Michael Marra is set to call for the Scottish government to decentralise power from Holyrood in his first conference speech as Scottish Labour leader.
Marra will claim the Scottish Parliament has "hoarded money and control" in Edinburgh and demand skills policy is devolved to Scotland's regions.
The MSP for North East Scotland, who defeated Joe Fagan in a vote to replace Anas Sarwar just over a week ago, will address the first day of the UK Labour conference in Liverpool.
He is expected to call on the Scottish government to put "power and money" in the hands of local people to grow regional economies.
Marra will say: "Had our regions grown at the same pace as Manchester in the last decade, the Scottish economy would be £30bn larger.
"Too much power is centralised in Scotland. The Scottish Parliament has hoarded money and control at the expense of Scotland's communities."
Marra took over as leader of Scottish Labour following Sarwar's decision to stand down in order to take up a role in the House of Lords as part of Prime Minister Andy Burnham's government.
That decision came a few months after the party's worst ever Holyrood election result in May.
Their return of 17 MSPs saw them tied with Reform UK as the second-largest party in the Scottish Parliament.
Marra, who first joined Labour as a teenager, previously called for a redistribution of "power, wealth and opportunity" across Scotland.
'Put control in hands of local people'
He will use his conference speech to highlight Scotland's shipbuilding history as an example of what he will call a "staggering failure" in the government's skills policy.
Marra will say that Scotland has a reliance on foreign workers, due to a lack of available, skilled Scottish equivalents.
"We have welders from the Philippines and South Africa working on the next generation of Scottish warships because not enough Scottish workers have the skills," Marra is expected to say.
"Shipbuilding – Scotland is famous for it. We're world class at it. There should be a sense of national pride that the ships being built in Scotland are providing opportunity and security for Scottish workers.
"So, my message to Bute House is put control and money in the hands of the councils, colleges and industries who know what their local economies need better than any bureaucrat in Edinburgh."