The leader of Scotland's Tories has accused the Scottish National Party of being "a pathetic excuse for an opposition party".

David McLetchie said SNP leader Alex Salmond shared the same socialist outlook as First Minister Donald Dewar.

He insisted the Conservatives were the only opposition to the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the Scottish Parliament.

In a speech to his party faithful in West Kilbride, Ayrshire, Mr McLetchie said: "There is no mistaking the growing public disillusionment with the performance.

"People's daily experience is of a health service in crisis, of rising crime and of a crumbling road network.

"Yet Labour and the Liberals refuse to accept that there is a problem with the health service, have reduced the number of police officers, are closing down three prisons and want to solve our transport problems by taxing the motorist off the road."

In a rallying speech ahead of the forthcoming by-election in Ayr, Mr McLetchie said it was time for the Tories to speak up for the ordinary people of Scotland.

He said: "We must be in the vanguard of new thinking in Scotland and be unafraid to challenge the existing, dreary consensus.

'Pact needs exposing'

"The political consensus in Scotland is interventionist and consistently supports greater government action and increased public spending.

"This is the "Lib-Lab-Nat" pact we need to expose.

"Labour and the nationalists agree on far more issues than they disagree.

"They are both cut from the same socialist cloth - both more interested in redistributing wealth than in creating it.

"Only last Thursday at First Minister's Question Time, instead of holding the executive to account, Alex Salmond was engaged in a love-in with Donald Dewar over the proposed repeal of Section 28.

"This from the leader of a party which has the audacity to call itself an opposition.

"In truth the SNP is a pathetic apology for an opposition party."

He said the debate surrounding Section 28 - which deals with the guidelines issued to teachers in respect of promoting homosexuality in schools - was not the only common ground between the executive and the SNP.

Mr McLetchie added: "On Europe, transport and land reform there is a common agenda among them to scrap the pound, tax ordinary family motorists off the road and fiddle with irrelevancies such as community right to buy whilst our rural economy is in crisis."