The Scottish Liberal Democrats launched their manifesto ahead of the 5 May poll
The Scottish Liberal Democrats have launched their manifesto for the 2011 Scottish Parliament election.
Here is a look at all the key pledges:
Economy
- Create the conditions for 100,000 new jobs, supported by at least £1.5bn of investment freed up by selling off Scottish Water debt, turning it into a "public benefit company".
- Replace Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland agencies with regional development banks to support 1,000 businesses.
- Keep the small business bonus and look into "rates holidays" for seasonal tourist businesses, while giving councils share of business rate growth.
- Deliver enterprise zones in Scotland, encouraging economic growth through a package of business support measures.
- New "science nation fund" to boost invention and innovation.
- Offer work experience, internships, apprenticeships or substantial volunteering opportunities for young people struggling to find work.
- Reform business regulation.
- Help more Scottish businesses access public sector contracts.
- Create the conditions to help grow Scotland's export value by 50% and double by 2020 the number of Scottish companies who trade overseas by 2020.
- Drive Scotland forward as "world leader" in renewable energy sector.
- Invest £250m to deliver superfast broadband to all parts of Scotland and improve mobile phone coverage.
- Require every public body to ensure all services can be accessed through technology and online.
- Require rail franchise to include provision of free wi-fi on key routes.
- Give the Scottish business community the right annually to draft the text of a parliamentary motion on a subject of its choosing and with actions that it determines.
- Cut the "burden of regulation" by a quarter.
Public services
- Pensioners with an annual income below £10,000 to be exempt from council tax.
- Look at transfer to local government the inspection functions of SEPA.
- Merge boards of Historic Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage.
- Publish a white paper on localism to outline the fuller steps that can be taken to disperse power away from the centre.
- Introduce progressively a new rule to ensure no local authority receives less than 90% of the average revenue support grant per head.
- Introduce payment-by-results in public services, where appropriate. Success in delivering the desired outcomes will be rewarded, "failure to deliver will not".
- Allow communities to take over public assets and register an interest to acquire private assets of significant value to the community.
- Require local authorities to publish monthly reports detailing all items of expenditure over £500.
- Public bodies to submit their budget for the number of their employees paid more than £80,000 per year and oblige those organisations to cut that pay bill by 10%.
Environment
- Allocate £250m to accelerate insulation of homes and buildings in Scotland and take forward new universal home insulation schemes.
- Support a new generation of apprentices to become experts in installing insulation and energy-efficient systems.
- Requirement for for new-build homes and non-domestic buildings to be "zero carbon" by 2016.
- New support to companies developing marine, hydro and biomass renewable energy technology.
- Scotland to generate the equivalent of 100% of Scotland's electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2025.
- Retain Scotland's forests in public ownership.
- Oppose construction of new nuclear power plants in Scotland, while backing development of carbon capture and storage technology.
- Strategy for on-street recycling.
Transport
- Make ownership of an electric car a "realistic ambition".
- Deliver strategic transport projects, with clear focus on safety, supporting the economy and improving public transport.
- Develop a fully-costed and timetabled plan to dual the A9 to Inverness.
- Improvements to road safety and quality, including on the A82, A83 and A96.
- Improve commuter transport outside major cities.
- Better rolling stock on long-distance train routes from central belt to Inverness and Aberdeen.
- Maintain a flexible freight facilities grant.
- Fairer fares charter for rail passengers.
- Increase entitlement age for free bus travel from 60 to 65.
- Continue to invest in lifeline ferry links.
- Keep up pressure on airport operators to continue to invest in snow clearing equipment.
- Reintroduce business travel in the air discount scheme for the Highlands and Islands and extend it to cover airport charges.
- Allow councils to charge utility services an hourly rate for highway lane closures that overrun.
Education
- £250m early intervention revolution fund to invest in early years.
- Introduce pupil premium for looked-after children, starting as soon as they come into care and ensure looked-after children at secondary school have access to a mentor.
- Provide supported accommodation for those leaving local authority care at the age of 16.
- Help every child to benefit from a strong start to formal learning in P2 onwards with the P1 year in primary school treated as a more informal start to education.
- Provide opportunity for youngsters to attend college to do a course of their choice from the age of 14.
- Encourage more secondary school style teaching for pupils in P7 to help the transition from P7 to S1.
- Give more power and financial control to headteachers.
- Priority on pupil-teacher ratios and allow headteachers and parents the flexibility to work within the existing legal class size limits.
- Review protections afforded to teaching staff accused of mistreating pupils to prevent their careers being wrecked by false allegations.
- Accept the recommendations of the Donaldson Review of teacher education.
- Keep university education free, with no tuition fees and no graduate contribution.
- £250m match funding to boost science facilities.
- Investigate fair system of payments from EU students.
- Establish flexible Scottish degree, with standard three year degree in many areas.
- Create stronger local colleges with a "radically enhanced role" to promote wider entry into higher education through further education.
- £250m fund to maintain the international competitiveness of university based research and science.
Health
- New national objective on obesity.
- New target for urgent referral for cancer diagnosis, with every patient to see a specialist within two weeks.
- Improve the provision of mental health services, increase access to psychological and emotional support and reduce waiting times for psychological treatments and talking therapies.
- Drive forward smart investment in preventative care and health.
- Retain NHS 24 helpline but improve out-of-hours care across Scotland, with a particular focus on rural and remote areas, and put GPs back at the centre of the service.
- Make Scotland the first country to establish national-scale telehealth services.
- Make better use of pharmacy services in the community to provide quick and easy access to healthcare out of office hours.
- Guarantee access to an NHS dentist for everyone who wants it.
- Drive down rates of healthcare associated infection.
- Protect free personal care for the elderly.
- Drive out waste and inefficiency in the health service without impacting on frontline services.
- Make health boards more financially transparent, end bonus payments to high-earning consultants and take action to reduce "soaring" drugs bill.
- Allow communities to design health services that best meet their local needs.
- Give individuals and carers right to access range of self-directed care options.
- Introduce short break entitlement for those in greatest need.
- Ensure "stringent enforcement" of existing alcohol law.
- Support UK-wide measures to tackle the sale of alcohol at unacceptably low cost.
- Use cash seized from criminals to invest in quality diversionary activities for young people.
- Every person seeking treatment for drug or alcohol dependency to wait no longer than three weeks for access to services
- Encourage more widespread use of Drug Treatment and Testing Orders and alcohol treatment requirements.
Housing
- New system of grants worth up to £10,000 to bring Scotland's 70,000 empty homes back into use, provided owners allow a housing association to rent it out for 10 years.
- Give further priority to shared equity schemes.
- Develop community land trusts to secure and develop land within remote or rural communities.
- Pilot "home on the farm" initiative to allow conversions of agricultural buildings for housing.
- Review home information survey packs to evaluate their effectiveness, but retain energy performance certificate.
- Widen tenancies available for immediate rented housing.
Justice
- Give local communities a right to hear from their police.
- Consider shared services for emergency services, but oppose single national police or fire services.
- End automatic early release from prison.
- Establish community justice panels as an alternative to court action to divert minor offenders from re-offending.
- Increase efforts to rid prisons of drugs by piloting wing-based, abstinence focused, drug recovery services.
- Set up custody and rehabilitation service from the current structure of the Scottish Prison Service.
- Allow voluntary sector to fund programmes with offenders, starting inside prison and accountable for two years after release.
- Increase mentoring on release from ex-offenders, especially offering young offenders the opportunity to be "met at the gate" on release.
- Targeted intervention strategies to help cut knife crime.
- Provide resources for community payback orders.
- Reduce the amount of time it takes to enact summary justice.
- Ensure victims receive compensation immediately after it is awarded, with the state responsible for recovery from the offender, rather than the victim.
- Widen the victim notification scheme to notify victims when the offender is eligible for release from prison or is unlawfully at large.
Human rights
- Give Scottish ministers defined interest in potentially lethal police equipment such as Tasers.
- Limit the use of biometric ID systems in schools, ban fingerprinting of pupils without parental consent and ensure that any existing data is kept secure and destroyed.
- Strengthen freedom of information legislation.
- Control the way councils use the serious surveillance powers intended for serious offences and require a Scottish Parliament committee to review annually how these powers are being deployed.
- Improve regulation and introduce a code of conduct for public authorities using CCTV and automatic number plate recognition cameras.
- Extend legal marriage to gay couples and civil partnerships to heterosexual couples.
- Work with the UK government to review the blanket ban on gay men donating blood.
Culture/sport
- Establish new a creative industry fund.
- Maintain free access to Scotland's national museums.
- Support 2014 as a second year of homecoming for those people around the world with Scottish ancestry.
- Support Gaelic medium education where there is demand and promote the language in cost effective ways.
- Develop Scotland-wide school Olympics.
