THE six-hour House of Commons debate on devolution has been branded a pathetic "charade" by Alex Salmond, who accused Conservative MPs of hijacking it to talk about English votes for English laws (EVEL).

Speaking at the STUC jobs conference in Glasgow in its first public speech since his resignation announcement, the First Minister said the referendum process had offered real hope of a better society in Scotland and that what was needed was to "keep that energy in the civic and political life of this country but we also need to keep it in our economic life".

He noted how No campaigners had argued the referendum process would stop people hiring in Scotland when it saw the largest fall in unemployment in Scottish history in the weeks leading up to the vote.

"That," declared the SNP leader, "demonstrates the process of political change makes the economy better."

He decried this week's Commons "general debate on devolution following the Scottish referendum", saying: "The first part of it was totally dominated not by, what are we going to do about Scotland; or how the leaders of the three Westminster parties, the three amigos, were going to keep the vow they made to Scotland for substantial further change when none of them even bothered to turn up.

"Instead it was about English Conservative backbenchers saying, what's in it for England?"