adam has lost the plot, as the SNP Government has lost the plot.

One minute.

The biggest con trick of all must be the SNP promise to get rid of student debt. The SNP could have made it clear at any time that it was talking only about the servicing of debt. It will come as a surprise to many young people that they will still be saddled with huge debts and that the SNP Government is no longer committed to getting rid of those. How will the Government try to get rid of the debts? It seems to the SNP that the only way forward is to make payments to individuals that are the equivalent of their debt repayments. That will be a massive task. Does it mean that the debts will never be paid off? I understand the criticisms that have been made of public-private partnerships and the private finance initiative, but surely even PPP projects are paid off at some point. The commitment to servicing student debt is a never-ending commitment.

I would like the minister when summing up to address the three issues that I have raised today. First, does the SNP intend to create any further criminal offences for our farmers, other than the one that it has just created?

The member must wind up.

Secondly, will the SNP inform us of any regulations that it annuls? Thirdly, when will the debts that are incurred by our students be repaid? Will they go on for ever and ever?

I am happy to take part in this morning's debate, although I am a little surprised that we are debating broken promises so early in the term of a new Government. In her opening speech, Nicola Sturgeon, who is no longer in the chamber, did not even try to explain why—perhaps the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing is in denial.

In its 2007 election manifesto, the SNP stated:

"We will reduce class sizes in Primary 1, 2 and 3 to eighteen pupils or less to give children more time with their teacher at this vital stage of their development."

We have heard from the Educational Institute of Scotland and others that teachers support that aim. Parents also believe that there are benefits from smaller class sizes. Politicians, too, support the proposal. All political parties made a commitment to reduce class sizes; the Labour Party certainly did. This is not a new initiative—the Labour-Lib Dem Executive reduced class sizes at primary level to 30 pupils or fewer In 2007, class sizes in primary 1 and in secondary 1 and 2 maths and English were to be reduced further.

However, ministers cannot afford to act on a gut reaction. They need hard evidence on which to base their actions, but they have not been very forthcoming with that evidence. For example, why was the figure of 18 chosen? Would it not be better to leave some flexibility? I cannot be alone in envisaging situations in which smaller classes would benefit children who are finding learning difficult; correspondingly, larger numbers may be acceptable for more able pupils. The Government has spoken about allowing local decision making, but clearly it does not allow it to happen in practice.

At one stage, the member was the convener of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. She must be aware of worldwide evidence—including from the student teacher achievement ratio project in Tennessee, which was the largest such project—of the effect of reducing class sizes to 18 or fewer in primary school and early years education. If she is not aware of that evidence, she should be.

Mr Russell knows as well as I do that the STAR report is inconclusive and that there are a variety of views on the issue. I am asking for flexibility to match the needs of children.

It has been suggested that resources would be better spent on targeting areas of deprivation, where class sizes could be reduced even further. That is probably not necessary, as evidence shows that often classes are already smaller in our more deprived areas. However, that means that those areas will not benefit from the extra money and teachers that will be available under the Government's policy. The other side of the argument is that, where there are larger classes, they are in popular schools in which attainment is high and to which parents aspire to send their children.

Will the member give way?

Not at the moment.

I will be kind and say that one of the unintended consequences of the policy will be to reduce parents' and children's choice of school. Strangely, I could not find that in the SNP manifesto, but it will come about, because the Government never gave enough consideration to what it was promising. Even if all members were sympathetic to the policy of reducing class sizes, how the Government goes about achieving that is important.

Maureen Watt, the Minister for Schools and Skills, stated in a letter to Ken Macintosh:

"Scottish local government has said they need to discuss with us how these commitments will be delivered."

Clearly, she was not referring to SNP-led West Lothian Council, where the SNP and Tory administration ruled out a motion from Labour councillors calling for just such a meeting. Ms Watt goes on to say that

"it is vital that local and national government work together".

I could not agree more, but would it not have been better if the SNP had had that discussion before announcing the policy, rather than afterwards? Who advised SNP ministers that £40 million for school buildings and £9 million for 300 new teachers would be anywhere near what was needed, or were those figures just pulled out of the air?

How have local authorities reacted to the announcement? In Edinburgh, the capital city, where we are today, the council said that the cost of delivering the SNP commitment would be more than £41 million and that a further difficulty would be finding space for the new classrooms. I understand that £2.3 million has already been given to Edinburgh, but that is not even close to the £41 million that is needed. Worse still, the money has gone into a general education pot to resolve financial pressures. In Aberdeen, while the local authority calculates how much will be needed, it has been given £2 million; again, that is not enough. As my Aberdeen colleague Lewis Macdonald indicated in the previous education debate, the policy is already having a detrimental effect, as Aberdeen City Council is seeking to end out-of-zone placements—stopping parent choice.

A pattern is emerging—too little money for classrooms, too little money for teachers, too little money for support costs and too little space for the classrooms that are needed.

I hope that the SNP Government will talk to local government and listen to what it says. I hope that the Government will not use local authorities as scapegoats for its own mismanagement. Sadly, and most damning for the SNP Government, is that had the policy been thought through properly, it could have gained consensus in the chamber and improved educational opportunities for many of our children. Instead, the SNP went for a quick headline. The SNP Government is incompetent and the policy is a mess and yet another broken promise.

I thought that I would contribute to the debate in the spirit of conciliation and consensus for which I am renowned. Then I looked at the petty, mean-spirited motion from the Labour Party. Despite that, I will point out a number of the Labour Party's problems and give its members pointers about how they can address them. The Labour Party cannot come to terms with the fact that it lost the election and is no longer in control of Scotland's councils. It has the arrogance of a party too long in power and lacks the humility to realise that it does not have a God-given right to continue to be in power.

Wendy Alexander's apology to the Labour Party for losing the election was par for the course, but her apology should have been to the people of Scotland for 10 years of broken promises. Wendy Alexander said that the SNP had seized the agenda of hope and aspiration. Too right we did, but the agenda of hope and aspiration is not Labour's; it is not even the SNP's—it is the agenda of the people of Scotland. It was part of our manifesto and the campaign that we ran.

Where Labour delivered mediocrity, the SNP brought vision. Where Labour looked inwards, the SNP looked outwards. Where Labour dampened down aspiration, the SNP raised horizons. Today's Labour motion is more of the same negativity that was prevalent in the May election campaign. Is it any wonder that Labour lost the election?

Every manifesto proposal that Labour highlights in its motion was opposed by the party at the election. I take it then that Labour's new-found concern for communities and hard-working families in Scotland means that it will support the SNP Government in delivering over the next four years on all those commitments. I welcome Labour's conversion and look forward to its support over the next three and a half years on each and every one of the issues that it has highlighted today.

Will the member give way?

Iain Gray. Sorry—Jackie Baillie.

We will be delighted if the member wishes to take a further intervention. Does she believe that the £2,000 first-time home buyer grant is an effective use of public money?

I look forward to my friend the minister making an announcement on housing proposals in the very near future. I suggest that Jackie Baillie has the patience to wait, because I will address housing in a moment.

Let us look at what the SNP has delivered in my constituency of Central Fife, which since time immemorial has been in Labour Party hands. To be fair, however, the late, great Willie Gallacher—the only communist ever to be elected to Westminster—might have had a bit of the constituency at one time. The SNP has committed to remove tolls from the Forth and Tay bridges. Labour and the Liberal Democrats steadfastly voted against that proposal in this Parliament before the election and supported it after the election; today, we had Iain Gray—the Kenny Dalglish of politics—saying that Labour's stance is mebbes aye, mebbes no.

I understand that the member has been campaigning for the removal of tolls since she was 15. By my calculation, she started in 1969, two years after the bridge was opened. Was that a productive way to spend the first summer of love?

I am not quite sure I got that, but in 1964 when the Forth road bridge was opened, I was 11 years old. I remember the unfairness of the tolls at that time. My dad, who was in the Labour Party, could not understand it when the Labour Government brought in the tolls.

Let us look at what else the SNP has done in Central Fife. We have free school meals for all pupils in primary 1 to primary 3. We introduced regulations to give ministers a role in the decision on ship-to-ship oil transfers, while Gordon Brown and the Labour Party at Westminster refused to act. We supported the Fife energy park at Methil and the world-leading Pelamis wave technology that will power the Orkney wave project, as announced last week by the First Minister. Already the SNP has funded 20 more teachers in Fife, six of them in primary schools in Levenmouth.

No one in the SNP will take lectures when, for the past eight years, we had a Labour Government so desperate for the trappings of power that it forgot why it wanted power in the first place. Of the many broken Labour and Liberal promises over the past 10 years, I will focus on just one. When she was minister with responsibility for housing in 2000, Wendy Alexander told Housing Magazine:

"We propose to address the housing situation radically. We will build 18,000 new homes in three years."

In fact, Labour built fewer houses between 1999 and 2005 than the Tories built in 1995. No wonder there is a housing crisis.

In four years, the people of Scotland will make their judgment on the success of the SNP Government. In those four years, we will work hard to get cross-party support for our proposals. Labour will also be judged if it stands in the way of the measures in our manifesto that were supported in May by the people of Scotland.

It is right that this Parliament continues to expose the level of duplicity that was perpetrated on the people of Scotland by the SNP at the last election.

We are already seeing a catalogue of excuses advanced by the SNP to try to explain away its failure or unwillingness to deliver what was promised. The most blatant excuse is that everything is down to the spending review and that somehow Westminster is to blame for all its problems. The truth is somewhat different. Before the election, each of the parties had access to civil servants to cost its promises and manifestos. The SNP knew the size of the current budget and like everyone else it could make adjustments within certain parameters about future budgets while waiting to see final details. So, when the SNP came forward with its proposals on education, it would have had been advised of the cost and indeed the consequences.

Let us look at a couple of examples. On 29 November 2006, speaking in advance of a speech at the University of Strathclyde, Fiona Hyslop said:

"Only an SNP Government will write off the outstanding Student Loans debt".

Note the clear language—not servicing or assuming the debt, but writing it off. Fiona Hyslop was not the only one. On 27 July 2006, Nicola Sturgeon, speaking to young people in Edinburgh, said that the SNP package

"will allow for the write off of existing graduate debt from student loans".

Not to be outdone, Alex Salmond, writing in Liberate, the student nationalist newspaper, in September 2006, said that the SNP would

"scrap the student loan debt for current graduates".

There was no misunderstanding. On the contrary, a clear line was developed that gave the specific promise that student debt would be written off.

Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and Fiona Hyslop were quite clear that the debt was to be written off. They were told at the time that the £1.58 billion of student debt was unaffordable but not only did they persist, they sought to ridicule those who pointed out that it was unaffordable. Allan Wilson, then the minister responsible for higher education funding, wrote to The Herald to point out that the SNP figures were bogus. He pointed out that if the debt was to be written off, it would have to be done in one year of the existing budget. He stated clearly that Audit Scotland had advised that once something is no longer held to be a debt, it cannot be held on the balance sheet and must be written off via the operating statement. Even worse, Treasury funding to the Scottish Executive, in the year of the write-off, would be commensurately reduced. It would be a double whammy of monumental proportions. The SNP sneered at Allan Wilson. He was derided and denounced, but now he has been shown to be absolutely correct. Even though the SNP was warned and told that its promises could not be delivered, it persisted.

What do we have now? The SNP has made a full-scale retreat to a cop-out—it will provide nothing near what was promised. Instead, it will merely service the debt. Leaving aside the foolishness of that proposal, which will mean that £40 million will have to be diverted from front-line services every year, while nothing is done to reduce the debt, it is a complete U-turn from what was promised.

What word should we use to describe people who knowingly make promises that they cannot keep? What word should we use to describe people who continue to repeat something that they know is not true and—worse—which they have been advised cannot be delivered? Some would say that such people are guilty of telling lies; others would call it deception or misrepresentation. What words properly describe those people who engage in lies, deception or misrepresentation? Whatever word one uses, it hardly touches on the breathtaking scale of what was done last May.

The same can be said about the promise on the number of teachers that are required to deliver class-size reduction in primary schools and more teachers for nursery education. Alex Salmond and Fiona Hyslop have confirmed to the Parliament that that promise will be delivered by 2011, but they know that that cannot be done. They are already starting to get their retaliation in first. They say that delivery of their promise will require the co-operation of local councils, but there was no mention of that before the election. At the time, we were told that an SNP Administration would deliver more teachers; there was no talk of having to rely on others. Now we have more weasel words, squirming and playing of the blame game. All the advice that the SNP would have been given, before the election and since, would have told it that what it was promising could not be delivered, but it persisted.

Taken in totality, the scale of misrepresentation is truly staggering. We were told that prisons would be taken back into the public sector. The reality is different—even Low Moss will be built by the private sector. We were told that PPP would be abolished, but now it is to be allowed to continue, with the Administration being prepared to pick up the cost. We were told that there would be a council tax freeze, but now we find out that that will happen only if local authorities co-operate. On health, the jury is still out on whether the promises that the SNP made in relation to Lanarkshire and Ayrshire can be delivered and on what the cost of that will be to other services, but people in the Vale of Leven and elsewhere have had no words of comfort. Do they not count? On education, the SNP has made a complete U-turn on writing off student debt and the start of a U-turn on class-size reduction.

The Parliament has a duty to expose the scale of what has been done. Each party in the Parliament needs to think carefully about the consequences of allowing such behaviour to continue. We must reflect seriously on whether we can have any confidence in a First Minister and a team who are prepared to behave in such an outrageous fashion.

I take members back to 3 May 1997, which was a bright, sunny day. As I travelled to school, I was a bit bleary-eyed because I had stayed up to watch the election results flood in. I walked to school with a smile on my face and felt a sense of optimism, a sense that something major had happened. The reason for that sense of well-being was Labour's victory in the election—things could only get better. It was a result that was supposed to signal the end of 18 years of Tory rule, or so I thought. I should have realised that nothing had changed when the very next year I, along with thousands of other students across Scotland, had to pay for my education.

In 1997, Tony Blair told us that the Conservatives' broken promises had tainted all politics. In comparison, his tenure would be hallmarked by the politics not of a revolution, but of a fresh start. His Britain would be respected in the world for the integrity with which it conducted its foreign relations. The new Labour Government would make the protection and promotion of human rights a central part of its foreign policy.

However, as the years rolled on, it became clear that new Labour's foreign policy would be far removed from the appealing words that were spoken at the beginning of the party's term in office. As Alex Neil said, if we want to see a genuine example of a broken promise, we need only look to the actions of the new Labour Government in waging war on Iraq. Broken promises are not just an element of London new Labour; unfortunately, as we have heard at length, they are a not-too-distant feature of Scottish new Labour.

Education was to be a key theme for Labour in 2003. In its 2003 manifesto, it told us that class sizes in maths and English at secondary 1 and secondary 2 levels would be reduced to 20 and that additional teachers would be deployed to meet that goal, which had the explicit backing of Labour's Liberal Democrat colleagues. We were also promised maximum class sizes of 25 for primary 1 pupils. Despite being in power for eight years, the Labour-Liberal coalition failed to deliver on that promise.

Will the member give way on that point?

No, I am sorry—I want to move on. [Interruption.]

Order.

In February 2007, we learned that more than 41 per cent of all primary 1 pupils were in classes that contained more than 25 pupils. The previous Administration also failed to deliver on the promise of reducing class sizes in maths and English.

In the May election, I stood in the Clydesdale seat. Under freedom of information provisions, we learned that not a single maths or English class in Clydesdale was of the promised size. Pupils and parents in Lesmahagow, Biggar, Carluke, Lanark and Larkhall, along with countless others across the country who had been promised such reductions, were failed by eight years of a dithering, inactive Government.

Will the member give way?

I have had eight years of hearing from the member.

Perhaps that failure is why Wendy Alexander, who in her 2003 election leaflet said that a vote for a party other than hers would put smaller class sizes at risk, decided last month that class sizes were

"not a good measure of what matters."

As Nicola Sturgeon said, the SNP won the election in May because we ran a positive campaign that talked up Scotland and showed its people what enormous potential we had to be a fully functioning, normal country. Our theme—it's time—was successful, so much so that the Conservatives used it for their conference banner.

We pledged to offer hope and aspiration, and we will deliver on that. Labour does not have a divine right to rule in Scotland and it should not dare to apologise for the election simply because it lost it. As Tricia Marwick said, it is not Labour's right to win every election in this country. That thing called "democracy" is precious and no members of our party will ever take it for granted. The people have placed their trust in us to deliver on our contract with them. We have made a pretty impressive start: we have announced the abolition of the bridge tolls, the scrapping of the graduate endowment and the saving of the Crichton campus. I could go on, but I will not shame the Opposition by listing more examples of the SNP's ability to accomplish more in months in government than the previous Executive could do in eight years.

The Labour Party needs to rid itself of its tendency to think complacently that people will always vote for it. Times have changed; we operate in a new political climate, which I hope will develop into an environment in which we all act for the good of our country. That is why it is so disappointing to have to participate in a yah-boo debate—a style of debate that is all too common at Westminster, but from which I thought that we all hoped to distance ourselves at Holyrood.

How will the people of Scotland feel if they see Opposition politicians playing political games instead of providing robust opposition that helps the country to be run positively? Maybe the Labour Party cannot afford to do that. All Labour members who support the motion will be playing games because they know that no Government anywhere in the world has ever implemented all its manifesto pledges five months into a four-year term. They know, too, that those who are behind the motion have engaged in the most childish political mischief making and that the SNP Government has been well received, is doing well for Scotland and will keep its promises to the people of Scotland.

You have one minute left.

Will the member give way?

I am in my final minute.

The elation that countries in Britain felt when new Labour broke 18 years of Tory rule did not feel half as good as 4 May this year felt. The difference this time will be that the hope and aspiration that the whole country feels, and the trust that has been placed in the SNP, will be rewarded by positive, responsive government that is dedicated to making the country a better place to be. It is up to the other parties in the Parliament whether they join us on that journey.

I was not quite sure how the debate would go. It has been lively—we should have lively debates—with both positive and negative aspects. It was predictable that such a blatantly party-political debate would be lively, regardless of whether it took place in the run-up to a potential general election. On the downside, there has been a fair bit of "Youse willnae do that," and "Well, youse didnae do this." We should all try to raise ourselves above that.

After listening to the debate, I wonder whether any members of the Labour group argued for a more constructive motion and, if so, who they were. They might not be the members who were selected to speak in the debate, but l live in hope that they are out there somewhere.

I respond to two points that were made from the Labour benches. Johann Lamont made serious points about taking the Parliament seriously. Any Government should be held to account in that regard and I agree with aspects of what she said. Accountability to the Parliament partly depends on Government; it also depends on the Parliament itself and on the legislation that defines the power of ministers.

I recall debates that Johann Lamont and I had during the passage of the Planning etc (Scotland) Bill, when I lodged amendments that would have introduced the most robust and rigorous scrutiny of the national planning framework—a document that is profoundly important for the future of the country. I challenged Johann Lamont, who was then Deputy Minister for Communities, on the implication that giving ministers the power to pass such an important document was legitimate because ministers represent a Government that carries the democratic mandate that is given to it in an election. I asked Johann Lamont how accountability could be achieved if a minister for a minority Government were to lay an important document before the Parliament. I thought that we should give the Parliament the right to say no. However, I am sorry to say that my point was not taken on board. During today's debate, Johann Lamont made serious points about the Government's responsibility to be accountable to the Parliament. We also need to define ministers' powers more carefully, bearing in mind the possibility of the circumstances that we are now experiencing.

The point that I was trying to make was that the Parliament is not getting the opportunity even to discuss key issues. Some things are for a Government to decide. It is ultimately for the Government to decide what the Scottish Enterprise network should look like. However, the SNP Government has failed to take on board anything that anyone says through the parliamentary process. That is a failure. It is an administrative approach rather—

You have had long enough.

Any failing of the Government that Johann Lamont points out is shared by the Parliament as a whole. The Labour group had the opportunity to lodge any motion for today's debate that it wanted to lodge, but it chose not to go with an issue on which a decision would have bound the Government. Instead, Labour chose to have a party-political debate.

Paul Martin is as keen as ever to win the tough-on-crime crown. After his third attempt to get a laugh with his Rebus and Taggart joke, I wondered whether he imagines that if 47 Labour members had been elected and had formed a minority Government, that Government would have blithely ploughed its way through its manifesto commitments, without the need for co-operation and compromise.

If the SNP does not fulfil its commitment to deliver 1,000 extra police officers, will Patrick Harvie no longer associate himself with the SNP Government?

Paul Martin knows well that my association with the SNP Government is limited to an agreement that has been fulfilled. The Greens have a positive and constructive working relationship with the Government, but we are not bound to it.

If Paul Martin's party learns the ropes of opposition in good spirit, the numbers in the chamber make it possible to implement any measure in the SNP manifesto that Labour wants to be implemented. That might not necessarily happen in 100 days or four months. Opposition MSPs who want something out of Government need to work at it and to persuade.

Mr Harvie's point is entirely reasonable. If the SNP proposes to bring in 1,000 extra police officers, we will support the proposal, so that those officers can be delivered. The point is that the SNP is not making that proposal.

As I said, four months have passed and Opposition MSPs need to work to persuade.

If the Labour Party does not want to learn to be an Opposition party, that is fine. It can spend the rest of this session of the Parliament merely rattling the cage and scoring party-political points-that would be easy. Labour will win some points and lose others, but the party should not fool itself into thinking that indulging its party—political instincts is the same as serving in opposition in the best interests of the people who elected us.

Some members of the Labour Party have not adjusted to the reality of opposition, but a few members of the SNP have spoken as though they think they are still in opposition. Alex Neil made fair points about the record of the Government from 1999 to 2007, but he undermined them hugely by deviating into wider issues, such as Iraq. Iraq is hugely important, but it is not the responsibility of the previous Scottish Administration. Just as Labour will take time to settle into the reality of opposition, the confident demeanour of a Government might take time to develop. When that has happened, we will have confident, assertive proposals from the Government, rather than defensiveness and mere attacks.

I shudder at the prospect of trying to pull apart the old enemies by injecting a little reality into our debates during the next few years. I call on all parties to support the Green amendment, which offers an addition to the motion that injects a note of reality about the political circumstances that we live with.

It is surely more in sorrow than in anger that we debate the motion. We have witnessed the enormous expectations, the hype, the spin, the determination, the drive and the enthusiasm—and that is just from Mike Russell—but the SNP is charged with overhyping, as Johann Lamont said, and with underdelivery. As members said, the SNP's approach is to take administrative action but to introduce little or no legislation.

SNP members and ministers have criticised Opposition members for not looking forward. We are indeed looking forward. The Opposition is looking forward to the fulfilment of all those expectations—and all that spin, hype, drive and enthusiasm. However, that has not happened. As Iain Gray said, there was much clarity in the SNP's manifesto. A striking aspect of the debate has been the number of members of all parties who have quoted directly from the manifesto and then quoted ministerial remarks that suggest that the manifesto was not worth the paper that it was written on. I hope that when Mr Russell winds up for the Government he will accept that members have been quoting directly from the manifesto and giving clear examples of issues on which the SNP in Government has not done something that it said in its manifesto that it would do.

In its manifesto, the SNP made crystal-clear commitments about police numbers, the council tax freeze, grants for first-time buyers, climate change and carbon emissions targets. However, there has been a volte face. The SNP's failures have been underspun and underhyped—that was uncharacteristic of the SNP—but they have certainly been overdelivered.

The SNP's position on the comprehensive spending review in London, the results of which will be known next week, perhaps offers the clearest example of what I have described. Mr Fraser called the SNP's position "a cop-out", which was fair. Mr Fraser's analysis was right. The SNP met senior civil servants of the Scottish Executive prior to the election—I remember a fair bit of publicity about that, too—and no doubt received exactly the same briefing as the Conservatives and other parties received about the United Kingdom spending pattern. The SNP's position, which is that the situation is desperately difficult now, is not coherent. The situation was completely clear in May.

Mr Arthur Midwinter, an academic whom the SNP was happy to quote when it was in opposition, called the SNP's proposals "wholly unrealistic" and identified a shortfall of £2 billion. I am sure that Mr Russell will expand on that and I hope that he will reflect on Mr Midwinter's comments now that he is a Government minister.

Let us be clear about the spending review in the context of the council tax freeze, because it is arguable that the local government financial position is the most serious issue that is faced by our constituencies, areas and communities. Nicola Sturgeon, who just sighed heavily—I would sigh, too, if I had said this—

It was me.

I apologise to Nicola Sturgeon. I mistook the sigh for hers.

Nicola Sturgeon wrote to SNP councillors in 2006 to say:

"we will freeze Council Tax at April 2007 levels."

That is a direct quote, which has not been taken out of context. However, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth said:

"I am not making the decision. I am encouraging local authorities".—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 27 June 2007; c 40.]

A desperately serious issue for local government should not be batted away in idle political chitchat. I hope that the Government will sort out its position, given the impending financial situation in which all councils will find themselves.

I will pick up on one other point about changes in the SNP's position—on VisitScotland and local enterprise companies. I can take good political debate and Rob Gibson, who is not in the chamber now, was happy to enter into that. [Interruption.] I see that he is just returning—good for him. The other day Rob Gibson strongly welcomed the centralising of local enterprise companies and VisitScotland in Inverness. I look forward to a continuing full debate on that matter over the next year.

Policy after policy has been announced, reannounced and spun. Nicola Sturgeon said this morning—I have a direct quote right here—that she and her Government would be held to account not by the Opposition, but by the people. That confirms the SNP's view that Parliament is great when it agrees with the SNP, but it is not worth doing anything with at all when it does not agree. I do not agree with that approach, and nor—I suspect—will Parliament. More to the point, I suspect that, in the coming years, the people will not agree either.

Members on the Conservative benches have today shown two of their typical positions. I am sure that we will have a good strong attack from David McLetchie—we certainly had that from Murdo Fraser. Annabel Goldie is not here today, while Derek Brownlee said once again that the SNP really is rather good, and that it does not really mean what it says on independence. I wish that the Tories would sort out their position.

Will the member take an intervention?

The member is in his last minute.

Today, the SNP has put up as its ministerial team the über-loyalist Nicola Sturgeon and the über—well, Mike Russell. We always enjoy Mr Russell's contributions, and I am glad that he is back here. [Interruption.] Okay, I withdraw that last remark.

The other night, I read—or tried to read—Mike Russell's most recent publication, "Grasping the Thistle". I tried to read it, but the Scottish Parliament information centre does not have it—the book is apparently out on loan to a Mr A Salmond, who clearly has strong views on it. There is one line from it that is important: Mike Russell believes that we need a new union, because it is a constitutional watering-hole. We are happy to look strongly at the future of this country, but I suspect that when people do that, they will find this lot wanting.

Today's debate is conspicuous because of an absence.

Annabel!

I am coming to that.

As my friend Murdo Fraser pointed out, one would have thought that the new leader of the Scottish Labour Party would take the opportunity of this set-piece occasion to lead from the front, but Wendy Alexander was missing in action. Leaders debate with leaders, so her absence meant that there was no need for Alex Salmond to come out to play, that Annabel Goldie could put her feet up and prepare for First Minister's question time and that Nicol Stephen could reinforce his well-deserved reputation for anonymity.

In spite of that, we have enjoyed a spirited clash. I congratulate lain Gray on his forensic analysis of the broken promises in the SNP manifesto. While I am in a generous spirit, I also congratulate Jeremy Purvis on the most entertaining and well-researched speech that has been delivered by a Liberal Democrat in the Parliament over the past eight years.

But, but.

There are no buts.

It is true that, as Nicola Sturgeon, Aileen Campbell and others on the SNP benches have pointed out, this session of Parliament will last for four years and the Government will be judged by its performance over the full term rather than the early stages, but the essence of today's charge concerns the false prospectus of a manifesto that has, in significant respects, been abandoned in short order.

The abandonment of some of the policies is more than welcome on the Conservative benches, as we said that they were a nonsense at the time, and they remain a nonsense now. The proposal to give a £2,000 grant to first-time house buyers was a self-cancelling policy that would have stoked inflation and taken house prices further out of the reach of young people and families. Similarly, the class sizes policy was never going to work, could not be afforded, was of dubious educational value and would have led to many children being refused admission to the schools that their parents wanted them to attend. We do not in the least lament the departure of those policies. On the other hand, the slippery equivocations by Kenny MacAskill and others on the subject of additional police officers—a policy that is both desirable and achievable—betrays the superficial cynicism that is typical of much of the SNP manifesto.

In this debate, the Conservatives have highlighted the U-turn on regulation. I ask members to cast their minds back over the past couple of years. Here we have Jim Mather, king of the prawn cocktail circuit and architect of the SNP's boardroom blitz, who talks in tongues to our captains of industry about the SNP's bogus enterprise agenda in a torrent of management guru psychobabble—a second language that he shares with Wendy Alexander. It is inconceivable that during all those discussions the subject of regulation did not crop up. Every member in the chamber knows from talking to businessmen—from those running small businesses to the biggest FTSE 100 company—that concerns about overregulation are at the top of their agenda.

The SNP pledged in its manifesto to

"adopt the Better Regulation Commission's policy of ‘one in, one out'"

in order to cap the regulatory burdens on our enterprises. However, as my colleague Derek Brownlee discovered in a written answer from the same Mr Mather after he had consulted the industry-led review group—the very same captains of commerce—Mr Mather now says that such an approach may not be

"wholly appropriate or realisable at present."—[Official Report, Written Answers, 31 August 2007; S3W-2666]

Indeed, I heard someone else on the Government benches say that it was simplistic. One wonders why Mr Mather took so long to realise that. Is that U-turn a betrayal of the pledges that he made in all those boardrooms, or is it an acknowledgement that the policy was no more than a decorative soundbite that was concocted for effect rather than to achieve any practical result?

That illustrates the answer to Patrick Harvie and the Green amendment. Of course, in a Parliament of minorities with a minority Government there is a need to build alliances across parties in order to implement policies, although consensus does not have to embrace all parties, and majorities can be constructed on different issues with different parties. However, the charge laid today against the SNP is that on many fronts it has failed even to bring its policies to the Parliament and to seek a majority. Instead, it has ditched them from the outset—a move that calls into question its good faith in putting the policies forward in the first place.

Nicola Sturgeon's amendment underlines the superficiality of much of the Government's approach. Playing to popular opinion on accident and emergency closures, the graduate endowment and tolls on the bridges is all well and good—even welcome in some instances—but the Government has done so in isolation, without looking at the underlying and far more fundamental issues, such as the delivery of health services, the future of higher education and the financing of a new Forth crossing.

It is now obvious that the SNP will be playing the victim card—blaming Westminster and blaming its minority position for its failure to deliver, with no acknowledgement that some of the policies were just plain daft in the first place. We on the Conservative side of the chamber do not intend to let the SNP get away with that, and today's debate should be a reality check for the Government. We will be pleased to co-operate with it on implementing policies with which we agree and on which we campaigned. It is up to the Government to reach an accommodation with others on policies with which we do not agree. Many of the policies highlighted today constituted a false prospectus. They deserve to be—and have been—shown up as such. Having shown them up, let us move on—we on the Conservative side are more than willing to do so.

I have said before in the chamber that when I was a student at the University of Edinburgh, staying in Pollock halls just up the road, there was on the wall of my room a 1970s Pan Am poster of a cartoon character looking over his shoulder, saying, "The real world's not in here—it's out there." When the real world judges this debate, it will see as ludicrous and unnecessary the motion and a number of the amendments—apart from the Greens' amendment, which is appropriate. The motion exists for two reasons only. The first is that, in the real world, Labour in Scotland is, and is seen to be, in a huff about losing an election. The second is that, in the real world, it is scared of the possibility of another election. That is what the motion is about.

Let us start with the election that the Labour Party lost. As my friend Tricia Marwick has said, Labour believed that it had a God-given right to rule in Scotland. The party could not believe that any election would come along in which the Scottish people would choose an alternative. The last democratic politician who had the same feeling was Mayor Daley in Chicago. He took some extra steps to ensure that failure did not come along: he had an electoral officer called "Short Pencil" Lewis, whose job it was to rub out the votes of other parties and put in votes for Richard Daley. The Labour Party may eventually be reduced to that if its negativity continues as it is.

I do not mind, and nobody on my party's benches minds, the resentment—

Will Mr Russell take an intervention?

No, Mr Henry, I will not. I have heard enough this morning from Iain Gray, Johann Lamont, Paul Martin, Mary Mulligan, Hugh Henry, and shortly Andy Kerr—the happy gang of Scottish politics.

The reality of—

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I hesitate to say it, but a serious allegation was just made about a threat that we would resort to electoral misrepresentation and electoral fraud. Will Mike Russell withdraw that serious allegation?

That was not a point of order.

What I said was a joke, but the happy gang cannot even get a joke.

I do not mind, and my party does not mind, the resentment that has come up—although it is not a good thing. However, the people who should be worried about it are the Scottish people. The motion is an insult to them. This Government has been in place for four and a half months. It has been working hard—indeed, it has been working flat out—but it does not matter what this Government does; the Labour Opposition does not like being in opposition, it does not know how to be in opposition, and it cannot handle opposition.

This is about not just the past but the future. The grand old duke of North Queensferry has marched his lot up to the top of the hill. They are looking over that hill and they can see something rather unpleasant—that they are bound to lose seats in Scotland in a coming general election. We have heard the opening lines of a general election campaign, and I must give the Labour Party a word of advice: one of the main reasons the party lost the election on 3 May was its negativity. If it goes into the coming election negatively, it will lose, and lose badly.

It is especially regrettable this morning that, with a new leader who uses the words "optimism" and "hope", the best that the Labour Party could bring to the chamber was a debate of such negativity. It is rather sad that the other parties have been suckered into it. We should have been hearing ideas for the future, but we have heard not a single idea—not one idea—from the happy gang. What we have actually had—

No, I will not give way.

What we have actually had—

No, I will not give way. We have heard enough this morning.

What we have actually had is what the former First Minister, the late Donald Dewar, called

"the awful predictability of Oppositions through the ages."

He used those words on 9 September 1999, when launching his first legislative programme. He went on to say:

"I know all about opposition. I relish the challenges of government".—[Official Report, 9 September 1999; c 273.]

The SNP relishes the challenges of government.

The subject of this debate is broken promises. What would Mr Russell say to a member of the business community who voted SNP because of its manifesto pledge to bring in a one in, one out policy on regulation? That pledge has now been broken.

No, it has not been broken. I would say to that member of the business community who showed enthusiasm for change—it is not just Jim Mather who meets such people—that change is under way. In my area, a substantial amount of change is already taking place to do with regulation.

This document in my hand—the SNP manifesto, which so fascinates the Labour Party that its members apparently support it in its entirety and want every item in it to be implemented—is a positive, optimistic, hard-working, visionary document, and it is about government. What we are doing is translating this document into government.

The Scottish people expect much of their Government. For eight years they were disappointed and let down by the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Now the Scottish people are hungry for change, and they are not being disappointed by this Government. This Government is delivering what it promised, and it will go on delivering what it promised. This Government has vision and hope and optimism, which will be the hallmarks of the Scotland that we will see.

I have to say this to the Labour Party: get over it. The party should learn from its mistakes, otherwise—alas—it will be fated to repeat them. On the evidence of today, the next election cannot come soon enough. The people of Scotland will judge the Labour Party by the negativity of what its members have said today. The happy gang is not an attractive gang and it is not a vote-winning gang.

In the 100-days document, my good friend the First Minister—my very good friend the First Minister—quoted Alasdair Gray, who talked of working

"as if you were living in the early days of a better nation."

We are in the early days of a better nation. This party in government is delivering that better nation. It is what the Scottish people asked for, it is what the Scottish people voted for, and it is what the Scottish people are getting. I invite every party in this chamber to join us in our task, because we need a better nation. In the light of what we have heard from the Labour Party today, oh we do need a better nation.

As a proud member of the happy gang, I am pleased to be summarising on behalf of the Labour Party. If Mike Russell wants to look back at the thematic debates that the Government has held over the past five weeks, he will see idea after idea—not just from the Labour Party, but from other parties in the chamber. Of course, none of them was taken up by Mr Russell's party. The SNP delivered the nation's 100-days document, and it will be held accountable for it.

Nicola Sturgeon spent 85 seconds defending the Government's record. I am not in denial; I know the benches that we sit on: you are in denial, and you are actually in government. It is about time that the SNP acted like a Government and defended its record—the record, set out in the 100-days document, that it has not delivered on.

I share Aileen Campbell's view about yah-boo politics and debates. The real victims are not us in the chamber; the real victims are our communities that will be denied police officers, our students who have been misled about student debts, and our first-time home buyers who thought that they would get £2,000 from this Government. None of those commitments has been met or will be met.

I will repeat some of the comments that have been made during the debate. Hugh Henry made a clear point that highlighted the big lie of the SNP campaign. He said that the SNP had access to civil servants and had knowledge of the comprehensive spending review and the cost envelopes for the budgets for this session of Parliament. The SNP knew all that, but irresponsibly, and in a deceptive way, went to the Scottish people and made promises that it knew fine well it could not deliver because of financial constraints. The SNP did that in the context of a budget in Scotland that, under Labour, has more than doubled.

In the past in the chamber, the SNP talked about the Executive being awash with cash. Well the time has come for you to make choices—and as a Government, not as an Opposition. You have not yet made that transformation. As a Government, you have tough choices to make.

It is the job of Opposition to hold the Government to account on its promises. There is nothing wrong with doing so.

Exactly—but you are not holding us to anything.

Nicola Sturgeon calls out from a sedentary position. She spent 85 seconds of her speech defending her record. That suggests to me that she has no defence at all. She talked about the agenda that was seized. The only agenda that was seized in Scotland was the misleading and deceptive election campaign. If anyone is in denial, it is the SNP.

In government, the SNP stated what it would do within 100 days. Members of the Opposition parties have not made up their quotes or read briefing documents; they have used your very words from that 100-days document. They have made it clear that the SNP has delivered not one of those promises.

Would it not be more fitting for the member, while closing for the Labour Party, to present arguments about why, for example, the £2,000 payment to first-time buyers is a bad policy, rather than regretting that it has not been implemented?

I say to Patrick Harvie—who is apparently the SNP's poodle in the Parliament this morning—that, if the SNP brings forward its commitment on police, we will support it. However, it has said that we will get virtual or kiddie-on police—people doing a wee bit more overtime. Nicola Sturgeon said that we will have 1,000 extra police officers. She said in the chamber that we will go from having 16,234 police officers to 17,234—exactly 1,000 extra—but that is not what everyone else in the SNP has said.

John Swinney acknowledged that the SNP does not have the powers to do what Nicola Sturgeon said on council tax. However, from a sedentary position, Nicola Sturgeon said that we will have a council tax freeze, which is in complete contrast to what the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth said. I am happy to take an intervention from Nicola Sturgeon if she is disclaiming that point.

Let us get the facts right: the police numbers are 16,234 and the SNP has promised 17,234—no equivalents, no overtime, no virtual police.

Derek Brownlee brought up Labour's record. We live in one of the strongest economies in the world, with low inflation and high employment. We reduced hospital waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks. A school was built every day under the Labour-led Administration in Scotland. We provided a record number of teachers and free nursery places for three and four-year-olds, while teachers' pay issues were resolved through the McCrone agreement. We reduced long-term unemployment, and more than half of our kids are now in higher or further education. We introduced free concessionary travel and free central heating for pensioners. There are record numbers of police. As a member of the happy gang, I am proud of that record of delivery.

I want to be absolutely clear that Mr Kerr claims that the Labour Administration built a school a day over eight years. That is extraordinary. I do not know where those schools are; the Labour Party must be hiding them.

My apologies. I meant to say "a school a week". [Interruption.] I was excited. Under Labour, a school was built every week—a new school opened every week—but you are closing them. In Edinburgh you are closing them. In Aberdeen you are closing them. What is your argument?

Please do not address the member in the second person.

Okey doke. My apologies for that.

Let us consider some of the other big issues that have been raised this morning. It is absolutely clear that the Government has let down first-time home buyers and communities that are victims of crime. It is absolutely clear that the council tax freeze—well, it is not actually clear any more, because Nicola Sturgeon has changed the position yet again, so we need clarity.

I have shared many television studios with Alex Neil, who is not in the chamber at the moment. When I was on TV with him, he said that the SNP would end public-private partnerships by autumn 2007. That is not what John Swinney, Nicola Sturgeon or Fiona Hyslop say. What is the SNP's position on PPP?

The SNP makes much use of its commitment on accident and emergency units. The paper that went to the NHS Lanarkshire board on 26 September 2007 states:

"The Report also advises us that ‘The more comprehensive are the services to be provided at all three sites, including Monklands, the greater are the risks and uncertainties that they will be able to be sustained in the longer term future'".

I suggest that that is not the health policy of a responsible Government.

Johann Lamont clearly set out her claims about the SNP overclaiming and underdelivering. She pointed to the housing supply task force, which the Government has emasculated, and the review—now not a review—of the central heating programme.

There is a lack of clarity when there should be clarity, and a lack of vision when there should be vision. We should have a presentation from the Government justifying some of the manifesto commitments and the 100-days commitments that it has not yet been able to fulfil. It is astonishing that none of the SNP members spent any time defending their own Government's record. For the past five weeks, the SNP has held thematic debates to which we could all contribute with no votes at decision time. We contributed ideas to those debates but, today, we want to hold you to account for your record and what you said in the 100-days document. All Opposition members have quoted precise actions that the document said the Government would take but that it has not taken.

We have a record of lack of delivery, of broken promises and of the Government saying that it has not managed to deliver its big commitments to the Scottish people. We have flags and fights, grudges and grievances, as the Government says that it is all Westminster's fault and it cannot deliver. That is the agenda that the SNP is trying to set. It is 1,000 police officers no more, the end of student debt no more, £2,000 for first-time buyers no more, the council tax freeze no more and smaller class sizes no more. That is a record of lack of delivery and of misleading the Scottish public. It is the big lie at the heart of the SNP Government.