Parties make policy promises with less than two weeks to election day

With less than two weeks until the polls open in the Holyrood election, political parties have been laying out more policy announcements.

The vote on May 7 to elect members of the Scottish Parliament is a crucial test at the ballot box.

Elections for devolved parliaments can reflect voters’ attitudes about their local area, such as when bins are collected, the state of parks and pavements, or the quality of schools and hospitals.

But they can also be a verdict on how parties and leaders are handling national issues – which this year could mean the cost of living, the economy and immigration, or even foreign affairs such as the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

What have the parties been saying this weekend?

Scottish Greens want to ban private jets from publicly-owned airports

The Scottish Greens have announced plans to ban private jets from Scotland’s publicly-owned airports, saying they “shouldn’t be used to serve the whims of billionaires”.

The proposed ban would stop such flights from landing at Prestwick Airport in South Ayrshire and at all airports covered by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited, including Inverness.

The Greens said the number of private jet flights in Scotland increased to more than 12,000 in 2024, the last year for which such data has been compiled.

The party said private jets are up to 30 times more polluting than regular commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains.

Reform UK to lead protest against fuel duty hike amid global oil price spike

Reform UK will lead a protest through Westminster on Monday to insist fuel duty “must not go up”, Nigel Farage said.

Fuel duty has been frozen since 2011, and was cut by 5p in 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But at her budget last year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the 5p cut would be unwound between September 2026 and March 2027.

A “national fuel tax protest” will take place on Monday, aimed at urging the Chancellor to walk back the plans amid the surge in fuel prices caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Poor poll projections ‘motivating’ Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay has said that poor polling projections are “motivating” his party ahead of the Holyrood election.

Findlay said the party has proved polling experts wrong after being “written off” ahead of previous elections, and he urged voters to help do so again by backing the Scottish Tories on the peach-coloured regional list ballot paper.

Campaigning in Burnside, South Lanarkshire, on Saturday he was joined by former Scottish Conservative leader Baroness Ruth Davidson who described the peach ballot as “voters’ secret weapon”.

Recent polls suggest the Tories – who were the second-largest party in the Scottish Parliament after the last election – face losses this time round.

Independence could help Scotland’s energy work for the country, say SNP

Scotland is an “energy superpower” and could “make that energy work for us” with independence, SNP leader John Swinney has said.

Swinney said that currently people filling up their cars with fuel are paying the price for Westminster failure to take action as it “simply refuses to act to help people.”

Campaigning in the Highlands on Saturday, Scotland’s First Minister called on the UK Government to act now on petrol prices amid the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.

The SNP has called on the Prime Minister to remove VAT from fuel for the duration of the crisis and to scrap increases to fuel duty planned for later this year.

Scottish Labour pledge to end NHS ‘mismanagement’ with new workforce plan

Scottish Labour has pledged to end what it called the “wasteful and dangerous mismanagement” of the NHS and deliver a new workforce plan that it says will ensure the health service “has the staff it needs”.

The party pointed to figures showing NHS Scotland has spent more than £635 million on agency nursing and midwifery staff over the last ten years – which it said had been needed to “plug the gaps of SNP failure”.

The stats show that over the same period, agency nurses and midwives worked a total of 13.7 million hours in NHS Scotland.

The party has pledged to “fix the mess” by introducing a 10-year workforce plan linking university places to training posts, jobs and career development, as well as flexible working arrangements to help retain staff and allow experienced staff to stay in work longer.

The party also said it would introduce a new NHS work requirement for Scottish medical, dental and nursing students – so that those who are funded to train in Scotland must work for at least five years in Scotland’s NHS or social care, or pay back their tuition and bursaries.

Scottish Liberal Democrats set out plans to tackle NHS ‘crisis’ and boost health

The Scottish Liberal Democrats have set out a plan they say “tackles the crisis at both the front door and the back door of the NHS”.

The party said that currently too many people cannot get the care they need and that “patient safety is being pushed into the danger zone”.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton set out his party’s proposals to modernise the NHS during a Holyrood election campaign visit to his party’s key target seat of Strathkelvin and Bearsden on Saturday.

The party also proposes changes it says would ensure patients can get swift access to care and would improve people’s health.

These include boosting cancer survival rates by detecting and treating it early, ensuring people are on the right medicines and harnessing the benefits of new technology and digital tools for staff and patients.