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These are difficult times - for Scotland, for Britain and the whole world. All nations face problems. No one nation can solve them alone.

Amidst the turmoil in the months ahead we will have to answer a question:
will we stick together and use our unity to build a better world than we had before… …or will we let our fears force us apart?

Will we come through this crisis together or will people be left behind?

Will we allow the pain of unemployment left to scar another generation?

These are the questions we are debating this weekend.

Giving everyone the opportunity to work was one of the reasons our party was founded.

When our first MP Keir Hardie rose to give his maiden speech it was to speak for the unemployed. Quoting the words of Robert Burns he demanded that government action to help the worker who “day after day, vainly ‘begs a brother of the earth, to give him leave to toil.’ ”

Throughout our history, Labour’s struggle has been the struggle against unemployment:
-    From the early union campaigns on the ‘right to work’,
-    to the building of the welfare state after the war,
-    onto the New Deal in our time.

It was the campaigns against Tory unemployment in the 80s and 90s that inspired many of us to join Labour and campaign for a Labour Government.

Because we knew that we had to bring people together so that, in our unity, we can overcome the forces that would overwhelm us as individuals.

That is why we are in politics. Its why we want the power of government.

The right work is emblazoned in the name of our party. We know that worklessness isn’t a matter of statistics or trends. We know every time a worker loses their job it is a personal tragedy. We will not repeat the mistakes of the 80s and early 90s and will never say, like the Tories did, that unemployment is “a price worth paying.”

So our promise to people losing their jobs is this: we may not always be able to save your job but we will never write you off. The longer you are out of work the harder we will work to help you get you back to work. We will do everything we can to prevent short term job losses from turning into the long term unemployment that scarred Scotland.

That is why as unemployment increases Labour is increasing the help we give. Help to encourage employers to recruit those without jobs. Help to get people the training and support they need to get back to work. And help to help pay the mortgage so that losing your job doesn’t mean losing your home.
That wasn't the Tory response. We all know what that response was. To fiddle the figures. To write people off by trapping them on incapacity benefit. Not to help people but to forget them.

But that wasn't their real crime. Their real crime was that once people went on incapcity benefit they got literally no help. It became a trap and half a million people were caught there in the last recession.

We will not repeat those mistakes. Instead we will give people more help:

- for the first time everyone on incapacity benefit will get the support they need to get well and get back to work.
- we will pay for sign language interpreters, wheelchair lifts, special computers... whatever disabled people need to access the job opportunities that most people take for granted.
Because they deserve exactly the same chance at a job as anyone else.

The Tories

Unbelievably, when people need it most, the Tories say we should be cutting back on the help we give people out of work. We are investing an extra two billion pounds - they would cut it. They would repeat the mistakes of past recessions when Scots who had worked their whole lives were told they had nothing left to contribute and whole generations were abandoned to a life on benefits without any help to get back to work.

The Tory answer to the questions we face is still to say that people stand and fall alone, that unemployment and poverty are inevitable and that there is nothing that together we can or should do about it.

That is why we need a Labour government that believes that we do have a choice and that together we help people overcome the problems in their lives.

The SNP

Every single day you go to work as a Labour minister is an amazing privilege. It is another day when you can change the lives of strangers for the better. But in times of hardship like these government also carries grave responsibilities. The responsibility to ensure that people come through the bad times ready for the good. A responsibility to ensure that no-one is left behind and that we come through this together.

I believe that Alex Salmond and the other SNP ministers are failing their responsibilities as a Government.... And that because of them Scotland is being left behind.

They are doing too-little too-late to help people losing their jobs today. And they are leaving behind those who have fallen behind.

-    While Labour in England and Wales were investing in skills to help people back to work the nationalists were cutting skills budgets.  I pay tribute to the Labour MSPs lead by Iain Gray who have fought to get more money for Scottish skills.

-    While the Labour government is ensuring that we check that everyone who is out of work has the skills to get back to work the SNP Government is threatening to block these plans. Scottish workers left behind by a SNP government.

-    While Labour is giving lone parents thousands of pounds to help them back to work, SNP MPs are blocking the Labour’s plans to give parents the help with skills or health that they need. Scottish families left behind by the SNP.

-    While Labour is working to ensure that benefit money doesn’t end up in the pockets of the crack and heroin dealers, the SNP, in Holyrood AND in the House of Commons are blocking Labour’s plans to get drug addicts the help they need to get clean, get off benefits and get their lives together so they can take care of their kids.

-    And while Labour across Britain moves to enshrine in legislation our historic pledge to end child poverty, the SNP oppose us. They seek to leave Scotland as the only part of Britain where Ministers are not legally responsible for ensuring that children do not grow up poor. Scottish families,  Scotland’s children, Scotland’s future, left behind.

On issue after issue they still act like they are not responsible. At a time when people need a government more than ever SNP ministers still behave like they are in opposition.

Why? Because they don't see government as an opportunity to bring people together but as just  another way to drive us apart.

In the end the Tories and the SNP are two parties united by the same flawed belief – that people would be better off standing alone than coming together.

In these tough times it is more important then ever that our Labour government is there for the people who need us most. It is more important than ever that we have a real government in Scotland a labour government in Scotland.

Thank you.