Scottish Liberal Democrat 2016 manifesto: key points

Under the tagline of ‘making Scotland the best again’, the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ manifesto leads with a strong focus on education. A proposed penny increase on income tax would provide a pupil premium of £1,400 for every primary school child and £900 for every secondary school child from a poorer background, as well as children of armed forces personnel and looked-after children. Early years provision for three and four year olds would be doubled and the entitlement extended to two year olds.

The party is also pledging to reverse cuts to college funding, drop standardised testing, give councils the option of making primary one a year of informal learning and offer £30m of new bursaries for further and higher education. The party continues to support named person legislation, but would keep it “under review”.

Mental health is another key priority area for the Lib Dems, with manifesto commitments to put mental health on the same statutory footing as physical health, double the budget for children and young people’s mental health, have a mental health professional in every GP practice and create new units for children’s and young people’s mental health in Aberdeen and Inverness.

The Lib Dems also promise to recruit more GPs and increase the proportion of health funding going into primary care, while maintaining overall NHS funding at least in line with inflation.

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Decentralisation of power and civil liberties are high on the Lib Dems’ policy agenda as well. The party says it would stop the Scottish Government’s ID database, councils would get full control over council tax and business rates, local policing plans would have to be approved by local people and they promise action to give more professional freedom to public sector workers such as teachers, police and health and social care professionals.

Under the Lib Dems, Police Scotland is promised an extra £20m of funding, there would be a “presumption against” short prison sentences of less than 12 months and they would approach drug use as a health rather than a justice issue. 

The party would bring Carer’s Allowance into line with Jobseeker’s Allowance, extend free personal care to people of all ages with dementia, pilot provision of a Finnish-style baby box of essential items and retain housing benefit for 18-25 year olds.

The Lib Dems would build 50,000 affordable homes over the course of the parliament, 40,000 of which would be for social rent rather than purchase, and bring 27,000 empty homes back into use.

A number of measures are mentioned to meet climate change targets and tackle fuel poverty, including a warm homes act, establishing warm homes as national infrastructure project and generating a ‘Fit for the Future’ investment fund using the Scottish Government’s new borrowing powers to create catch up zones in areas where fuel poverty remains particularly high.

In terms of local taxation, the Lib Dems say they would accelerate the process of mapping Scotland’s land ownership and propose to put further work into the creation of a land value tax. They have already committed to increasing all bands of income tax by a penny to pay for their commitments in education, but with the aim of creating a new zero-rate to effectively increase the personal allowance.

The penny on income tax across all tax bands is expected to raise £505m in 2017-18 and £520m in 2019-20, according to latest HMRC estimates, £55m more than previously estimated.