Graduates would have to contribute up to £4,000 towards the cost of their degrees, the well-off would have to pay for their own prescriptions again, but some children would be able to leave school at 14 – if the Conservatives win the Scottish elections in May.
Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie unveiled her party’s election manifesto in Glasgow today, promising to “tell it like it is”.
Insisting that the country had to face up to the massive deficit left by the Labour government, Miss Goldie said this meant that some sections of society would have to pay more.
In a pitch which was clearly designed to put considerable political distance between the Conservatives and their three rival parties – all of whom have promised a series of spending commitments and resisted calls to raise revenue elsewhere – Miss Goldie said money would have to be raised as well as spent.
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Among the high-profile commitments in the Scottish Conservative manifesto were pledges to: * Introduce a variable graduate fee of up to £4,000, payable when graduates start to earn a solid income. * Offer a new school-leaving age of 14 for those who wanted to leave and who had a trade apprenticeship or college place to go. * Bring back prescription charges, of £5, for the well-off. * Keep free pensioner bus-travel, but only for the over 65s, not all those aged 60 and over, as at present. * Continue to freeze council tax and provide a £200 cut in the council tax for pensioner households. * Protect the health budget. * Create a Scottish Business Start-up Fund of £154 million to support new jobs and provide training opportunities. * Make enterprise training at colleges and universities. * Create a new minister for enterprise and jobs at cabinet level. * Invest £135 million in new superfast broadband for the whole of Scotland. * Allow hard-shoulder running on the M8 and M77 to get traffic moving. * Use new borrowing powers to finance the new Forth Bridge. * Hold referenda on elected provosts in Scotland’s main cities. * Create a pothole fund to repair Scotland’s roads. * Freeze public sector pay until April 2013 for all those earning more than £21,000. * Allow educational charities and parents to set up new schools, independent of local authorities. * Reform the process of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic in primary schools. * Introduce free universal health checks for everybody aged 40–74. * Re-introduce prison sentences of less than three months and end automatic early release. * Introduce compulsory drug tests for prisoners. * Merge health and social care budgets. Miss Goldie said her party’s manifesto was properly costed. “I will tell it like it is," she said. "The others are telling it like they wish it were – but it isn’t. They are, quite literally, unbelievable. Whether it’s the Deficit Deniers of Labour or the Fantasy Economics and secrecy of the SNP, they are more interested in self preservation than in the common good. “But that is not my way. It is not the Scottish Conservative way.” And she added: “My goal, my driving force in this election, is to bring more of what we have delivered for Scotland in the last four years, into the Scottish parliament over the next five years. We have been pivotal in the past – and we will be pivotal again. “We will deliver Common Sense for the Common Good. I am proud to deliver this manifesto and to have it compared with the others. I am proud that this is a manifesto for families, for business and for communities.” In response, Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour leader, said: “This is a half-hearted attempt to disguise their cosy pact with the SNP because it is pretty clear the Tories want the SNP to win the election.” And he added: “The Tories are trying to do Scotland what David Cameron and Nick Clegg are doing down south. It is a back-to-the-future manifesto showing they learnt none of the lessons of the 1980s and are destined to repeat them… “The Tories are trying to dismantle the very fabric of Scottish society in their relentless pursuit of right-wing ideas.” The SNP seized on the Conservatives’ failure to mention upgrading the A9 in the manifesto. The SNP's Dave Thompson said: “The Tories – and their deputy leader Murdo Fraser – has talked big for the last four years but when it comes to the crunch with the publication of their manifesto have delivered precisely nothing. For the Tories – who failed to dual the A9 in their 18 long years in power at Westminster – the A9 doesn’t even rate a mention. This is the height of Tory hypocrisy.” But this then attracted an angry rebuttal from the Conservatives, with Murdo Fraser insisting that the manifesto included a pledge to take forward the Strategic Transport Projects Review, which includes dualling the A9. “Dave Thomson and the SNP have blundered badly here," said Mr Fraser. "Being an honourable man, I am sure he will want to apologise for getting his facts wrong. At the same time, he should apologise on behalf of the SNP for their broken promise to the people of Perthshire and the Highlands at the last election to dual the A9.”Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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