Scottish Labour reiterates call for National Care Service following Covid-19 pandemic

Richard Leonard gave a digital keynote speech unveiling his party’s alternative programme for government.

Richard Leonard announced his party's alternative programme for government in a digital speech.

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard has repeated his earlier call for a national care service to be established in Scotland.

As part of speech unveiling his party’s alternative programme for government delivered online, Mr Leonard also announced Scottish Labour plans to invest millions in new housing, transport schemes and electric vehicles.

Among the proposals included 25,000 jobs as part of a national care service, a job guarantee scheme paying the real living wage, and a ban on evictions until the end of the current parliament in May next year.

Mr Leonard also announced policies including 12,000 council homes to be built each year and called on the UK Government to give Holyrood the borrowing powers necessary to pay for the interventions, as well as committing to pay the £800m Scottish Labour claims Scotland would be owed in payments which would have otherwise gone to the EU post-Brexit.

He said: “We have witnessed a new willingness to intervene in areas that many politicians previously would not have touched with a barge-pole and all the time we hear those politicians say that they are doing things differently.

“But there is still far too much that has stayed the same and even where changes have been made, the ground is already being prepared to return to the same old failed normal.

“Those same politicians still rely on the same rigid doctrines and outdated practices which left us unprepared for the public health crisis, unprepared for the education crisis, and unprepared for the economic crisis.

“So today I am issuing a warning to Scotland’s political establishment. Your old ways were never the answer. But the need to break with them is more urgent now than ever. It is time to fight for Scotland’s future.

“And that is the fight that I will lead Scottish Labour into the 2021 elections to win.”

Mr Leonard also said Scottish Labour would commit to expanding Scotland’s bus network by investing £100m in new buses from domestic manufacturers, and repeated a commitment to provide free bus passes for under-25s, a move he said could be extended to all ages.

He also added that Scottish Labour would invest £200m in electric vehicle charging points and said it would establish a £500m Just Transition Fund to help businesses, individuals and the country be zero-carbon by 2045.

The Scottish Labour leader, referencing the Scottish Conservative’s new leader Douglas Ross’ second job as a referee, added: “People want politicians who are on their side, not someone more interested in catching footballers offside.”

However, the Scottish Greens said the announcement was a “carbon copy” of their own green new deal, announced in 2019.

Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater said: “Almost exactly a year since the Scottish Greens published our Scottish Green New Deal, Richard Leonard has produced a carbon copy and attempted to pass it off as his own idea.

"The truth is Scottish Labour have no new ideas. Recycling Scottish Green ideas and trying to pass them off as their own won’t impress the public.

"The people of Scotland know that the way to ensure that the climate crisis goes to the top of the political agenda in Scotland is to reject the Labour party and vote for the Scottish Greens.”

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