Fight for votes on schools and homes

Tories and Labour mark out key election areas

LABOUR and the Tories will today go head-to-head in a race for centreground votes as the Holyrood election campaign gets under way.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale will unveil a radical new policy that would see a £3,000 hand-out for young savers to help them secure a deposit for their first home.

The £103million plan would benefit those with disposable incomes and would involve cash originally earmarked to reverse tax credit cuts for poorer Scots – which are no longer going ahead – in a clear demonstration that Labour wants to win back the ‘aspirational’ classes.

And Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has launched a bid to win over ‘aspirational’ parents by pledging to improve state education so that families do not have to move catchment areas or consider paying private fees to find a good school.

New policies to tackle ‘ bog standard’ schools include handing control over budgets and recruitment to head teachers, rather than councils, and national tests for pupils at P1, P4 and P7.

Strategists in both parties believe that the centre-ground is the main battlefield for May’s election, particularly middle-income families who voted No in the independence referendum and are hostile to Nicola Sturgeon’s support for higher taxes. Labour insiders are also desperately concerned that they could finish in a humiliating third place behind the Conservatives.

All polls point to a comfortable victory for the SNP, and Miss Sturgeon will today use a Holyrood speech to call for a ‘great, ambitious and thriving debate’. She will pledge to put education at the heart of her campaign, despite already saying that she wants a ‘renewed debate’ on independence.

Miss Dugdale will say in a speech in Edinburgh today: ‘Existing interventions to help people buy their own home have been welcome but scarcely match the scale of the problem. Something has to give or this generation may never catch up, may never recover what they lost out on. Aspiration will simply pass them by.

‘So we will take bold action to begin to set that right. Not just a break from austerity for my generation, but a boost for aspiration.’

The money for her proposal would come from reversing SNP plans to make family holidays cheaper by cutting Air Passenger Duty. First Time Buyer ISAs already exist which come with a 25 per cent top up from the UK Government, and the Labour plan would extend this to include another £3,000 after three years for those who have saved around £1,000 every year.

Only 28 per cent of 16 to 34-year-olds have a mortgage, down from 48 per cent at the dawn of devolution in 1999.

But SNP Social Justice Secretary Alex Neil said: ‘As we emerge from the recession, first-time buyers are rising under the SNP government, with the latest figures showing a 4 per cent increase in the last quarter and a 16 per cent increase in the last year.’

On the education battlefront, Miss Davidson said: ‘I can’t be satisfied... with a school system until it meets the aspirations of all parents, no matter their background.

‘In short, it is time for us to rise up against the bog standard comprehensive and work towards gold standard schools in every village, town and city in Scotland.’

Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said: ‘The last five years... have been dominated by independence. The next five should be dominated by a bright, green and liberal programme.’

STILL shell-shocked from a bruising referendum campaign, Scottish voters must steel themselves for another onslaught from political parties, this time seeking their vote in May’s Holyrood election.

Labour and the Tories are already out to catch the eye in the key areas of housing and schooling.

But the fact remains that the SNP rides high, complacently telling itself its poll lead is an endorsement of its competence in government.

But as Graham Grant points out elsewhere on this page, SNP governance in many pivotal areas leaves much to be desired.

Voters’ spirits will have sunk at Nicola Sturgeon’s declaration that – rather than concentrate on areas as vital as justice and the NHS – she intends to pursue a ‘renewed debate’ on independence.

For the SNP knows that if it can keep its independence agenda bubbling along, it can count on a separatist bloc vote no matter how poor its Holyrood record.

There’s more than a touch of hypocrisy about it all, just as there is over our disclosures today on Nationalist MP Lisa Cameron’s property empire.

It was, ultimately, built on the back of buy-to-let – a policy she and her party have been keen to denigrate.

Yet again the SNP says one thing while doing quite another.