These last few months have been desperate – from both a public health and an economic point of view.

The clampdown on our most basic freedoms, which was necessary to save lives and protect the NHS, sparked a frantic scramble to maintain wages and stop businesses from going under.

I think most people understood the need for lockdown and the actions the Scottish and UK governments took to go some way to preserving key parts of the economy.

But they won’t forgive anything less than a Scottish Government focused on getting those jobs back and improving the education and employment prospects of our young people.

Nicola Sturgeon had the opportunity to do just that when she unveiled her Programme for Government at the start of the month – the annual opportunity for ministers to set out what they intend to do and how they intend to do it in the year ahead.

Businesses across the west of Scotland waited with bated breath to see what the First Minister would unveil to help them get back on their feet and start looking to the future with some optimism again.

Instead they heard platitudes, and a depressing if predictable pledge from Ms Sturgeon to get the wheels in motion for another tiresome and damaging independence debate.

The threat of a second referendum would bring chaos and uncertainty to businesses across Scotland at the best of times. Signalling an intention to hold one amid a global pandemic and economic crisis is a disgrace.

But in some ways it makes the choice all the more clear for voters ahead of next year’s Scottish Parliament elections. Vote SNP and get a party obsessed by breaking up the UK irrespective of the ruin it would bring. Or back the Scottish Conservatives as a party which has set out a series of measures to get Scotland back to business.

They include job security councils to match skills with vacancies; a hardship fund to protect firms which have been forced to close because of local lockdowns; and a Town Centre Adaptation Fund which would bring wider pavements and safe cycling lanes to urban spaces.

We’ve tabled these proposals because we believe it’s now time to start thinking about the post-coronavirus economy.

Of course we need to retain a clear focus on the virus and make sure local flare-ups are brought under control. But a failure to think about lives after Covid-19 could bring just as much destruction to the hopes, dreams and employment prospects of people right across the west of Scotland.