Scottish Parliament Election 2026 Party Manifestos

Universities and funding

- Maintain free university tuition
- Cost-of-living increase to the paramedic bursary and student nurse and midwife bursary by at least inflation
- £300,000 Islands Scholarship to support access to postgraduate study for learners from Scotland’s islands
- Retain free tuition for Scottish students but examine alternative systems
- Tackle the default assumption that university is the best option for young people
- Introduce a Skills Bill to link universities, colleges and businesses to address skills shortages
- Maintain free tuition for Scotland’s undergraduates
- Work with partners on a future funding and governance model to make higher education more sustainable
- Support research capacity in Scottish universities
- Oppose any attempt to introduce tuition fees for Scottish students
- Oppose the marketisation of higher education and work with the sector to find a sustainable funding model for universities
- Suspend interest payments on student loans during maternity and parental leave
- Encourage universities to widen access by undertaking outreach work in schools in disadvantaged areas
- Work towards a consensus about the future funding of colleges and universities
- Create the conditions for Scottish universities to successfully compete for UK-wide research funding
- Review university funding to ensure degrees are grounded in academic merit over ‘EDI or sustainability metrics’.
- Direct more school-leavers away from university and into trades via technical college

Colleges, Apprenticeships and Skills

- 150,000 apprenticeships over the parliament term
- Continue 10-year infrastructure plan to modernise college campuses
- Introduce an Apprenticeship Accelerator Grant for businesses to hire more apprentices
- Increase college funding so that it matches 2021-22 levels, adjusted for inflation
- Allow colleges to borrow more to invest in facilities and courses offered to students
- Set up a new fund to increase support for apprenticeships
- Reform college funding so that it is longer term and linked to employment and apprenticeship outcomes
- Create Apprenticeship Centres of Excellence in colleges, and introduce ‘taster apprenticeships’
- Simplify vocational qualifications to create lifelong learning pathways
- Support colleges to maximise income from the private sector without undermining the needs of students and communities
- New Deal for Apprenticeships with fair pay, adult entry routes and recognition of prior learning
- Increase the number of reserved places for students and staff on college boards
- Securely fund colleges, giving them more freedom to innovate, borrow and keep surpluses
- Treat apprenticeships on part with university and college courses, and reorganise apprenticeship funding
- Strengthen careers advice and links with employers in colleges
- ‘First Job Passport’ for young people to move from school into further education, apprenticeships, training or employment
- Establish an Adult Re-Skilling Taskforce focussed on life-long learning and helping out-of-work adults into jobs
- Guarantee every penny of the Apprenticeship Levy is invested into apprenticeships linked to colleges

International students and migration

- Call for a Scottish Visa scheme to deliver an immigration policy that works for Scotland
- Encourage more migration to Scotland, initially focused on key target business growth sectors
- Welcome and support refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland
- Reverse the policy of giving free bus passes to asylum seekers
- Prioritise local people over asylum seekers when assessing homelessness and social housing applications
- End taxpayer funding for translation services used by Social Security Scotland for people receiving benefits
- Support passporting of skills for refugees to help skilled and highly qualified individuals find work
- Expand the availability of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses for refugees
- Aid matching scheme so government contributions to international development can donate public donations
- Pressure the UK Government to enhance and expand the post-study work visa programme
- Support scholarships for Palestinian and Ukrainian students
- Call on the UK Government to end the policy of no resource to public funds for migrants to the UK
- Report international student flows separately to estimates of long-term migration
- Make the most of the return to Erasmus Plus
- Allow asylum seekers to work if they have been waiting for a decision for more than three months
- Oppose accepting ‘uncontrolled’ immigration
- Oppose ‘woke’ policies on immigration
- Require a local connection in Scotland to be able to apply for council housing

Cost of Living, Employment and the Economy

- Cap the prices of essential food items such as bread, milk and eggs
- Ensure majority of income taxpayers continue to pay less tax than if they lived in the rest of the UK
- Extend childcare support to every child from 9 months to the end of primary school, 52 weeks a year
- Lower income tax to 19p in the pound for low- and middle-income households
- Raise the threshold at which you start paying income tax, and raise the threshold at which the higher rate is paid
- Reduce business rates for companies
- No income tax rises for five years, with the ambition to lower taxes
- Prevent above-inflation hikes to water bills
- Increase the value of tax-free childcare so it is worth £3,000 per child
- Scrap council tax and replace it with a residential property tax based on the value of the property
- Provide a hardship fund for students during the summer and enable students to rebalance bursary and loan payments
- Make Fair Work First conditions mandatory for any company in receipt of public money to limit exploitative practices
- Ensure that students and apprentices receive help with the cost-of-living crisis, through the student support system.
- Job Transition Loan worth up to £5,000 to support people reskill
- Reform council tax and the business rates system
- Reduce Scotland’s income tax bands from six to three, and set each tax rate at 1p below the UK rate
- Abolish ‘cliff edges’ in the tax system that cause people to lose out on benefits
- Cancel planned increases to council tax

The NHS, Health and Wellbeing

- £200m investment in NHS per year to tackle waiting times
- More new GP walk-in clinics across Scotland
- Expand 24/7 mental health support, roll out Mental Health Triage Cars and deliver five new drop-in mental health hubs
- Increase NHS funding above inflation every year of the next Scottish Parliament
- Guarantee a GP appointment within 48 hours.
- Walk-in mental health hubs to help those with mental health conditions get the support they need
- Reduce NHS waiting times by using all available healthcare capacity, including elsewhere in the UK or in the private sector
- Guarantee a GP appointment within 48 hours and deliver online bookings of GP appointments
- Create a new mental health response service so people in crisis get NHS care, not a police response
- Hire more GPs to ensure one GP for every 1,000 patients and the availability of 15-minute appointments
- Cost-of-living increase to the student nurse bursary and extend it to all student allied health professionals
- End all charges for dental treatment and gradually bring dental practices fully into NHS ownership
- Improve access to GPs and embed 900 extra NHS staff in GP practices to reduce waiting times
- Roll out a comprehensive NHS App, which patients can use to book, move and cancel appoints
- Provide new walk-in services to meet the needs of people in mental health distress or crisis
- Establish a Scottish Healthcare Reform Commission, while committing to keeping the NHS free at the point of need
- Expand frontline services in the community and in GP surgeries
- Embrace tech including AI and the NHS England App

Housing and Renting

- Up to £10,000 to help first-time buyers get on the housing ladder, and remove land transfer fees for under-30s
- Give private renters a period of first refusal to buy a property they rent when the owner puts it up for sale
- Reform the law to enable repairs, maintenance and enhancement of tenement properties
- Scrap rent controls
- Abolish tax on buying a home for people purchasing a primary residence
- Scrap regulations and levies to make it easier and cheaper to build new homes
- 125,000 new houses, including 52,300 affordable homes, by 2031
- Build over 20,000 mid-market rent homes, which save tenants an average of £2,700 off market rates
- Save first-time buyers £1,100 by reforming Land and Business Transaction Tax
- Strengthen rent controls, including by introducing rent controls on student accommodation
- Make it easier for councils to block the use of land for student accommodation instead of long-term homes
- Build at least 15,700 more social homes each year between now and 2031
- Build an average of 25,000 homes each year
- Help-to-Renovate loan scheme to bring neglected properties back into use
- Reform planning to make it simpler to redevelop long-term derelict buildings
- Repeal regulations for all new private tenancies, while keeping the terms of existing tenancies
- Introduce a rent-to-buy model for young people, first-time buyers and working families
- Build a 15,000 new homes a year for the next five years

Transport and Travel

- £2 nationwide cap of all single bus journeys
- Maintain the ban on peak rail fares
- Support roll-on roll-off ferry service from Scotland to Europe
- Better integrate public transport and improve bus connectivity between small towns, rural areas and major cities
- Abolish and oppose any targets that aim to reduce the use of cars in Scotland
- Oppose attempts to increase taxes on air travel and lower air travel tax for long-haul flights
- Maintain free bus travel for under-22s and older people, and bring local bus services back under public control
- No return to peak rail fares, continue rail electrification and improve connectivity between cities
- Deliver integrated smart ticketing across Scotland between rail and bus
- Expand free bus travel to everyone resident in Scotland, starting immediately with under 30s
- Introduce an integrated ticketing system with daily caps for all public transport journeys
- Expand the National Cycle Network and support councils to deliver active travel infrastructure quickly and efficiently
- Nationwide tap-and-go transport system using only your phone or bank card
- Introduce a ‘Transport for London’ style model to give communities control of when and where their buses go
- Increase late night rail services and open new stations
- Abolish low emission zones
- Support and invest in bus corridors in major cities
- 10-year plan to upgrade major trunk roads

Climate, the Environment and Energy

- Achieve net zero by 2045 and support people and businesses through a £500m Just Transition fund
- Support homeowners, landlords and talent to transition to clean heating in a fair and affordable way
- £15 million to support community ownership of renewable energy projects
- Abolish target to reach net zero by 2045
- Overhaul energy policy so the main objective is to lower costs for households and businesses, rather than reaching net zero
- Scrap the carbon tax, carbon price support schemes and renewable energy subsidies
- Achieve net zero by 2045
- Supporting expansion of renewable energy in Scotland by cutting decision times and reforming planning
- Support nuclear energy projects
- £600 million investment programme in onshore and offshore wind, tidal and solar
- Fully funded worker-led transition plans to support every community to move away from fossil fuel dependence
- Oppose new fossil fuel and nuclear developments in Scotland
- Accelerate roll-out of climate-friendly heating, including heat pumps and district heating
- Ensure local people get more of the money made from energy projects near them
- Work with colleges and employers to double the training of heating engineers to install heat pumps and renewable tech
- Scrap all net zero related targets and subsidies
- Use North Sea gas as Scotland’s primary energy source
- Stop building offshore wind farms and ‘massive’ solar and battery farms

Rights, Equality and Liberation

- Transition to Adulthood Guarantee for all disabled young people to offer support to plan and achieve goals
- Ensure LGBTQI+ people have equal access to public services, including improved access to inclusive healthcare
- Introduce legislation to permanently end conversion practices
- Ban ‘woke’ roles within the public sector, such as dedicated diversity and inclusion officers
- Scrap the Scottish Government’s guidance that encourages the teaching of ‘gender ideology’ in schools
- Require all public sector bodies to have ‘single-sex’ spaces
- Close the disability pay gap, including by reforming employability support
- Ban conversion practices on a four-nation basis
- Deliver single-sex spaces on the basis of ‘biological sex’ in NHS wards, schools, sport and everyday life
- Introduce a Human Rights Bill recognising economic, social and cultural rights
- Embed rights of disabled people, older people, women, members of faith groups, migrants, gypsy, roma and traveller communities, and LGBT+ people
- Comprehensive ban on conversion therapy covering all settings
- Resist any attempts to repeal or weaken human rights legislation in the UK
- Ban all forms of conversion therapies and practices in partnership with the UK Government
- Work towards a four-nations consensus on addressing the ‘shortcomings’ of the gender recognition process
- Scrap hate crime legislation to ‘restore freedom of speech’ and allow police to focus on ‘real crime’
- Oppose ‘woke policies’ on gender

Society, Democracy and Young People

- Hold a referendum on Scottish independence
- Restore Scotland’s membership of the EU as an independent nation
- Oppose nuclear weapons and their location in Scotland
- Improve government transparency and give whistleblowers a place to expose state failings
- Introduce a Recall Bill to allow the public to sack MSPs who have broken the rules or are failing to do their job
- Ban prisoners from voting in Scottish Parliament elections
- Pass a Local Democracy Act to give people more of a say over how public services in their areas run
- Consult on giving Scottish regions the right to create regional mayors
- Support efforts to build closer relationships with the EU
- Campaign for independence and call for devolution of taxation, workers’ rights, energy, migration and foreign affairs
- Continue four-day week pilots in the public sector, and support greater take up of four-day week in the private sector
- Automate voter registration starting in schools, colleges and universities
- Support a written constitution for the UK
- Change the voting system Scottish Parliament elections to single transferrable vote (STV)
- Introduce an Accountability Act to reduce government scandal and drive up standards
- Reduce constituency MSP numbers from 73 to 57
- 10-year reviews of devolved and reserved powers between the Scottish and UK parliaments
- Department of government efficiency to cut waste and duplication and taxpayer funded ‘lobbyist’ charities

Scottish Parliament Election 2026 Party Manifestos

Political parties have published their manifestos for the 2026 Scottish Parliament Election

Click a section below to see what the different parties are pledging in each area.

Universities and funding

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

Colleges, Apprenticeships and Skills

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

International students and migration

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

Cost of Living, Employment and the Economy

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

The NHS, Health and Wellbeing

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

Housing and Renting

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

Transport and Travel

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

Climate, the Environment and Energy

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

Rights, Equality and Liberation

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

Society, Democracy and Young People

SNP

Scottish Conservatives

Scottish Labour

Scottish Greens

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Reform UK

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