SWBG blog

We have not received a response from the Conservative and Unionist Party yet

We have not received a response from the Scottish Green Party yet

1. The cost of living continues to rise, impacting the price of basic household goods and  leaving people to struggle to afford food and heat their homes, including those who are working. Our recent women’s survey shows that many women are feeling worse off compared to last year, how do you intend to address this, particularly for families who are working? 

On the cost of living, we know women, and particularly those in working families, are disproportionately affected by rising costs. Our emergency home insulation programme and accelerated rollout of renewable heating are designed to cut bills for households across Scotland. We also support a social tariff to protect the most vulnerable energy consumers, and we want Job Transition Loans of up to £5,000 to help people move into better paid work.

2. We’ve worked with disabled women for a number of years to understand the impacts of the high cost of living. Women we worked with want to hear what actions will your party take to address the inequality experienced by disabled people? 

 On disability and poverty, we are committed to ending long waits for neurodevelopmental assessments, halving the disability employment gap, and supporting Liberal Democrat calls to remove the benefit cap, scrap the bedroom tax and fix the broken statutory sick pay system. Disabled people deserve full participation in economic life, not managed exclusion from it.

3. Women work in and rely on public services to a greater degree, the women we worked with were concerned by what appears to be a lack of accountability in the Scottish public sector. An example they gave was the continued delay to and increasing costs for the Baird hospital in Aberdeen. What will you do to ensure accountability across the public sector? 

 On public sector accountability, your example of the Baird hospital is precisely the kind of failure our proposed Accountability Act is designed to address. We would enshrine the Ministerial Code in legislation, give Parliament the final say over minority governments, and ensure the public can access information about how decisions are made and money is spent.

4. Over recent years, we’ve heard that public finances are tightening and that cuts need to be made. As a result, we are seeing reductions to essential services and increases in charges.  What plans do you have for bringing sustainable change that improves the performance of public services? 

 On sustainable public finances, we would end SNP waste, halve spending on private consultancy, review the quango landscape, and publish a transparent financial strategy. We believe long term investment in prevention is far more cost effective than crisis response.

5. Gender bias in healthcare diagnosis remains a serious concern. The women we have worked alongside have experienced what they term ’medical gaslighting’. What steps will you take to address this inequality? 

 On medical misogyny, this is something I feel strongly about. Our manifesto makes an explicit commitment to ending the dismissal of women’s symptoms, with a special focus on conditions including endometriosis, PCOS, the menopause and hyperemesis. Women must be believed and properly treated.

6. With rising levels of economic inactivity due to health issues, made worse by long waiting times for specialist medical appointments, what steps will you take in the next 12 months to address this?  

 On waiting times and economic inactivity, we would embed 900 additional clinical staff in GP practices and neighbourhood health teams, roll out a national lung cancer screening programme, and establish a rolling ten year NHS workforce plan to get the right staff in the right place.

7. Over the next five years, there will need to be significant investment in responding to climate change. What would your priorities be to ensure the move to Net Zero is a Just Transition and doesn’t further embed inequalities, for example in transport, across Scotland?  

 On a just transition to net zero, we believe this must mean no one is left behind. We would rewrite community benefit rules so local people receive far more of the money generated by renewable energy near them, invest heavily in insulation and clean heating for the coldest homes first, and ensure the skills and transition support needed reaches the workers and communities most affected.

We have not received a response from Reform UK

1. With the rising costs for basic household goods, people are struggling to eat and heat their homes, this particularly affects women, how do you intend to address this including for families who are working?

Under Labour, energy bills are set to be £700 higher than promised, food prices have gone through the roof, UK unemployment has risen to a five-year high, and families across Scotland are paying the price.

We know people are struggling, and we recognise the disproportionate impacts on women, particularly those who have caring responsibilities. That’s why the SNP is resolutely focussed on using the powers of the Scottish Parliament to tackle the cost of living, reduce inequality and support mothers to re-enter the workforce.

Recognising the importance of flexible and affordable childcare for families, our recently published Child Poverty Delivery Plan sets out the action we are taking to tackle the barriers in childcare that too often limit parents’ ability to take up employment, training, or other opportunities.

This includes our cost of living guarantee, which is delivering real savings for hard-pressed households across the country. It goes further than any package offered in the rest of the UK, including 1,140 hours of free, high-quality early learning and childcare, worth around £6,000 and free school meals for thousands of children, including all pupils in P1 to P5.

In 2026-27, the SNP is expanding this package, including a new universal breakfast club offer for primary school aged children and additional funding to extend wrap around activity clubs in the afternoon and early evening. 

And, if re-elected, the SNP will also extend childcare support to every child in Scotland from 9 months old to the end of Primary School. Backed by over half a billion pounds of new investment, the SNP has promised to deliver this landmark package by the end of the next Parliament

The brand-new childcare system will fit around families rather than expecting families to fit around the system, with childcare provided beyond school term time through the summer holidays, 52 weeks a year. Every single Scottish family with a child under 12 will benefit from this policy - from £1,400 up to and over £11,000, dependent on need.

Our Best Start Foods payment is supporting people to buy healthy foods during pregnancy and when their child is under 3. It part of the five family payments provided by Social Security Scotland which are worth around £25,000 by the time a child turns 16, compared with less than £2,000 in England and Wales.

But we are not stopping there. If re-elected, the SNP will take a public health intervention to establish statutory price ceilings on a basket of 20 to 50 essential food items at large supermarkets, such as bread, milk and eggs. This will provide tangible relief to families struggling with grocery bills, ensuring that necessities for a balanced diet remain affordable.

2. Disabled households are at particular risk of experiencing poverty. What actions will your party take to address the inequality experienced by disabled people?  

The SNP is committed to improving the lives of disabled people across Scotland and putting their experiences and concerns at the heart of policymaking. That’s why we published the Disability Equality Plan, backed by £2.5 million investment, which builds on our human rights-based approach to strengthening support for disabled people. Under the Plan, the SNP in government is progressing its Improving Access Fund, which aims to strengthen access to essential services and projects that disabled people rely on.

We understand the pressures facing disabled households and we are committed to helping with living costs. That’s why we are investing £7.2 billion in devolved benefits in 2026-27 and continuing to offer the following support:

• Adult Disability Payment - money towards helping people who have a long-term illness or a disability that affects their everyday life.
• Child Disability Payment - extra money to help with the costs of caring for a child with a disability or ill-health condition. 
• Pension Age Disability Payment - extra money to help people who have reached State Pension age and have care needs because of a disability or long term ill-health condition.
• Scottish Adult Disability Living Allowance - extra money to help meet the additional costs of living with a disability or health condition.

The SNP also recognises the vital work of Disabled People’s Organisations, and that’s why we will deliver a £3.5 million 3-year settlement for this sector, giving them greater certainty to plan their services.

3. Women work in and rely on public services to a greater degree, the women we worked with were concerned by what appears to be a lack of accountability in the Scottish public sector. An example they gave was the continued delay to and increasing costs for the Baird hospital in Aberdeen. What will you do to ensure accountability across the public sector? 

The SNP in government is undertaking a programme of public service reform to ensure our public services are inclusive, sustainable, and effective in improving people’s outcomes.

The SNP recognise that our current system of accountability does not enable the ways of working we want to see and we must fundamentally rethink how we hold organisations and leaders to account. We need to empower leaders to operate with appropriate control and monitoring, but within a framework that enables them to act and take risks while creating the right incentives for change.

As committed to in our in our Public Service Reform Strategy, the SNP in government is reviewing Scotland’s wellbeing framework - the National Performance Framework (NPF). We have developed draft NPF proposals which aim to ensure a clear connection between outcomes, ways of working and accountability across Scotland. The reformed NPF will act as the unifying framework, setting direction for all public service strategies and informing decision-making by providing a stable long-term anchor against which priorities, investment and performance can be tested.

Meanwhile, the SNP in government has been progressing improvements to the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) in Scotland and recently set out the actions we will take to December 2029. This includes actions to enhance leadership, capability and capacity in the private sector, with a focus on sharing good practice and tackling inequality.

The SNP have committed to re-designing our approach to accountability across Scotland’s public sector to enable collaboration, and the investment of resources and capacity in collectively achieving priority outcomes. We will engage closely with Audit Scotland and other scrutiny partners to build on their expertise and work closely with colleagues across the system to deliver the necessary change. This will align to the work to develop a new monitoring and accountability framework with local government, as set out in the Verity House Agreement.

We will also undertake a review of reporting and scrutiny requirements on Scottish Government and public bodies to improve efficiency and effectiveness and ensure a focus on outcomes that aligns with the refreshed NPF.

4. Over recent years, we’ve heard that public finances are tightening and that cuts need to be made. As a result, we are seeing reductions to essential services and increases in charges.  What plans do you have for bringing sustainable change that improves the performance of public services? 

A decade and a half of Westminster imposed austerity, coupled with high inflation, has significantly eroded the value of our Block Grant funding. In addition, an ageing population and strong global economic headwinds have left our public services having to meet growing demand within those increasingly challenging settlements.

Meanwhile, UK Government decisions have led to constraints on Scotland’s budget - including the near £400m shortfall in funding due to Labours decision to increase Employer National Insurance contributions.

These fiscal constraints emphasise the urgent need to improve the delivery of public services that are designed around the needs and interests of the people and communities of Scotland. The SNP will continue our work to shift spend to areas of prevention, to deliver efficiencies, to join up and further integrate services and to transform the service delivery landscape, taking forward work in our public service reform strategy.

Our 2026-27 Budget offers a new approach to public services, with new high street GP walk-in centres an example of us thinking differently to ensure that much-needed services are accessible. Work will also be taken forward to develop a new approach to supporting individuals with complex care needs to move out of hospital, and to reduce inappropriate hospital admissions and out-of-area placements by providing tailored, community-based support solutions.

The Budget also includes funding to deliver more efficient services across our public sector, with £29.9 million of funding to support the invest to save programme in the year ahead. Alongside our public service reform strategy and portfolio efficiency plans, the Budget supports the Government’s efforts to deliver better services for the people of Scotland.

The SNP recognise the need for continued public service reform to ensure that resources are focused where they make the biggest difference and positively impact on outcomes. If re-elected, we are committed to building on this progress.

5. Gender bias in healthcare diagnosis remains a serious concern. The women we have worked alongside have experienced what they term ‘medical gaslighting’. What steps will you take to address this inequality? 

Addressing health inequalities faced by women is key priority for the SNP, which is why Scotland was the first country in the UK to publish an ambitious Women’s Health Plan. Informed by the experiences of women and girls nationwide, Phase Two published in January this year sets out new action focusing on:

•  gynaecology transformation, eliminating cervical cancer and brain health priorities
• better research, data and information on women’s health
• prevention and early intervention throughout women’s lives
• improving menopause and menstrual health, including endometriosis, and
• supporting sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing.

Improving health outcomes for women and girls is not only about services but also about culture change. Women and girls should not feel that they have to fight to be heard or struggle to access timely and appropriate healthcare.

The SNP therefore believes a whole government approach is vital to ensure that the specific health needs of women and girls are met across all aspects of their lives. Phase Two of the Women’s Health Plan reiterates the SNP’s commitment to seeing that through.

6. With rising levels of economic inactivity due to health issues, made worse by long waiting times for specialist medical appointments, what steps will you take in the next 12 months to address this?  

The SNP in government has delivered record investment of £21 billion for health and social care, with £135.5 million of additional funding targeted at specialty areas with the longest waits. The latest figures demonstrate real and sustained progress in reducing waiting times for patients across Scotland, with new outpatient waits over a year having dropped by more than 63% since July 2025, while thousands more operations and procedures are being carried out.

We continue to see downward trends across nearly all waiting list indicators and diagnostic activity is up, meaning that thousands more people are getting their MRIs, scans and scopes quicker. The SNP also remains committed to ensuring no patient waits longer than 52 weeks.

The SNP have put a plan in place to drive down long waits and improve our NHS. The consistent month-on-month improvement we are seeing demonstrates that that plan is paying off and Scotland’s NHS is turning a corner. But there is more work to be done, and we are determined to see our plan through.

As set out in our manifesto, the SNP, if re-elected, will implement the National Plan for Gynaecology, backed by £13 million of investment to reduce waits. We will also recognise endometriosis as a chronic, long-term condition to ensure women get the support they need as early as possible.

We will keep driving improvements in our NHS – that is what people will get from the SNP if we are re-elected on 7 May.

7. Over the next five years, there will need to be significant investment in responding to climate change. What would your priorities be to ensure the move to Net Zero is a Just Transition and doesn’t further embed inequalities, for example in transport, across Scotland?  

The SNP is committed to achieving net zero in a way that distributes the costs and benefits fairly, and which tackles inequality and injustice. We recognise that without targeted interventions, the transition could reinforce existing inequalities experienced by protected groups, including women. We believe that if Scotland’s transition to net zero is indeed going to be just, we need women in the driving seat too.

That’s why the SNP is delivering the Pathways Fund and the South of Scotland Enterprise pre-start regional pilot, helping more women and people from under-represented groups start their own businesses. Meanwhile, the Techscaler programme, our £42 million national programme for creating, developing and scaling tech start-ups, has active partnerships with organisations explicitly focused on supporting female entrepreneurship, such as AccelerateHER. It works in partnership to run hackathons and focused development events to address challenges such as reducing carbon emissions and advancing clean technologies, providing a platform for female-led ventures in clean energy, transport and legal tech. 

Today’s young people are the entrepreneurs of the future. The SNP’s Young STEM Leader Programme gives young people in Scotland the chance to become STEM role models and to inspire their peers to develop an interest. That is key when it comes to inspiring women to get involved. It is important that we retain the skills and talent of women and girls in STEM jobs once we have sparked that interest, and we are funding Equate Scotland, through the equality and human rights fund, to support women’s recruitment to, retention in, return to and success in STEM jobs, where they are significantly underrepresented.

These are just some of the measures the SNP is taking to ensure that the transition to net zero does not further embed inequalities across Scotland. If re-elected in May, we are committed to building on this momentum.