‘Once the crisis has passed Scots should choose our future’

The last year has been tough for all of us.

Over that period, I have fully dedicated myself to steering Scotland through the global pandemic.

The SNP’s manifesto for this election is truly transformational in its ambition.

It includes plans to remobilise our NHS, with an increase in frontline spending of at least 20%, meaning £2.5bn in additional investment to help increase capacity and enhance our NHS for the future.

We’ll also restore fully the principle of a free NHS by working with dentists to reform funding and remove NHS dental charges.

We’ll build on our new Scottish Child Payment...by increasing the age threshold to every school-age child in receipt of free school meals, and double the payments themselves to £20 a week over the parliament.

We’ll support ideas that can transform how we live like a minimum income guarantee and pilot four-day working.

We will invest an additional £500 million to support new, green jobs and re-skill people for the jobs of the future.

We will invest over £33bn in infrastructure projects over the next five years, supporting around 45,000 jobs.

All of our investments will have tackling the climate emergency at its heart. Scotland may be a relatively small country, but it can play – and is playing – a big part in global efforts to reduce emissions.

There is so much ambition in our manifesto – and the SNP will never place any limits on our ambitions for Scotland.

But it is the case that, for as long as key decisions about our lives are taken at Westminster, Scotland will be held back.

Scotland’s recovery must be in our hands and when the immediate crisis has passed, the people of Scotland should get to choose our future, with the option of a better future for independence.