By Steve Bargeton, political editor

FIRST MINISTER Alex Salmond yesterday challenged his political opponents to give the Scottish people the chance to vote for full independence in a referendum.

In his keynote speech to the SNP in Aviemore at their first conference since winning power in May, Mr Salmond described independence as the “noble cause . . . which stirred the heart.”

During his address he also made two announcements—to slash the number of quangos by a quarter and to upgrade the M8 linking Glasgow and Edinburgh to full motorway.

With 47 of Holyrood’s 129 MSPs, the SNP do not have enough parliamentary support to pass a bill on an independence referendum, planned for 2010.

Earlier yesterday in a television interview Mr Salmond described independence as a “fair and equitable” solution.

He told conference that every passing day as First Minister made him more certain of the need for independence, and claimed that doing so would lift Scotland from 10th to 3rd in the European league of prosperity.

And he threw down the gauntlet to the opposition parties to back a referendum and give Scots a say over their own destiny.

“If the Unionist parties can agree a scheme, then let them come forward and have it tested against independence and be judged by the people,” he said.

“If not, then do not let them try to prevent the people from having their say. Because it is the same people who will decide the next government of Scotland.”

Ever since devolution there has been talk of a “bonfire of the quangos” and yesterday Mr Salmond pledged under an SNP Scottish government there would be one.

He told delegates that the public sector landscape was littered with some 200 quangos, many of which were doing a good job. “But we don’t need 200,” he said. “We don’t need overlap, duplication—people falling over each other.”

Over the life of this parliament 50 of them will disappear, he said, to deliver “smaller, fitter, better” government.

On the M8, the First Minister said it was not acceptable that the road linking Scotland’s two great cities remained part motorway, part dual carriageway, and vowed that the entire road would be upgraded to motorway standard.

Earlier in the day Mr Salmond rejected plans by the Conservatives to strip Scottish MPs at Westminster of the right to vote in English matters by setting up a Commons “grand committee” open only to English MPs.

“I think the right solution is to have a Scottish Parliament and an English Parliament—I believe in independent parliaments—and to do the job properly, as opposed to having some sort of spatchcock solution to appeal for votes in middle England,” he said.

However, Mr Salmond said he welcomed a “growing sense of Englishness” south of the border. “I would like to see the people of England have the same right and entitlements as I believe the people of Scotland should have.”