Alex Cole-Hamilton's speech to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference

While living and working in London, Adam was a homework volunteer with The Hackney Pirates. They help disadvantaged kids, often from single parent families with their schoolwork in the evenings.

He’s worked as a Deliveroo driver, a RADA-trained actor, and a charity worker fighting to secure life changing treatments for cystic fibrosis patients. But he always found time to offer mentorship to those adrift from school or at risk of offending.

That speaks to a community spirit that has punctuated his approach to life and politics.

Adam is now raising a young family where he grew up, just up the road in Bishopbriggs. So go and knock doors for him. Susan Murray won the equivalent seat last year, and like then it’s a straight fight between us and the SNP.

Because he’s on the verge of making history, as the first ever Liberal Democrat representative for Strathkelvin & Bearsden in the Scottish Parliament.

It’s great to be back in Glasgow. Home to one of our country’s greatest seats of innovation, creativity and learning, and the alma mater of Charles Kennedy, and of course our dear friend Ming Campbell.

Three weeks ago, Ming slipped away from us. A giant of our party and a regular at our conferences since the 1970s. He grew up in a flat a short walk away in Kelvinbridge.

Conference, my first political act of any kind, took place on the morning of the 1987 General Election. I was nine years old.

At 4am my father woke me from my sleep and bundled me out the door to help him deliver Good Morning leaflets to the entirety of our village in Fife. They were for Ming Campbell.

I did so without complaint because Dad had taken me to his adoption meeting a few weeks previous.

At that young age, in just a few minutes, I was absolutely spellbound by the man who would come to lead our party, who would go on to mentor me and who so many of us counted as a friend.

He had a voice that was respected in the living rooms of Great Britain. A command of international affairs that was unparalleled. He was right about Hong Kong, about our place in Europe, and about Iraq.

Many commentators described him as the greatest Foreign Secretary we never had.

I am greatly comforted by the thought that he is once again reunited with the love of his life and matriarch of our party, Lady Elspeth.

She’s probably fussing over him right now, in a plume of cigarette smoke, and securing him a preferential seat in the choir of St Peter.

Ming, we miss you and today we rededicate ourselves to the promise of the liberal society you gave your life to. Thank you.

Conference, the foundations of that liberal society, and a strong economy, are built on the health and wellbeing of our citizens.

But right now, under the SNP, our NHS is in a state of permacrisis.

Conference, to fix our health service, you’ve got to get the front door open and moving freely.

And traditionally, that front door has always been your GP.

Scottish Liberal Democrats secured £15 million more for GPs in the Scottish Budget this year, to alleviate some of the recruitment and retention issues that practices are struggling with right now, to make it easier for people to see a GP.

Money is certainly part of it, but we need a change of government to fix what the Royal College of GPs say is “a state of crisis”.

The damage done by the SNP can’t be unpicked by a single budget or by a flashy pre-election policy headline.

It requires a realistic plan to get things done. So at the coming election, we will commit to:

• Train and recruit new staff like nurses, mental health professionals and physios and get them into every GP practice in Scotland.
• End the ridiculous requirement for a GP’s wet signature on every prescription that passes through the practice.
• Roll out AI language models in consulting rooms to listen to appointments and generate notes and referrals. These are already being used safely in some surgeries and could save GPs masses of bureaucracy.
• Increase the number of GPs and their share of the NHS budget.
• And crucially conference, let’s give infants, over 70s and everyone with long-term health conditions access to a named GP, because the evidence shows having a GP who knows you well, and can see when something isn’t right, lowers the chance of expensive emergency admissions.

Most people have to wait weeks for non-urgent care. Deliver our plan, and we can enable everyone to be seen within 5 working days. 

Because Scotland deserves better.

So let’s rip out the bureaucracy, back our staff, get our people well and deliver the first-rate healthcare our country and our economy depend on.

Conference, you know that addressing the crisis in mental health is equally as important to us as Liberals.

That’s why we’re asking the Chancellor to use her Budget to increase the tax on the social media giants. That’s money that could get people off mental health waiting lists, back to work, and excelling at school.

The social media giants need to be held accountable.

But I don’t think that goes far enough.

Because studies show the link between problematic smartphone use and poor mental health. We’re talking anxiety, depression.

Young people are telling us that they know it’s harmful. Research shows many have tried to find ways to cut down their use themselves.

Phones are a distraction, apps are built to be addictive, they offer relentless notifications, toxic role models and platforms for the worst kind of bullying.

The classroom ought to offer a break to our young people from all of that, a bit of peace and quiet, to learn, to focus, to properly connect with your teacher, your classmates and with the lesson.

It’s time to enshrine the right of children to learn, and teachers to teach, in phone-free classrooms.

Tackle the violence in our classrooms – the worst in the UK, under the SNP.

And we’d expand pupil support in every school too.

Because education is the great leveller of our times. It is the ladder. It is the best investment we can make in our children’s potential and our country’s future.

And Scotland deserves better. A realistic plan.

Conference, for all the questions facing Scottish education right now, the answer to none of them is a third decade in power for the SNP.

Conference, we know the strain that pressures at home can also have on childhood learning.

And one pressure that is all too commonplace in Scottish homes, is the rising cost of living. Of all the outgoings families face, the cost of keeping the lights on and the radiators warm is among the hardest.

That’s why, we’ve got a realistic plan to cut energy bills in half by 2035.

Last week, Ed Davey was up at Edinburgh College, talking about our plan with apprentices and our brilliant candidate for Edinburgh Northern, Sanne Dijkstra Downie.

Our plan means insulating cold homes.

Using Scottish renewable energy to drive down household bills.

And on top of that, we’d overhaul the rules so companies that generate renewable energy give back far more money to the local community.

There’s another way we can bring down bills, and it’s been staring us in the face since 2016.

You reduce costs, make life easier for business, you grow the economy, by unpicking the failures of Brexit and rebuilding our relationship with Europe.

We would create a reciprocal Youth Mobility Scheme, so British employers can recruit the workers they desperately need in hospitality, construction, the creative industries, care.

Rip up the red tape that is holding back British firms, especially small businesses, from selling into Europe, costing our economy billions in lost exports.

We’d tear down the Conservatives’ trade barriers with a new bespoke Customs Union.

Conference, for our economy to grow, for our businesses to thrive, we must be striding with confidence, back upon the path towards the Single Market.

And to grow the economy, we’ve got to get Scotland moving.

Fixing our roads.

Fixing our public transport.

Fixing our ferries.

The Scottish Government’s ferries fiasco is a national embarrassment. It has cost us a fortune, and yet no SNP minister has ever had the decency to resign.

Islanders and coastal communities deserve compensation for the colossal disruption to their lives.

But the Scottish Government has set up a scheme that excludes so many communities: Iona, Coll, Tiree, Islay and Jura all get absolutely nothing.

No compensation for Millport or Ardrossan, which has lost its link to Arran because the SNP Government built a boat that doesn’t fit their harbour.

No compensation for Mull where the toy shops of Tobermory are genuinely displaying signs that say their toy ferries are more reliable than their real-life counterparts.

The SNP just don’t get it. Ferry-dependent businesses deserve so much better.

Conference, they deserve compensation, and the Scottish Government needs to pay up today.

On top of that, Scottish Liberal Democrats will fix the ferries for good. A realistic plan.

That’s why today, you, our members, have committed to introducing a Ferries Bill. New legislation:

• To guarantee that vessels are replaced on time;
• To give communities a real say on how their ferries are run;
•  And to take power away from ministers

So nobody ever has to endure a repeat of the SNP’s ferries fiasco.

Jamie Greene: fighting for fair compensation for his constituents in West Scotland.

Alan Reid: grafting his way towards a victory in ferry-dependent Argyll & Bute. That could be the surprise of the night.

Liam McArthur and Beatrice Wishart: fighting for a fair deal from NorthLink, and delivering millions more for their inter-island ferries in the Scottish Budget.

Emma Macdonald: our Shetland candidate, putting in place the building blocks required for inter-island tunnels that would be so transformational.

Scottish Liberal Democrats, rolling up our sleeves, getting Scotland moving, fixing Scotland’s lifeline links for good.

Because as Liberal Democrats we see the intrinsic potential in our country to expand, to compete, to make and to innovate.

That’s why our plan for economic growth hinges around delivering first-rate healthcare, helping you with the cost of living, getting Scottish education back to its best and getting our country moving again.

Opportunity for everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from.

Because the Scottish Liberal Democrats are unashamedly the party of growth with fairness at its heart.

Conference, the election is only 200 days away. It is so near you can practically reach out and touch it.

So welcome to our surprise campaign bootcamp on message discipline.

The opportunity is such that we could be standing on the threshold of a historic breakthrough for our party across Scotland.

But that breakthrough is not inevitable, we are going to have to work for every single vote and we are going to have to stick to our message like glue.

That message is unapologetically positive, it speaks of a renewed confidence in our party, with more councillors, a record number of MPs, and a vision for change with fairness at its heart.

While we have so much to offer the voting public, we have an ask of them as well.

Conference you are going to get sick of hearing me talk about a certain type of fruit.

You’re going to think I’m obsessed with peaches.

Because I will use every broadcast, podcast and print media interview between this day and polling day to appeal for people to back us on that second, peach regional ballot paper.

It’s all about the peach.

To help get this message through to you conference, Willie Rennie has even offered to throw peaches at me. In tins.

We’ve built citadels in our constituencies because local people trust us to get stuff done. We are poised to win against the SNP in new seats across Scotland. And now, for the first time in more than a decade, we are poised to break through on the regional lists.

That matters so much. It could make the difference between a good night for our party and an absolutely stonking, breakthrough of a night.

We haven’t done this well enough before.

We’ll need to ask people again and again. In our canvassing, at election hustings, in broadcast and media interviews we will remind them again and again:

You have two votes and in seats across Scotland we are poised to beat the SNP, but wherever you are a vote for the Liberal Democrats on that second, peach regional ballot will deliver you change with fairness at its heart and a hardworking regional Lib Dem MSP.

Claire McLaren. Duncan Dunlop. Morven-May MacCallum. Paul McGarry. Jane Alliston-Pickard. Daniel O’Malley. Yi-Pei Chou Turvey.

If you ask for the peach vote on every door, we can send each of them to Parliament.

The more of them get over the line, the more we can get done.

And that matters to the communities we serve.

Up in Tain and Easter Ross, Connie Ramsay has always been someone who gets stuck in.

A British judo champion and medallist at the Commonwealth Games right here in Glasgow. What an inspiration that is to the young people she now teaches.

A campaigner determined to save her community’s leisure centre from SNP cuts.

A local businesswoman.

A retained firefighter.

And Conference, as of three weeks ago, the newest Scottish Liberal Democrat councillor.

I can see the glint in the eye of our staff.

Why do I have the distinct feeling that before polling day, with all the cameras rolling, I’m going to be getting decked by a judo champion.

Conference, Connie got more than double the vote of the SNP, triple the vote of Reform.

It was the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ best ever result in Tain.

It’s a sign of things to come in the Highlands.

For David Green who can take this seat of Caithness, Sutherland and Ross from the SNP.

For Andrew Baxter, whose popularity has already scared off Kate Forbes as his opponent in Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch.

For Neil Alexander, who can charge through the middle as the nationalists face off against each other in Inverness and Nairn.

It all goes to show, that when we roll up our sleeves, when we get things done, it matters to people.

That cuts through the disillusionment.

And each of you who has joined me on the doors will understand the truth of those words. Trust in politics and public services is ebbing away.

It’s incumbent on us to offer something better. To offer people hope and a realistic plan.

So let me be absolutely clear about our approach to something dividing our communities right now.

Conference, immigration is woven into Glasgow’s history.

Irish immigrants who came to work in the factories and mills. Highlanders forced south by the clearances. Italians fleeing famine.

And from the turn of the century, people were diverted here by the Home Office because it had surplus housing.

But right now, this city is being let down by a broken immigration system. It’s the same across the country.

People are frustrated. They feel let down by the other parties.

Conference, we see the people coming over in dangerous leaky boats. Children drowning in the channel. It’s awful.

We see the millions being spent on asylum hotels. It’s a complete waste of money.

We see people kicking their heels, in town centres with nothing much to do and nowhere to go, in fear of violence, in destitution – that’s what living off £7 a day means. It’s bleak.

The question is what you do about it.

Do you meet it with more Conservative schemes like Rwanda, that deported four people at a cost of £700 million.

Do you meet it with Labour’s ID cards that will threaten your civil liberties, add to your tax bills, while doing nothing to tackle channel crossings?

Do you meet it by doing deals with despots? Nigel Farage wants to send men, women and children back to Afghanistan to be murdered – paying the Taliban to do it.

Conference, you do not. You put in a place a realistic plan to get things done. To deliver change with fairness at its heart.

So here it is.

Right now, 90,000 men, women and children are stuck in the UK’s asylum backlog. A backlog created deliberately by the Conservative Party.

It's time to:

• Declare the asylum backlog a national emergency,
• Invoke the Civil Contingencies Act,
• Set up Nightingale processing centres,
• And employ 2,000 more caseworkers to get to the bottom of people’s claims.

By getting through the backlog the Tories created, we can close those asylum hotels.

By working with our neighbours on the continent, we can tackle the gangs and deadly crossings.

And by letting people work while they wait for a decision, we can let them stand on their own two feet and contribute.

Instead of sitting idle in hotel, why not let them work, perhaps in a local hospitality business struggling to keep the doors open because they can’t find the staff.

That is a humane, liberal solution.

So Conference, from Stranraer to Shetland, Skye to St Andrews, our message to everyone is this…

We know you feel let down by the other parties.

We think Scotland deserves better than this. A realistic plan. Change with fairness at its heart.

Scotland has so much going for it. But right now, it feels like our country simply isn’t working.

Household bills are soaring. The long waits to see your GP. The national embarrassment of the ferries fiasco. And Scottish education just isn’t what it used to be.

People are tired and frustrated. They’re right to be.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats believe in fairness for everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from.

That’s why we have a realistic plan to get things done:

• Delivering first-rate health care – so you can see your GP, dentist or mental health professional when you need them.
• Helping you with the cost of living – insulating cold homes and using Scottish renewable energy to drive down household bills.
• Getting Scotland moving again - by fixing our roads, our ferries and our public transport.
• And Scottish education back to its best – expanding pupil support in every school and giving every child the best start in life.

Liberal Democrats are winning again, with more councillors, a record number of MPs and more to come. 

In many constituencies we are on the verge of winning against the SNP but wherever you are, every vote for the Scottish Liberal Democrats on the second peach ballot will deliver change with fairness at its heart.

Because Scotland deserves better. And with the Scottish Liberal Democrats, you can vote for it.