Bringing back family doctor, banning mobiles in schools and fixing potholes: Scottish Labour’s manifesto summarised

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has urged voters to give him five years to “fix the SNP’s mess”, with pledges to build more homes, cut taxes and make the NHS there for when Scots need it.

In the party’s manifesto, unveiled yesterday, Sarwar said that Scotland has huge potential but “after 20 years of SNP government too many people feel our country is being held back”.

“They see it in our NHS, in soaring waiting lists and the struggle to get a GP appointment. They see it in schools under pressure, in town centres that have been hollowed out, in young people priced out of home ownership, and in families who work hard but feel they are getting nowhere.

“A Scottish Labour government will be relentless in the service of the hard-working majority. It will focus on delivery, not distraction. It will put country before party and the interests of the people of Scotland first.”

The manifesto emphasises Labour’s plan to ‘fix the mess’, ‘get the basics right’ and ‘deliver a better future’, with detailed manifestos for each region of Scotland.

Here are the 20 key pledges highlighted in Scottish Labour’s plan for the nation, from bringing back the family doctor and establishing a mental health emergency service to a right to recall MSPs and scrapping the unfair business rates system:

• Cut NHS wait times with funding following the patient
• End the 8am rush for a GP appointment
• Bring back the family doctor
• New technology in our NHS with an NHS app and AI scanners
• A mental health emergency service
• Top up tax free childcare and two weeks of summer holiday clubs
• Breakfast clubs in every school
• Ban mobile phones in classrooms
• 2,000 Education Recovery teachers and 1,500 more classroom assistants
• 9,000 new apprenticeships to deliver an apprenticeship guarantee
• Abolish the unfair business rates system
• End the block on clean nuclear energy
• Deliver the Glasgow airport rail link
• Community police officers for every neighbourhood
• A £350m potholes fund to fix the roads
• Fair funding for local communities
• 125,000 new homes to fix the broken housing market
• End government waste and cut a third of quangos
• A right to recall MSPs
• More support for people trying to buy their own home

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