I stand today as others have done before me—Alex Salmond, Robin Harper, John Swinney, Dennis Canavan and half a dozen others besides—knowing that I do not lead the largest party in the Parliament and realistic about my prospects of becoming First Minister, at least for now.

However, I stand for an important reason. But one issue has dominated the political landscape for the entirety of this session of Parliament, and the Deputy First Minister, who is seeking to ascend one rung, finds herself on the opposite side of the issue from the Majority of people in this country. So today, I offer an alternative, as someone who wants Scotland to prosper as part of our United Kingdom, not outside it, and as a member of this Parliament who wants it to work better, using the powers that it has to improve public life in Scotland, and the powers that are coming to limit the financial burden on families across our country.

I want both Scotland’s Governments to work together for the betterment of all our people. I do not want false grievance to be held up in order to pit one against the other—Holyrood against Westminster. My stated aim is to develop devolution, not to end it—to use this devolved Parliament to serve the people and empower them, and to loosen the constraints of the state, pushing power into communities and increasing freedom and choice.

I want parents to be free to raise their children without a state-appointed guardian being imposed on them. I want tenants to be free to buy their council house and pass that asset on to their children. There should be greater economic freedom, with more of the money that is earned staying in the pockets of those who earned it. There should be freedom for football fans to be subject to the same Laws as everybody else. There should be freedom for parents to pick a school for their child and to have different types of schools from which to choose; and freedom to break the council monopoly that says that there is only one way to teach and one way to learn—there is not, and Scotland can learn from countries where that freedom of choice has driven up standards for future generations.

Reform of our public services to make them more effective and responsive to people’s needs is long overdue in Scotland. It is a debate that has been ducked for 15 years, but it is a conversation that we need to start having right now; failing to do so is hitting those who rely on such services hardest, and it is a dereliction of our duty as parliamentarians.

Freedom, yes, but there are responsibilities, too, and choices to be made. The way in which the single police force is being rolled out urgently needs to be reviewed. Simply stamping the rest of the country with the Strathclyde mould and expecting it to fit is not working. Local communities need to feel that they have got their community police force back.

The messy web of justice policy needs to be untangled. Asking members to vote down corroboration without knowing what its replacement would be was an act of either desperation or hubris—I cannot work out which. We need to start from first principles: how do we better secure justice for our victims and fairness for the accused? We need a wholesale review of the law of evidence.

Our national health service must stop having sticking-plaster fixes. I have more cause than most in this chamber to thank our NHS, which saved not only my life but my legs. I have always been happy to pay a contribution towards my prescriptions, as were the vast majority of people who were asked to do so. Extending free prescriptions to those who could afford to pay takes £60 million out of the NHS budget each year. Free stuff is nice. Free stuff is easy. However, I think that £60 million would be better spent funding 1,000 extra nurses and midwives for our hospitals.

I stand here today knowing that I will likely lose, but I stand to offer a different vision of Scotland: a Scotland where we value our vocational education as highly as our academic education; a Scotland where we do not decimate our college places for the shibboleth of no university contribution; a Scotland that recognises that children learn differently and should have the opportunity to be taught differently, with choice driving up standards; a Scotland where local police, local services and local colleges answer to the communities that they serve, rather than to a central Government hell-bent on pulling all power to Holyrood; a Scotland that acknowledges that there is no such thing as Government money, only the money that Governments take from the working men and women of this country—and we resolve to ensure that they keep more of it; and a Scotland where Government is there to help, not to hector.

I stand to offer that vision of Scotland and I promise that, whether elected to the office of First Minister or—more likely—not, I will work with anyone who will help achieve it.