The Race for Holyrood

We have kept these promises.

The Scotland Bill will begin the final part of its journey through the House of Commons tomorrow. We've identified the site for the Scottish parliament building at historic Holyrood in the heart of Edinburgh. However, constitutional change is only the starting point for new Labour in Scotland.

"Education, education, education" is our top priority in Scotland as much as in the rest of the United Kingdom. We have long boasted about our excellent education system, but the record of the past should never be a cover for complacency.

Key steps have already been taken - providing a nursery place for all four-year-olds whose parents want to take it up; the improvement of standards with every school in Scotland for the first time having its own challenging target; an early intervention programme to ensure that the basics are got right in primaries one and two; a national grid for learning bringing the benefits of new technology and the Internet to every school in the land.

But Scotland needs new ideas to modernise its education system. New deal schools are one such idea built on the American experience, but to be adapted to Scotland's needs. Research here, as in the United States, shows that the children who struggle educationally have other problems in plenty.

New deal schools will help children to learn by addressing these other issues within the school environment. By ensuring other services are available in the school for both parents and children, we can reinforce the learning environment and assist the efforts of the teachers.

A new deal school will give children and their parents access to a wide range of services, for example on diet and general healthcare - not just occasionally, but day in, day out as part of the school experience. There will be counselling for parents who need support.

Parents may even want help on how they can help their children to learn, how to help their reading and their arithmetic. Health problems, social work issues, childcare for younger siblings - all able to be addressed around the school day.

Already, several authorities have shown an interest and I look forward to announcing pilot projects shortly.

The new deal is the most ambitious programme ever to tackle youth and long-term unemployment. This is a Government that believes in work and in making work pay.

Before the election, the cry was that the windfall tax would be challenged in court, would disrupt the stock market and bring ruination to key privatised utilities. It worked. It provided the funding that has allowed this Government to mount a sustained attack on long term unemployment.

Our efforts are already paying off - a pilot in Tayside with nearly 200 young people already placed in jobs. The challenge is to repeat that success all over the country.

But the real challenge is not just to embrace the new deal in Scotland, but to tailor it to our needs. That is why, later today, I will be meeting a number of people to discuss the new futures fund.

This is a specifically Scottish initiative that we will be launching later this month to make sure that the new deal really does reach some of the youngsters who have simply dropped out of the system. Those youngsters who need basic life skills before they can be helped back into work.

In the health service in Scotland we have also lead a radical redirection , putting the clinician centre-stage and making the service patient-centred.

Eight new hospital developments have been approved and the number of trusts is being almost halved. Red tape is being slashed and the internal market, pitting doctor against doctor and hospital against hospital, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

But, as we approach the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the NHS this summer, I look forward to a celebration, not a wake. That celebration should focus on the new lease of life we are giving to the service. Again, Scotland is in the lead.

We are pioneering the wiring-up of GP surgeries. This opens the door to an efficient appointments system which allows a patient to leave his or her doctor with the time and place of a hospital appointment settled.

We also lead in the development of one-stop clinics, which allow tests and diagnosis in the a single visit, reducing worry and improving efficiency. On Wednesday, Sam Galbraith is addressing Britain's leading surgeons, meeting in Edinburgh. He will be outlining his plans to raise standards of clinical care.

The real challenge is that whatever hospital you attend, you have the right to expect the best. That is the challenge for the NHS in the next century.

The evidence is mounting. This Government is set fair to be the greatest reforming administration since Clement Attlee in 1945.

This time next year, we will have another general election - the general election which will elect the first Scottish parliament for 300 years.

We will maintain the pace we have set over the past 12 months. We will drive forward our campaign to raise standards in education and to put social progress, the fight against inequality, at the heart of our agenda.

The Budget included the first serious attempt to sweep away the disincentives that have excluded so many Scots from the labour market.

Any family with children and with someone in full-time employment will be guaranteed £180 a week; a family, again with children, will not be troubled by the tax collector until their weekly income is above £220. These are practical ways of making work pay. It is action in Government, not the rhetoric of opposition.

Within the next fortnight, I will be launching our Scottish childcare strategy - the first genuine attempt to put in place the flexible care that working parents need and which will allow women, in particular, to maintain the pace of their career.

There will soon be an integrated transport white paper which will face up to the tough decisions on the funding of public transport - congestion charging and rural travel.

We have to modernise, and we are doing so. Our values are unchanged, but the method of delivery must be updated. This year's council tax increase in Scotland averaged 5.6 per cent - half that of the previous year. Work on efficient delivery of service must bring further improvement in the years to come.

Labour delivered on the promise to create a parliament for Scotland. That will be remembered, but the people will rightly look to the future. They want the parliament they created with their votes to earn its keep, to prove its worth. Labour is committed to taking into the new parliament a constructive programme dealing with the areas of policy that matter to the electorate.

Scotland will not relish the prospect of further years of argument about constitutional change, promoted by a separatist party which threatens that every policy area will become a proxy for the constitutional struggle.

Labour offers modernisation combined with social justice. This can only succeed if it is delivered within a framework which allows business to flourish; holds out the prospect of sustainable growth and leaves the old stop-go cycle as no more than a memory. It is the right future for Scotland. With the strong voice the Scottish parliament brings, it can be achieved.