To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Prime Minister and what issues they will discuss. (S2F-2801)

That is the final time I shall ask that question before the First Minister takes over on this side of the chamber.

I look forward to meeting the Prime Minister again very soon.

For the next 35 days, the Scottish National Party will work hard to win the trust of the Scottish people. Does the First Minister agree that he has lost their trust because he has broken so many of his key promises?

I will start with the council tax. I remind the First Minister that, four years ago, he promised to make the council tax fairer, but it has increased by 60 per cent and it is as deeply unfair as it ever was. The First Minister broke the promise that he made and people throughout Scotland are paying the price of that. In this final meeting of the session, will he tell us how he proposes to make the council tax fairer?

I say to Nicola Sturgeon that people will not trust the SNP if it tells untruths, which has happened again in the chamber. The high council tax increases under the Tories cannot be lumped together with the increases that have taken place under Labour or since devolution. Those increases have been lower than the increases in the Tories' final years and lower than the increases elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

For the third week in a row, I explain to Nicola Sturgeon that the Labour Party has not had a majority in this parliamentary session and that, as a result, it has simply not been possible to implement our desired council tax reforms. She does not seem to understand that. I look forward to debating with her the plans that she has put forward for a national tax increase of 3p in the pound, which would make Scotland the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom, and cuts of more than £1 billion in services. It is probably the first time a political party has made such a suggestion. Such cuts would affect every school, nursery and social work service and every other local service in the country.

Oh dear. The First Minister is making one excuse after another for Labour's failure to deliver. The people of Scotland know the truth about the council tax, because they pay their council tax bills, which are 60 per cent higher than they were. Is it not clear that the only local tax policy in the election is the SNP's policy of abolishing the council tax?

I turn to another of Labour's broken promises. I remind the First Minister that, four years ago, Labour promised to cut serious youth crime by 10 per cent. It said that such a cut would be "easily achievable," but youth crime has not come down. New figures that have been published this month show that it has gone up by more than 20 per cent. Communities throughout Scotland are paying the price of that Labour failure. After four years of failure to deliver, why on earth should anyone in Scotland trust the First Minister when he says he will tackle crime?

Nicola Sturgeon again completely distorts the truth. Back in 2003, when we were making it clear that crime and antisocial behaviour should be a significant priority in the session, the SNP fought what we said tooth and nail. It opposed the legislation that we proposed and said that it was ridiculous to prioritise crime and antisocial behaviour in an election campaign and a legislative programme.

The truth is that the number of violent crimes dropped by more than 1,000 last year—there was a dramatic change in the number of violent crimes that were committed in this country. The truth is that, as a result of our court reforms, more people are being tackled in the courts more quickly and less police time is being wasted. Those reforms have been part of the most comprehensive changes in the history of Scotland's justice system.

I believe that our commitment to tackling antisocial behaviour at the local level and building a better justice system at the national level are helping us to turn the corner and ensure that, here in Scotland, we can get a grip on crime, bring it down, catch more people and have less reoffending.

Let me tell the First Minister the real truth. Youth crime is up, gun crime is up, vandalism is up, and drug offences and serious assaults are up. It is beyond argument that the First Minister has failed to keep his promise to tackle crime, and no amount of ranting and raving about the SNP will cover up that fact.

Is it not the case that the First Minister has also broken his promise to stand up for Scotland? I remind him that, on 4 December at 11 o'clock in the morning, he said that he would listen to the people of Scotland before making his mind up on Trident, but at 6 o'clock the same day he proved that he listens only to Tony Blair. Against the wishes of the Scottish people, he gave his full backing to spending £100 billion on a new generation of Trident nuclear weapons on the Clyde. That money would be better spent on schools, on hospitals and on fighting crime.

When the First Minister has so completely failed to stand up for Scotland in the past, why would anyone trust him to do so in the future?

There are two truths here. The first is that Nicola Sturgeon's campaign manager for the election on 3 May, Angus Robertson MP, who is her party's spokesperson on defence and foreign affairs, explicitly promised to spend any money that was saved from nuclear weapons on defence forces and not on education, health, tackling crime, or jobs. No amount of bluster by her to deny that and to claim something else will be believed by anybody in Scotland. Secondly, the SNP wants to talk in the election campaign about issues that are decided elsewhere because on each and every policy that has been discussed here in the chamber, the SNP has got it wrong. It has been beaten policy by policy.

The most significant truth is that, in education in our schools and nurseries, in social work services and the care of our elderly and our children, and in tackling crime and making money available to our police boards, not only would the SNP lead Scotland to be the highest taxed part of the United Kingdom, it would cut more than £1 billion from local budgets. Every one of those services would be affected. That is the truth in the election campaign, and that is why the SNP will not win.

I say to the First Minister that on education, health, fighting crime and tax, Labour has broken its promises, but all we hear from the First Minister is excuse after excuse. Is it not the case that people in Scotland have a clear choice at the election? It is a choice between Labour's broken promises and the SNP's ideas for the future. It is a choice between a Labour party that has forfeited the trust of the people of Scotland and an SNP that is working hard to win that trust. Is that not why, every day, more and more people are deciding that it is time for Scotland to move on from Labour, that it is time now for the SNP?

We will be very happy to debate the SNP's ideas over the next five weeks. Increased tax for every ordinary Scot, cuts in services in every local area—these are the impacts of the SNP's policies. Of course, there is also the policy that dare not be named, which is independence. If the SNP really believed that the people of Scotland will back independence, they would put that, and not all the other alternatives it is proposing, on the ballot paper. The truth is that the SNP does not come without independence and independence does not come without a cost.

Over the next five weeks, the SNP will find that that is true, to its cost.