Holyrood election will be battle of leaders

NICOLA Sturgeon has said that next year's Holyrood elections will come down to a battle of personalities between the SNP leader Alex Salmond and Labour leader Iain Gray.

• Nicola Sturgeon said the focus would be on the SNP's record and believes Alex Salmond is seen as a statesman who speaks up for Scotland

The SNP deputy leader gave one of the clearest signals yet that her party plans to contrast Mr Salmond's style which Ms Sturgeon described as "statesman like" with that of the Lab-our leader who she suggested was largely unknown among voters.

The health secretary and Deputy First Minister told The Scotsman on the eve of the SNP annual conference in Perth that it was her "preference" to campaign on the party's flagship council tax freeze.

As the SNP prepares to set out its stall ahead of next year's elections, Ms Sturgeon went on to claim that it was "inevitable" that the Scottish Government's minimum pricing policy of 45p per unit for alcohol would become law.

She said: "As the election approaches the focus will be on our record in government and it will be a choice between Iain Gray and the alternative vision Alex Salmond and the SNP are putting forward.

"I'm hopeful that people will want to give the SNP a second term in office and that they will make this decision in the best interests of Scotland.

"I believe that people view Alex Salmond as someone who speaks up for Scotland, who is a statesman-like figure who's shown that he is a good and effective First Minister.

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"Alex Salmond is a very big asset for the SNP and is a popular figure with voters.

"At the moment I'm not sure that everyone would even know who Iain Gray is."

The health secretary went on to say that she wanted to keep the council tax freeze in place, despite the funding squeeze hitting key services in Scotland.

She said: "Before the 2007 election and before the SNP introduced the council tax freeze, people were paying much higher rates.

"Now Labour is talking about increasing council tax and taking Scotland back to where it was before 2007. My preference is to maintain the council tax freeze."

Ms Sturgeon also suggested the SNP would bring the controversial minimum pricing policy for alcohol, which is likely to be thrown out by MSPs next month, back before the Scottish Parliament if it wins next year's election.

When asked about whether the policy would become law she said minimum pricing was "inevitable".

She said: "I'm the eternal optimist. I think minimum pricing will happen and that it's an idea whose time has come. "There's overwhelming support for the policy among Scotland's medical community, but Labour has chosen to turn this crucial issue into a party political matter.How exactly minimum pricing happens has to be determined, but it's a very important issue for the future of Scotland's health."

Ms Sturgeon went on to defend other flagship SNP policies such as the abolition of the council tax, which the party was forced to shelve after opposition parties threatened to block it.

She said: "I favour a local income tax based on the ability to pay. The council tax is a fundamentally unfair and regressive policy."

However, Ms Sturgeon refused to promise that the SNP would maintain its free prescriptions policy and extend free dental care, saying that she wanted to await the publication of the UK government's spending review on Wednesday.

Ms Sturgeon said: "We don't know what the spending review will say, but dentistry is a hugely important area of provision. "We have lots of people in the North East on dental waiting lists for example and that is something this government has worked hard to address with the opening of an Aberdeen dental school."

The health secretary also denied the SNP's time in power would make it difficult to be re elected said and that the party had shown that it could "govern" since 2007. She said: "No election is easy and in 2007 one of the things our opponents said was that we had no experience. But the SNP has shown it can govern for the past three and a half years and that it can govern well.

"We're going into this election during tough economic times as the experienced party in contrast with an opposition that has no experience. This will be an election about the future and we'll be going out there campaigning on the basis that we've got a better vision for the future than Labour.

"We've got to look at what direction we want be going in during the next ten years and I don't believe Scotland wants to go back to where it was under the Labour-Lib Dem administration." She said that the SNP would campaign on more economic powers for Holyrood.

"All the Labour, Lib Dem and Tory parties have to offer is more cuts, whereas the SNP is setting out a vision of more economic powers for the parliament that would allow us to grow the economy."