FIRST STEPS
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CONTENTS
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Introduction
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Leading Scotland out of the pandemic
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Supporting our NHS and care services
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Backing our economy and creating jobs
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Children, families, and young people
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Tackling the climate crisis
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Backing our communities and building better lives
INTRODUCTION These are serious times which require serious government and experienced leadership. By re-electing Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP, you can ensure Scotland gets that vital experience and the serious programme for government that people need and deserve. That experience and seriousness of purpose have never been more important. Here, we set out the key social and economic actions the SNP will take in the first 100 days of a new government if we have the privilege of being re-elected. This is far from everything that we will do in these first 100 days – our manifesto is full of progressive policies and, of course, Covid has reminded everyone that unexpected events will always require a quick response from the Government. But the number one priority for the SNP will continue to be keeping Scotland safe. And using our experience we will take immediate action to protect our NHS, boost jobs and help Scotland’s children and young people.
Our publicly run and owned NHS would be safe from Tory trade deals and the power-grab Westminster has launched on Holyrood, we would be able to escape Boris Johnson’s job-destroying hard Brexit and we could re-build a social security system after years of deep Tory cuts that have hit working people and their families hard. That is why it is essential that people in Scotland have the right to decide whether or not they wish to become independent, and we intend to offer that choice when the Covid crisis has passed. However, our immediate priority, should we be re-elected, must and will be to steer Scotland through the Covid crisis and get our recovery underway. The plan we are setting out today will only happen if the SNP is returned to government with Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister. So, help us to keep Scotland safe and re-elect Nicola Sturgeon on May 6 by giving both votes to the SNP.
Of course, with the full powers of an independent country we could do so much more – and Scotland would no longer be subject to a Tory Westminster government taking our country in the wrong direction.
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Leading Scotland out of the Pandemic The first task of the next Scottish Government will be to keep the virus under control and get Scotland back to as much normality as possible, as quickly as it is safe to do so.
Fighting the virus and re-opening the country In the first 100 days we will work to reopen our society and economy by: • Completing the vaccination of all adults, subject to supply. • Moving to Level 2 on 17 May – reopening more of society and the economy. This means people will be able to: • meet in each other’s homes in small numbers • go to the pub and have a drink indoors with friends, • visit cinemas, music venues and theatres and, • take part in contact sports. • Moving to Level 1 on Monday 7 June, Level 0 in late June, and something much closer to normality over the course of July.
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Preparing for the future We must learn from what worked well and what did not work well fighting the pandemic so that we are as prepared as it is possible for new variants of Covid and future pandemics. In the first 100 days we will: • bring people together in pursuit of the strongest possible recovery by establishing a cross party steering group on Covid Recovery. • establish a Standing Committee on Pandemics, bringing together scientists and clinicians to advise on future risks. • begin to take the necessary steps to establish a Covid-19 Public Inquiry in order that lessons are learned for the future. • replace the current coronavirus legislation removing parts and powers which are no longer necessary, whilst ensuring we can manage any upsurge in the virus.
Supporting our NHS and Care Services Over the last year, our NHS and care services have stepped up on behalf of the entire country. We must properly recognise their tremendous efforts and help the NHS and social care services recover from Covid.
NHS Recovery In the first 100 days, to help our NHS and care services recover, we will: • Implement a 4% average pay rise for NHS workers – subject to agreement with the workforce – including full back pay. • Publish an NHS Recovery plan to meet our ambition of increasing inpatient, daycase, and outpatient activity by 10%. • Open three fast track cancer diagnostic centres in Ayrshire & Arran, Fife, and Dumfries & Galloway.
The National Care Service
A fairer future The inequality exposed by the pandemic must be addressed. In our first 100 days we will: • Remove dental charges for care leavers as the first step towards ending all dental charges. • Take steps to make parking permanently free at all NHS PFI hospital car parks. • Publish the recommendations of the Women’s Health taskforce and produce a Women’s Health Implementation plan. • Introduce a Bill to reimburse the cost of private mesh removal surgery carried out in the past. • Establish the Young Patients Family Fund to support families visiting children who are receiving inpatient care. • Continue support for the roll-out of Computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (cCBT).
The National Care Service will require legislation to set it up. In the first 100 days we will: • Start formal consultation on the legislation with a view to introducing it in the first year of the Parliament. • Establish a social covenant steering group, including those who use our care services, to ensure the new service is designed around the needs of care users and supports the needs of care workers.
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Backing our economy and creating jobs Investing in jobs and supporting our economic recovery will be a priority for the SNP in the next Parliament. In the first hundred days of an SNP Government, we will: • Establish a new Council for Economic Transformation to shape the new 10-year National Strategy for Economic Transformation and commit to the strategy being published in the first six months of the Parliament.
Support youth employment
• Appoint an external reviewer of the current regulatory processes involved in fish farming, to identify how best to reform and streamline the system and establish a new single determining authority. • Support a National Living Hours Accreditation Scheme. • Reopen the Digital Boost Fund – backed by £25 million - providing technology support and training for small and medium sized businesses. • Set out a Strategic Investment Assessment into the Scottish supply chain for offshore wind. • Open the latest 5G Innovation Hub in Dundee, boosting businesses’ ability to access and benefit from the new technology.
Younger people have already paid a heavy price in this pandemic. After years where youth employment fell markedly, it has now risen again. In our first 100 days, therefore, we will: • Appoint a Minister specifically tasked with supporting youth employment. Help local businesses, tourism, and hospitality • Invest £45 million through local partnerships to provide training and employer recruitment incentives. Local businesses, tourism and hospitality have been particularly hard hit by Covid lockdowns. In our first 100 • Fund colleges to deliver around 5,000 more short, days, therefore, we will: industry-focussed courses to help young people train for jobs in key industries. • Provide a second payment of £1,500 to each taxi driver who previously received a Covid grant and up • Roll-out new school coordinators across the country to £10,000 for taxi operator firms to help them to support young people access education, work, or training. through these difficult times. • Establish a new graduate internship scheme • Publish a route map to reopening for cultural venues and increase places on volunteering and third and performances, developed in partnership with the sector programmes. sector and public health experts, and pass on in full Culture consequential funding once received. Invest in better, greener jobs • Launch the £10 million ‘Scotland Loves Local’ The sustainable economic future post-covid must be programme to support local businesses and back increasingly based on green jobs. In our first 100 days, we will: Scotland Loves Local loyalty card schemes. • Set out the next stage of our National Transition • Publish a draft local food strategy, and provide Training Fund to support people at risk of grants from the Regional Food Fund to support local unemployment into new careers. and regional food festivals and initiatives. • Set up a new Green Jobs Workforce Academy to • Launch the £25 million fund for tourism, including help people get the skills they need to move into new, investment in more Seasonal Rangers and vouchers greener jobs. for days out and short breaks for carers, people with • Make flexible and family friendly practices and disabilities and families on low incomes. opposition to hire and rehire processes criteria in the • Launch a new campaign to promote Scotland as Fair Work First Programme – using the Government’s a tourism destination to help restore business to the procurement process to deliver fairer work. Scottish tourist industry. • Establish a commission to take forward the review • Set up a taskforce to develop a growth strategy of land-based education. for agri-tourism and publish a refreshed food • Appoint new islands-based crofting tourism action plan. development officers. • Create a Scotland Touring Fund for Theatre and Music worth £1.5 million over two years.
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Children, families, and young people We are determined to make Scotland the best place to grow up, to give children and young people a fair start in life and help families through these tough times.
Helping families and giving pupils the best start
In the first 100 days, we will prioritise children’s fundamental rights by:
• Complete the roll-out of 1,140 hours of free, high quality early learning and childcare, and begin work on extending wrap around childcare.
• Pressing on with the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to the maximum extent possible, and • fighting any legal challenge to children’s rights from the UK Government.
Improving Attainment and Recovering from Covid In our first 100 days we will: • Fund councils to increase teacher numbers by 1,000 and classroom assistants by 500 - as part of our commitment to 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants over the Parliamentary term. • Roll out a £20 million Summer Programme of help for pupils - helping children socialise, play, and reconnect - with children and their families able to access activities to help them recover from the pandemic.
In our first 100 days we will:
• Introduce free school lunches for primary 4 children as the first step to delivering free school breakfasts and lunches for all primary school pupils. • Increase Best Start Food funding to £4.50 per week, helping families with children under three to buy healthy foods. • Increase the School Clothing Grant to at least £120 per primary school child and £150 per secondary school child. • Abolish core curriculum charges for all pupils, enabling children to take the subjects they want without families having to struggle to meet costs of resources and materials for practical lessons. • Begin the planning for provision of tablets and laptops to all schoolchildren. • Agree the first allocation of funding to councils for the refurbishment of play parks.
• Pay the first instalment of the expanded £1 billion Scottish Attainment Fund. • Ensure pupils receive national certificate awards, despite the absence of formal exams, ensuring teacher judgement delivers fair results. • Publish the OECD review of Curriculum for Excellence and begin work to implement its recommendations. • Abolish fees for music and arts education, including instrumental music tuition in schools, and renew funding for Sistema.
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Tackling the climate crisis Covid has posed a massive challenge to the world but the climate emergency has not gone away. We must end Scotland’s contribution to climate change by 2045 in a just and fair way. Our commitment will begin at the very heart of government. In our first 100 days, we will:
• Establish the integrated implementation board to develop new proposals for sustainable farming support and drive forward the recommendations of the farmer-led groups. This will include consulting on proposals for a sustainable suckler beef scheme. • Announce the locations of Scotland’s first lowcarbon vertical farms.
• Appoint a new Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, bringing together key challenges on the road to net zero.
Transport
• Appoint a Minister of Just Transition with responsibility for overseeing a ‘national mission’ of fairness and opportunity as we move to net zero.
A revolution in transport will be needed to meet our climate change responsibilities. In our first 100 days, therefore, we will:
COP26
• Introduce the legal changes to extend free bus travel to everyone under 22 years old.
The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) will put Scotland centre stage of the climate change crisis in November. In our first 100 days, therefore, we will: • Publish Scotland’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) towards the global goal of delivering the Paris Agreement. • Launch a national campaign to raise awareness of the climate crisis and the actions we need to take as a country. • Appoint Environmental Champions, experts from around the world, to advise the government on international best practice. • Work with Glasgow City Council, the UK Government, and the UNFCCC on the delivery of COP26 in Glasgow, including working to ensure all Covid precautions are in place. • Complete the creation of 12,000 hectares of woodland in 2020-21.
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• Convene the Bus Decarbonisation Taskforce to take the next steps toward removing the majority of fossil fuel buses from public transport. • Begin the process of bringing Scotrail into public hands from March 2022 as part of the transition to a publicly owned, cleaner, and greener railway. • Resume Low Emission Zones, paused due to Covid, in Scotland’s cities. • Start to deliver free bikes to children who cannot afford them by establishing pilot projects and commit to rolling the scheme out fully within 12 months.
Backing our communities and building better lives A sense of community, and the resilience we all draw from it, helped Scotland get through the pandemic. The SNP will invest in our communities, in homes, in keeping people safe and in empowering people to have a greater say in their future.
Minimum Income Guarantee In our first 100 days we will: • Invite all groups and organisations supportive of a Minimum Income Guarantee to start planning how this can be delivered. • Establish a Steering Group, inviting cross party representation, to progress the delivery of a Scottish Minimum Income Guarantee.
Keeping people safe In our first 100 days we will: • Invest a further £5 million this year to support frontline organisations which tackle domestic abuse and sexual violence to deal with outstanding demand that has built up over the past year of the pandemic.
Better homes In our first 100 days we will: • Begin to develop a new Rented Sector Strategy to be published this year as part of our commitment to provide greater protections from unreasonable rent increases, give people affordable choices when renting, and increase protections for tenants.
In our first 100 days we will:
• Establish the next stage of the review of student accommodation to end the rental trap too many students faced during the pandemic.
• Pay £100 as part of the £520 support we will provide for low-income families - the equivalent of the Scottish Child Payment.
• Start cladding safety assessments - Single Building Assessments - to help homeowners whose flats have external cladding.
Tackling inequality
• Establish a new Summer Student Support Fund of £20 million for students unable to find work in the months they do not receive student support and begin a review of the future of summer student support. • Start work to develop our new five-year social isolation and loneliness plan backed by £10 million over five years focused on reconnecting people as we come out of the pandemic and tackle loneliness head on. • Legislate to give carers an extra Coronavirus payment of £460 - a double payment of their Carer’s Allowance Supplement in December 2021.
Bridging the digital divide In our first 100 days we will: • Deliver 40,000 digital devices as we head towards 60,000 by the end of this year as part of our ambitious plans to end digital exclusion by getting 300,000 households online over the next five years. • Provide mobile coverage in more remote rural and island areas with a further 14 masts going live through our SG4i Mobile Infill programme.
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STEPS