Scottish election: SNP manifesto

The Scottish National Party has launched its manifesto for the 2011 Scottish Parliament election.

Here is a look at all the key pledges:

- Freeze council tax throughout the next, five-year parliament.

- Capital investment worth more than £11.5bn by 2014-15.

- Keep Scottish Water in public ownership, freeze water bills for two years and deliver a £2.5bn investment programme.

- Community Empowerment Bill to give local people greater say in their area, including taking over underused public buildings.

- Direct "maximum funding" to the frontline services in next parliament, including £900m freed up by 3% public sector efficiencies in 2011-12.

- Achieve 25% cut in quangos by the end of 2011.

- Improvements to current planning system, including community involvement at earlier stage.

- Committed to a policy of no compulsory redundancies in public sector, with agreement to deliver promise for the 30,000 staff within government and agencies in place.

- Protect the NHS budget with extra £1bn over four years.

- £30m to increase number of cancers detected at first stage by 25%, starting with lung, breast and colorectal cancer.

- NHS to make further £300m efficiency savings in the next year, to be retained by NHS Boards for reinvestment.

- Cut NHS senior managers by 25% over the next parliament.

- Guarantee of no compulsory redundancies in NHS.

- Tackling hospital infection "a top priority" and bring forward new minimum standards for MRSA screening.

- Increase number of people able to receive telecare services at home.

- New hospitals and facilities in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Highland, Lanarkshire, Dumfries, Grampian and Dundee.

- Roll out family nurse partnerships across Scotland, providing support for teenage mothers.

- Keep prescriptions free of charges.

- Four-year pilot to test the effectiveness of universal, face-to-face "over 40s MOTs".

- Re-introduce legislation on minimum alcohol pricing.

- Consult on new mental health legislation.

- New strategies to cut smoking-related illness and death and obesity.

- Maintain free personal care for the elderly.

- Single, integrated system of health and social care across Scotland.

- 20% of £70m change fund to support carers from 2012-13.

- £6m to provide breaks for families with severely disabled children and maintain our commitment to an extra 10,000 weeks' respite provision per year for carers.

- New autism strategy backed with £10m over four years.

- Work towards maximum 12 month wait for IVF treatment.

- Protect free eye tests in Scotland.

- Maintain police officer numbers, including 1,000 extra police delivered in last parliament.

- Change the law to take more money from more criminals for investment back into communities.

- New serious crime prevention orders to restrict the activities of those with known criminal connections, including getting involved in running a business.

- Move towards single, national fire and rescue service in next parliament.

- Cut number of police forces, currently at eight.

- Tackle knife crime through increased stop-and-search policy and roll out No Knives, Better Lives scheme across the country.

- "Zero-tolerance" approach to football-related violence and prejudice, including domestic abuse, alcohol misuse, racism and sectarianism.

- Maintain funding for Scottish Women's Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland.

- Maintain funding for Community Payback Orders so that offenders repay debt to society "through hard labour".

- Commission review of female offending.

- Look at measures to help victims get compensation more quickly.

- Seek to introduce law of evidence of similar fact - commonly known as a "bad character law", meaning previous convictions are permissible in evidence in most serious cases, such as murder or rape.

- Maintain investment at 2010-11 levels in frontline drug treatment services.

- Propose to UK government new Ballistics 'DNA' Database so each and every firearm in Scotland can be tracked.

- Modernise civil law system, including introducing form of class action to enable groups of small claimants to combine to seek redress through the courts.

- Demand same rights for Scots law in relation to European human rights legislation as enjoyed by other jurisdictions.

- Reform law on damages.

- Legislate so that judges will direct juries not to take into account any delay in reporting a rape or any apparent lack of resistance from the victim when reaching their decision.

- Work to win new job-creating powers for the Scottish Parliament

- Bring forward legislation for an independence referendum.

- Offer 100,000 training opportunities each year, including £11.5m to fund 25,000 modern apprenticeships. (46,500 training opportunities in 2011-12, including 7,000 flexible training opportunities smaller firms.)

- New £250m Scottish Futures Fund using the savings from cost of new Forth road bridge, focussing on young people and early years, rolling out superfast broadband to rural areas, a "warm homes" initiative and transport fund.

- Next-generation broadband available to all by 2020 and rate of uptake in Scotland at or above the UK average by 2013, and highest among the UK nations by 2015.

- Press Westminster for devolution of corporation tax, excise duty, enhanced borrowing powers, responsibility for the Crown Estate Commission and Job Centres.

- Continue Small Business Bonus scheme, with 80,000 firms paying no or lower rates.

- Focus on "growth" companies and markets, including green, financial, food and drink and life sciences.

- Continue to match English business rates poundage.

- No use of Scottish Variable Rate, or "tartan tax" in next parliament.

- Specific support for small businesses looking to take on their first member of staff, including help setting up payroll systems, as part of £7.5m in year ahead.

- Provide 2,000 new work opportunities for young people in voluntary sector.

- Support Scottish exports under £2.5m initiative to help 100 companies break into overseas markets.

- Deliver a 50% increase in exports over the next six years.

- Support creation and entry of new retail banks.

- Establish four new Enterprise Zones across Scotland.

- £45m to support "nearmarket research and development" projects by smaller companies and £17m backing for life-sciences, digital and energy projects.

- Extend scheme giving small firms access to public sector contracts.

- Every company in receipt of "significant government contract, or public support" to produce a training and apprenticeship plan.

- Protect our current level of investment in international development.

- New cities agenda, overseen in government by the deputy first minister who will also become cities minister, to help cities flourish.

- Continue to invest in Scotland's town centres.

- In manufacturing, open markets, help companies to innovate, make production efficiency savings and safeguard jobs.

- Continue to support Interactive Scotland and other creative sector initiatives.

- Increase computer gaming exports by 50% over next six years.

- Long-term strategy for science and engineering and back introduction of legal status for commercial space flight and permission for the use of RAF Lossiemouth.

- Increase domestic energy generation from renewables to 100% by 2020, ensuring 130,000 jobs are delivered in the low-carbon economy.

- No to new nuclear power stations.

- Keep the Forestry Commission as a publicly-owned body and forests in public hands.

- Increase penalties for environmental and wildlife crime.

- Consult on environmental court in Scotland.

- Establish new Scottish Land Fund, with proposals by the end of 2011.

- Support use of electric cars.

- Press for the proposed green investment bank to be located in Scotland.

- Demand release of £200m fossil fuel levy from UK government.

- Look at legislation on tackling high hedges.

- New coal-fired stations must demonstrate carbon capture and storage on at least 300 MW of its capacity from day one and retro-fitting for those stations by no later than 2025, with 100% CCS expected on new builds from 2020.

- No energy need for additional thermal generation plants.

- No university fees for Scottish students studying in Scotland, requiring additional funding of £93m a year.

- Cut by half, or 60,000, the number of pupils taught in the worst the number of pupils in "crumbling" schools.

- Expand pre-school support and create a new Sure Start Fund to improve life-chances for young Scots.

- £10m to provide 50,000 college bursaries a year for the next five years.

- £100,000 Youth Enterprise Scotland Challenge fund.

- Bring in new university-level "graduate apprenticeship" and technical apprenticeship" for colleges.

- Take forward plan to boost adult literacy.

- Place 750 college and university students in IT companies.

- Enable teachers and schools to deliver new learning through the Curriculum for Excellence, making it the "cornerstone of education".

- New generation of national qualifications

- Continue drive to cut class sizes, especially in P1-P3.

- Deliver improvements to system following review of the 2001 McCrone agreement.

- Further cut teacher unemployment.

- Create new Scottish Education Quality and Improvement Agency, bringing work of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education and Learning and Teaching Scotland together.

- Maintain the Education Maintenance Allowance.

- Look at more help for low-income families such as help to meet costs of school uniforms and trips.

- £1.25bn investment in new schools, with projects in every local authority area in Scotland.

- Introduce Education Rights and Responsibilities Bill to set out in law what pupils and parents can expect from the education system.

- Create conditions in which every child will learn two languages in addition to their mother tongue, to be rolled out across two sessions of parliament.

- Support expansion of Gaelic medium education and examine entitlement to Gaelic-medium education "where reasonable demand exists".

- Build on 2010 national child protection guidance.

- Protect the Scottish Funding Council's research excellence grant in cash terms in academic year 2011-12.

- Continue with increased support for college bursaries, providing 50,000 a year for each of the next five years.

- Extend the council tax exemption to students moving undergraduate to post-graduate courses in intervening period.

- Create 50, £5,000 bursaries for young Scots looking to advance in science and engineering.

- Take forward projects including Borders Railway, M8 Baillieston to Newhouse, M74 Raith Junction and M8, M73 and M74 network improvements.

- Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route and A90 Balmedie.

- Take forward Edinburgh-Glasgow rail improvement programme which will see the electrification of "much" of the central Scotland rail network.

- Increase in train services on Airdrie to Bathgate line to four trains per hour.

- Increase long-distance services to Inverness from nine to 11 trains per day.

- Investigate re-integration of rail services in Scotland.

- Continue strategy for improving A96 and fully dualling the A9 from Perth to Inverness.

- New integrated ticketing system and increased investment in our ferries.

- Continue with ferry Road Equivalent Tariff on current routes, and look to roll out to the Argyll and the Clyde islands in light of the Western Isles pilot.

- No bridge tolls.

- Guarantee to retain secured tenancies at affordable rent and implement Tenant Deposit Scheme, to help the estimated 8,000 to 11,000 Scots who have their deposit wrongly withheld.

- Tough tenancy rules for those who commit anti-social behaviour.

- Private Rented Sector Strategy Group to improve the sector.

- Publish a national strategy on housing for older people.

- Use the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow to put Scotland on the path to a healthier and more successful future.

- Demand return of lottery cash diverted (£114m) from Scottish good causes to help fund the London Olympics. The UK government has

- £8m to fund elite athlete programme up to 2014.

- Continue funding for Active Schools programme.

- Open school estate over and above regular hours and.

- Deliver, by 2014, at least two hours of PE in primary schools and at least two periods of PE in secondary schools for pupils in S1-S4.

- Support Creative Scotland arts agency.

- Establish a National Book Week from 2012.

- Support Historic Scotland as they take forward their strategy for sustaining and developing traditional building skills.

- New national strategy for museum and gallery sector, including the establishment of a National Development Body and direct government funding for Scottish Mining Museum, Scottish Maritime Museum, and Scottish Fisheries Museum.

- Grow Scotland's food and drink sector to £12.5bn by 2017.

- Make case for for EU farming and fishing reform with UK ministers.

- Cut bureaucracy facing farm businesses.

- Consult on issues of same-sex marriage and registration of civil partnerships.