I STAND proudly as the leader of the party which in government delivered devolution. I stand proudly as the leader of the party which in opposition defends devolution.

Because it is an unassailable truth that each generation has to win the same battles over again. I stand proudly, but with great humility. Today is a time for reflection, and to think of those we have lost. I think especially this morning of Donald Dewar, who at the opening of this parliament 20 years ago said: “Today there is a new voice in the land, the voice of a democratic parliament. A voice to shape Scotland, a voice for the future.”

And he would be the first to say that we have much unfinished business. We began to reform the ownership of our land, [as Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon wrote in the early 20th century]: “The land out there, under the sleet, churned and pelted there in the dark.”

But too much power still lies in too few hands. We have legislated for equality, but too much inequality still persists: inequalities of race and religion, of sex, gender and sexuality, of disability, of age — and of class.

And over the last decade the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. We passed laws to end homelessness, but all around we see lengthening waiting lists for housing and the return of rough sleeping.

We brought Scotland’s biggest private hospital into the National Health Service, but we have yet to eliminate the private profit motive and the shareholder dividend from every corner of our public health service. And we began to change the economy in those early days, and rates of employment have risen in later days.

But our industrial base is still too narrow, too much of its destiny lies in the hands of faraway boardrooms, and far too many jobs are far too precarious.

So we have a job to do ahead of us, in rebalancing of the economy, so that it runs by and for the people.

So there remains much unfinished business. People are hungry for real change. For a vision of a better future, a more equal country, a cohesive society, with an economy which is working for the people rather than people simply working for the economy.

And so it is up to us, to this generation of political leaders, to stand together for new hope to inspire the people and work with them to bring about that real change, because there is no iron law, no inevitability about the future. We make our own history.

And with the consent but also with the determination and the will of the people, that “new voice” which Donald Dewar spoke of so passionately will be heard, and real change will come.

Richard Leonard is leader of the Scottish Labour Party.