General election: Nicola Sturgeon's manifesto pledges

The key points of the Scottish National Party manifesto, launched on Monday by Nicola Sturgeon with the title "Stronger for Scotland", include:

Economy and taxation

• Spending increase of 0.5 per cent a year will enable £140bn additional spending in the economy and public services

• Restoration of 50p tax rate for those earning over £150,000

• Cut in employers' national insurance. Lobby for employers' allowance raised from £2,000 to £6,000

• Bankers' bonus tax

• Mansion tax

Employment and benefits

• Increase minimum wage to £8.70 by 2020

• Crackdown on zero hours contracts

• Opposition to a £3bn cut in disability support

• Retention of a triple lock on pensions

Health

• The SNP will vote for an extra £24bn for the NHS in the UK by 2020-21. That would be equivalent to a real-terms increase of £9.5bn and a total increase for NHS Scotland of £2bn

• No further privatisation of NHS

Defence

• Would scrap Trident nuclear weapons system - £100bn claimed savings to be reinvested in education, child care and NHS

Housing

• Annual UK target of 100,000 affordable homes, and use additional capital investment to deliver a further expansion of housebuilding in Scotland.

• Cut in employers' national insurance contributions to help smaller construction businesses take on and retain additional staff

• Immediate abolition of the spare room subsidy or "bedroom tax"

Miscellaneous

• Protect the winter fuel allowance

• EU referendum proposal that there should be a double majority requirement, whereby each of four constituent nations of the UK would have to vote for withdrawal before the UK as a whole could leave

• Responsibility for broadcasting in Scotland to transfer from Westminster to Holyrood

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation