Scottish Socialist Party Policies

End Poverty Pay: Pay, Hours and Conditions We Can Live On

Learn more: demand action on the cost of living crisis

Living costs are running out of control – but working-class incomes have remained stagnant for years. Wages, social security, and pensions are not keeping pace with inflation.

In real terms, that is a pay cut for millions of workers. We need to end poverty pay in Scotland to fight the cost of living crisis.

The SSP demands pay rises for workers that at the very least compensate for years of wage stagnation – restorative pay rises that reflect the cost of living.

The SSP also campaigns for a higher minimum wage of two-thirds of the male median earnings, rising with inflation – for all workers over 16, without discriminatory age banding and without apprenticeship loopholes.

Zero hour contracts and other forms of precarious employment are a major cause of poverty pay in Scotland. We can’t afford to live on low hours and casualised employment. The SSP is fighting for 16-hour-per-week minimum contracts for every worker who wants one.

The SSP strongly opposes any and all attacks on pensions, and condemns the removal of the “triple lock”.

Fight Fuel Poverty

The fuel poverty crisis is a cost of living crisis.

From 1 April 2022, our energy bills are rising by an average of £700 – a price hike that working-class people just can’t afford. As many as one in three households in Scotland already experience fuel poverty. At the same time, private energy companies made £750 in profit every second in 2021.

No one should have to choose between a warm meal and a warm home.

The SSP calls for an emergency programme to retrofit existing homes and public buildings – without cost to tenants. Retrofitting 2.62 million dwellings and 20,000 public buildings with insulation, draught-proofing, replacing old boilers with eco-friendly ones, and installing high-speed broadband nationwide will cut fuel poverty and emissions, improve living standards and health outcomes, and deliver a bounty of new, skilled jobs and apprenticeships.

Insulating and draught-proofing houses and public buildings, and replacing inefficient boilers, could cut energy use by 40% – cutting bills, emissions, and poverty in one, while creating new jobs and apprenticeships across Scotland.

Private energy barons hold a monopoly on the supply of energy in Scotland, including renewables. Big polluters like Shell and BP receive more in subsidies than they pay in taxes, despite soaring profits. Scotland is an energy-rich country; it can afford to end fuel poverty, or continue to subsidise private profiteering – but we can’t do both.

We need democratic public ownership of energy production and supply in Scotland. The SSP supports the creation of a National Energy Company to direct an energy policy that is for people, not for profit.

Free Public Transport

We face catastrophic climate crises, rampant poverty, and growing inequality. We all rely on public transport in some form. That means we need a free public transport system fit for the 21st century.

Many working-class people have no access to a car – but we all need the ability to get around.

Privatisation and deregulation of public transport services have resulted in soaring fares, job losses, and cuts to essential services in local communities around the country. Public transport should be a public service, not a money-making machine for a handful of millionaire capitalist owners who make a packet out of the privatisation racket.

Needless competition between rival privatised bus companies creates traffic chaos. Train timetables are being slashed, and ticket offices shut. Fares are rising beyond people’s reach, leaving the poorest in terrible social isolation. Ferry services face chaos due to ageing ferries.

For over 20 years, the SSP has pioneered the fight for a vastly expanded, integrated, free public transport system – when every other political party opposed the idea. SSP MSPs introduced a free public transport Bill to Holyrood in 2006.

COP26 delegates were given the benefit of free public transport, while the public were left with rip-off fares and unreliable services. If free public transport is good enough for COP26, it’s good enough for all of us.

Free public transport fights poverty and pollution together by reducing car dependency and improving accessibility for everyone. Free public transport and expanded service provision bring communities together and tackle loneliness and isolation. It also brings improved access to job opportunities, public services, retail, sports, hospitality, and leisure – returning on the public investment by boosting our economy right when it needs it most.

Cap, Cut, and Control Rents

The Scottish Socialist Party demands the building of 100,000 new, environmentally friendly, council homes for social rent, and for restoring an adequate surplus of safe, suitable, and affordable social housing in all regions.

Multiple and for-profit homeownership strips away residential housing options and raises prices. The Scottish Socialist Party believes that a home is a human right – not an opportunity to profit.

Rent is rocketing across Scotland, but incomes are stagnant – or falling. But the SNP/Green coalition government has pushed rent controls back to 2025 – breaking their promise to Scotland’s tenants, leaving plenty of time for rents to climb and climb, and to water-down plans in favour of landlords.

We’ve had enough broken promises. We need to cut and cap rent at affordable levels through emergency intervention in the housing crisis – and we need rent controls NOW. The SSP will cap private rent at an affordable percentage of income.

Housing debt and arrears should be cancelled with no strings attached.

Scrap Council Tax

The Scottish Socialist Party will scrap and replace the unfair Council Tax.

The Council Tax puts an unfair, higher burden on lower earners whilst lightening the tax bills of the very richest in our society. It is the government’s gift to the already wealthy.

In 2022, the Scottish Government’s Council Tax freeze will end. In every part of Scotland, the predictions are for substantial hikes. With similar hikes in energy bills, rent, and shopping costs – and no change in wages – this year promises to heap substantial extra costs on working-class households.

In 2019, households in Scotland were facing a combined Council Tax debt of at least £6.9 million. As Council Tax and living costs rise again, so too will Council Tax debt. Council Tax debt should be written off.

The Scottish Socialist Party will replace the regressive Council Tax with the progressive Scottish Service Tax. The Scottish Service Tax is pegged to household incomes, not outdated property values. By linking tax bills to the ability to pay, we lift the burden from those worst hit by the Council Tax.

Demand a No Cuts Budget

The Scottish Socialist Party demands a No Cuts Budget across Scotland.

We know that Tory Westminster government has slashed Scotland’s budget. But Holyrood should not agree to pass on cuts to local authorities. Councillors should not agree to pass on cuts to communities and services.

Discredited austerity is a political choice, whether it be in Westminster, Holyrood, or local councils. Instead, we need organisation and mobilisation to defy all cuts and win back the stolen billions.

We can conservatively calculate that replacing the regressive Council Tax with the Scottish Service Tax will raise £4.1 billion. That’s an additional £1.7 billion raised for schools, jobs, and local services all whilst still lowering bills for the majority.

Scotland is being robbed by PFI. Audit Scotland have found that “the Scottish public sector will make payments worth over four times the capital value of the assets built (over £40 billion) with £27 billion still to be paid between now and 2047/48”.

That means taxpayers are paying the private sector far too much for new infrastructure developments – and we’re paying that bill in the form of spending cuts, job losses, and a cost of living crisis. We must renegotiate rip-off PFI contracts to free up billions to tackle the cost of living crisis.

We need redistributive, progressive systems of taxation in Scotland to stop runaway inequality and act on the cost of living crisis. The SSP demands a “Windfall Tax” on pandemic profiteers, as well as higher taxes on wealth and corporate profits.

A Higher Minimum Wage for Workers Over 16

Learn more: A Higher Minimum Wage

Most people in Scotland who are in poverty are in employed households on minimum wage incomes.

Despite soaring living costs, wages have remained static – especially for those on low-wage incomes and in the most precarious jobs. Workers on low-wage incomes simply cannot afford to save for a rainy day when every penny that comes in must go straight out again.

Millions of workers are living in precarious, hand-to-mouth conditions with little to no savings. Even before the pandemic, 38% of people in Scotland had savings below £2,500 – 21% had no savings at all. The result is poverty, debt, misery, and economic decline.

As living costs run out of control and jobs come under threat, it is set to get worse.

Poverty pay comes from low wages, precarious jobs, and inadequate hours. We need to act to end poverty pay conditions in Scotland.

The SSP campaigns for a statutory minimum wage set at two-thirds of the male median earnings, rising with inflation.

In April 2022, the UK’s minimum wage band rates will increase by an average of just 48p. But the cost of living in the UK is skyrocketing. This means that millions of workers are facing a real-terms pay cut, leaving them unable to afford transport, food, and essential utilities.

Scotland’s voluntary Living Wage rate of £9.50 an hour is completely inadequate.

Instead, we need to raise wages to a level that workers can live on – and keep it scaled to reflect future changes in the cost of living.

The SSP supports a public audit of small and medium enterprises to determine which can afford the new minimum rate without state assistance, with assistance offered to those genuinely in need.

We fully support Trade Unions and workers fighting for an immediate £15 per hour pay in their sectors.

The SSP supports an equal minimum wage rate for all workers over 16.

Under the current wage rules, younger workers and apprentices can be paid around half of that of workers over the age of 23 – less pay for the same work.

From April 2022, under 18s and apprentices are entitled to a rate of just £4.81 an hour. That’s often not even enough to pay for the bus.

Age bands are legalised discrimination that exploits younger workers with the least amount of bargaining power – and which drives down everyone’s wages, as employers are incentivized to exploit younger workers and discard older ones.

A new minimum wage for Scotland must set a single base rate of pay for all workers over 16.

Guaranteed Minimum Hours: End Zero Hours

Learn more: Guarantee Minimum Hours

Poverty pay isn’t just about wages – it’s also about hours.

81,000 workers in Scotland are employed on zero hours contracts.

Zero hours and other low-hour contracts leave workers without the guarantee of paying work, and without the same rights and protections afforded to workers with secure contracts.

Contracts of this sort require workers to be on-call, unpaid, ready to work at a moment’s notice, but without minimum or maximum hour guarantees. Workers who decline hours are frequently punished with reduced offers of work – and half of all workers on zero hours can be sacked without statutory processes.

Precarious contracts have become a growing norm in more and more sectors of the economy, plaguing workplaces in education, social care, healthcare, leisure, hospitality, and retail. Far from offering workers short-term flexibility, they only offer long-term uncertainty.

Precarious hours make it impossible to plan and run your own life. Unpredictable incomes make it impossible to budget and meet the bills.

Not everyone wants or can hold a full-time job. Flexibility is an increasingly important part of working life, with more time for care duties, travel, and a healthier work/life balance.

But, right now, all the power to dictate our hours and our lives rests with employers. The balance of power in the workplace and labour market needs to be tipped in favour of the workers.

The SSP is fighting to end zero hours contracts, and will instead guarantee contracts with a 16-hour minimum working week for every worker who wants one.

Companies will be obligated to offer workers at least a 16-hour week minimum contract.

That includes an opt-out clause for individual workers who require fewer than 16 hours – to be negotiated with Trade Union representation for every affected worker.

This will give genuine flexibility to workers who cannot take on full-time employment, but who need and deserve stability and certainty.

Repeal Anti-Trade Union Laws

Learn more: Build fighting Trade Unions

The Scottish Socialist Party is a party of workers – rooted in working-class struggle. We firmly support organised workers in Trade Unions fighting for jobs, pay, and conditions.

Trade Unions are the largest civil society organisation in Scotland, with the potential to drive forward change that tackles poverty, inequality, exploitation, and the climate crisis together.

For the working-class, Trade Unions are an essential democratic space – to organise, to learn, and to act. There cannot be a functioning democracy without unimpeded, member-led Trade Unions.

But the UK has some of the worst, most repressive, and therefore most undemocratic anti-Trade Union laws in Europe.

We need to build fighting Unions that are member-led, and that stand up for workers against the bosses. We can and must build a mass-movement for political and economic change in Scotland – and that begins with everyday struggles in our workplaces.

Every worker should join and build their Trade Union.

The Scottish Socialist Party demands the repeal of the UK’s repressive and undemocratic anti-Trade Union laws.

The SSP calls for a reinstatement of full, free collective bargaining in all sectors and workplaces, including on wages, conditions, training, equalities, and health and safety.

We must protect the legal right to freedom of association through joining and organising a Trade Union without fear of victimisation, and to freedom of speech through going on strike – including the right to solidarity strikes – while removing the undemocratic ban on so-called “political strikes”.

Therefore, the SSP supports a ban on blacklisting, and demands justice for the victims of blacklisting. The SSP supports abolishing all fees for Employment Tribunal hearings and extending Legal Aid provision to include workplace disputes.

We must protect the right to strike after a simple majority vote, abolish outdated rules for postal-only voting, and end unjustified requirements to inform employers before workers are balloted.

We need to ensure that precarious, short-term, and other temporary workers have unimpeded access to a Trade Union without victimisation; that there is a guaranteed Trade Union presence beside every worker in contract negotiations.

Union reps should have rights and facilities to represent members during working hours, and we must make sure that those reps and officials can openly recruit for their Union in workplaces.

The SSP supports a radical expansion of workplace democracy.

That includes having boards of management made up of elected, accountable representatives of workplace Trade Unions, and worker and Trade Union control of workplace health and safety through elected Health and Safety stewards.

Four Day Week on Five Day’s Pay

Learn more: a Four-Day Week

The UK has a dual crisis of underemployment and overwork. Full-time workers in the UK work the longest hours in the whole of Europe, at an average of 42.3 hours a week – 2 hours more than the EU average, and 4.5 hours more than in Denmark.

Scotland’s last population Census recorded 39% of all workers – 984,000 – worked between 38-48 hours a week. 295,000 Scottish employees toiled for more than 49 hours. Other sources show at least 54,000 people in Scotland are chained to their work for over 60 hours a week.

Exhaustion, stress, and burnout are the increasingly common hallmarks of working life. Medical studies have linked overwork with heart disease, diabetes, stress, depression, and a five-fold increase in the risk of strokes.

At the same time, 3.8 million workers in the UK cannot get enough hours due to insecure and short-hour contracts.

81% of workers want a reduction in working time. In July 2020 63% of respondents told Survation that they want the government to explore a four-day working week.

The SSP is a long-time pioneer in the campaign for a four-day week on five days pay – a 35-hour maximum working week without loss of earnings.

Fighting for a shorter working week without a loss of pay is a constant theme in working-class history. It’s as urgent a demand today as it was 100 years ago.

An immediate maximum working week of 35 hours – without loss of pay – would itself free up millions of new jobs as the crisis of overwork ends. It would be good for workers’ physical and mental health, reduce accidents at work, reduce sickness and absenteeism, and – as has been definitively proven – it would boost productivity.

A Four-Day Week would enhance the quality of workers’ lives, facilitate improved care and childcare, reduce the damage to workers’ wallets by slashing commuting times, and restore proper rest and leisure time.

The SSP is also fighting for a minimum of 12 months parental leave, on full pay, without loss of rights; and for a minimum of 6 weeks paid annual leave for all workers, plus public holidays (including defence of the May Day public holiday).

Demand Full Pay for Sick Workers

Learn more: We need proper sick pay

More than two years into the pandemic, the UK still has one of the lowest levels of sick pay in all of Europe.

In the UK, workers are entitled to just £96.35 per week in Statutory Sick Pay – and not every worker, at that. The European average is £245 per week. In real terms, sick workers are given pay cuts that they cannot afford.

In Belgium, workers are guaranteed their full salary for up to 30 days. Germany pays their full salary for six weeks, then 70% of a worker’s wage for the remainder of sick leave. In Norway, workers on long-term illness can receive up to 52 weeks of full pay.

One-third of workers on zero hour contracts, 1 in 10 women workers, a fifth of 16-24-year-olds, a quarter of over 65s, and most migrant workers are excluded from Statutory Sick Pay altogether. The UK is one of just four countries that totally excludes the self-employed from Statutory Sick Pay.

The UK’s inadequate system of sick pay, and opportunistic attacks on sick pay by employers, have put the lowest earners, their families, and other workers in the COVID-19 firing line. Low-paid workplaces such as food production plants, garment factories, call centres, and care homes have become ground zero for new COVID outbreaks.

The fact is that low-paid, precarious workers simply can’t afford to self-isolate when sick. If you can’t afford to be ill, you are more likely to get sick.

Workers are left to choose between their income and their health, including during COVID-19 outbreaks.

Nobody should ever have to make that choice. We have to make sure that everyone can afford to look after their health and help protect the health of others.

That’s why the SSP demands full average wages for sick and self-isolating workers.

Proper sick pay, not punitive pay cuts.

This means that no one has to drag themselves into work when sick out of financial hardship – protecting their health, and the health of everyone around them.

The SSP reiterates its condemnation of major employers who have victimised and sacked prominent Trade Unionists for demanding full average wages for sick and self-isolating workers.

The SSP campaigns for worker control of workplace health and safety, with elected Trade Union health and safety reps.

Only 38% of workers in Britain believe that their employer carried out a COVID-secure risk assessment. Only 42% were given PPE.

Workplace hazards could be removed and prevented by elected workers’ representatives, whose everyday experiences put them far more in tune with workplace risks than the depleted, downgraded Health and Safety Executive Inspectors – whose numbers have been halved by budget cuts.

A system run for private profit will always cast workers’ health to the back of the queue. Instead, we must put workers’ lives and health before profit.

Ban Fire and Rehire

Learn more: Ban Fire and Rehire Now

“Fire and Rehire” is a growing problem and a threat to every worker.

As many as one in ten workers were threatened with “Fire and Rehire” in the first year of the pandemic. Younger and BAME workers in the UK are disproportionately targeted by “Fire and Rehire”.

Workers are threatened with redundancy and job losses if they do not reapply for their current roles on worse contracts. That means cuts to their jobs, to pay, to terms and conditions, and the invasion of their time by bosses demanding more work and longer hours for less money.

If any worker’s rights can be torn up, then every worker’s rights can be torn up. We have to fight back against “Fire and Rehire” and make sure that it is banned in the UK.

Workers have been fighting back against “Fire and Rehire” tactics by employers like Weetabix, Clarks, British Airways, Tesco, and British Gas.

70% of companies using “Fire and Rehire” are already profitable. But workers are strongarmed into lower pay and worse conditions while executive bonuses continue to grow.

The Scottish Socialist Party fully supports a total ban on “Fire and Rehire” attacks on workers.

A 2021 survey found that three-quarters of the public support a ban on “Fire and Rehire”.

There are already laws against “Fire and Rehire” in countries such as Ireland, France, and Spain. Trade Unions and the SSP have called for “Fire and Rehire” to be outlawed in the UK too.

The SSP has proudly stood beside workers fighting back against “Fire and Rehire”. SSP members are helping build fighting Trade Unions that stand up for workers.

A Home is a Human Right

Learn more: Build 100,000 new Council homes

The Scottish Socialist Party demands the building of 100,000 new, environmentally friendly, council homes for social rent, and for restoring an adequate surplus of safe, suitable, and affordable social housing in all regions.

In 1999, the mean house price in Scotland was around £71,000. Now, it has rocketed to around £200,000 – eight times the average annual income. As a result of out-of-control cost inflation and dwindling supply, the number of owner-occupiers in Scotland under 34 has plummeted from over half in 1999 to just one-third.

In September 2019, 11,432 households were living in temporary accommodation – including 7,252 children. The average time spent in “temporary” accommodation is six months.

This is a housing crisis, and under SNP, Green, Labour, Liberal, and Tory administrations, Holyrood and Local Authorities have been dithering on housing action for too long.

There is a crisis of available homes in Scotland because the public housing stock has been depleted through privatisation. At current rates, it will take 20 years to clear the existing waiting list for housing.

In just two years, 35,000 new jobs could be created to build eco-friendly social housing – with a further 36,000 jobs up to 2030.

The 2019 Housing Conditions and Standards Report revealed that 68% of Scottish homes suffer from disrepair and, shockingly, half of Scotland’s dwellings have disrepair to critical elements – including roof coverings, windows, and exterior doors.

This has led to a housing crisis of dampness and fuel poverty in Scotland.

Housing quality, and appropriate housing, connects directly to public health and wellbeing. 11% of households are affected by damp, and in the middle of a pandemic 53,000 households are overcrowded.

The SSP calls for an emergency programme to retrofit existing homes and public buildings – without cost to tenants.

Retrofitting 2.62 million dwellings and 20,000 public buildings with insulation, draught-proofing, replacing old boilers with eco-friendly ones, and installing high-speed broadband nationwide will cut fuel poverty and emissions, improve living standards and health outcomes, and deliver a bounty of new, skilled jobs and apprenticeships.

Over 100,000 jobs can be created in a 20-year plan to decarbonise and retrofit every home in Scotland.

The SSP demands that local and national authorities implement clear, high standards on cleanliness, central heating, double-glazing, insulation, environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, and safe lighting – and real enforcement against rogue landlords.

Authorities must compile and maintain a thorough register of property owners in Scotland and bring rented private sector homes identified as being “below tolerable standard” into the public sector. Bring long-term empty or dilapidated homes into public ownership and restore them for social rent.

The Scottish Socialist Party believes that a home is a human right – not an opportunity to profit.

Multiple and for-profit homeownership strips away residential housing options and raises prices – destroying communities. The need is clear: no more seconds until everybody is homed.

Local authorities will be given additional powers to prevent the purchase of holiday homes in regions where there is a housing crisis, as well as the power to levy additional taxes on secondary properties.

56% of homeless applicants for housing cite abuse, relationship breakdowns, or being ejected from their home as the reason for their application. A surplus of safe, suitable, quickly accessible social accommodation is needed in all regions.

Rent is rocketing across Scotland, but incomes are stagnant – or falling. But the SNP/Green coalition government has pushed rent controls back to 2025 – breaking their promise to Scotland’s tenants, leaving plenty of time for rents to climb and climb, and to water-down plans in favour of landlords.

We’ve had enough broken promises. We need to cut and cap rent at affordable levels through emergency intervention in the housing crisis – and we need rent controls NOW.

The SSP will cap private rent at an affordable percentage of income.

The SSP will implement a graduated rent discount set at the same level as the support that would have been available for tenants to buy their council homes under “Right to Buy”. After 25 years, tenants would pay zero rent until their tenancy is terminated or transferred to another member of the family.

We must extend Secure Tenancy protections to private tenants and pass stronger legislation that protects tenants from eviction. Ensure additional protections for vulnerable and low-income households.

People are pushed into homelessness because the private landlord decides to sell a property. Tenants must have the automatic right to remain in their home, and not have it sold out from under them by landlords.

To avert an evictions catastrophe and lift both people and the economy out of unsustainable debt, local authority housing debt should be cancelled with no strings attached.

Power For The People

Learn more: democratic public ownership of energy

Energy is a human necessity, and no society can thrive without it. But private energy tycoons currently control where our energy comes from and how much it costs us. While private energy profits, working-class people have gotten poorer, and our planet has gotten warmer.

The Scottish Socialist Party supports a National Energy Company and democratic public ownership of Scotland’s vast energy potential, including renewables, to create green jobs and end fuel poverty. That means taking the full supply chain into democratic control, from production to distribution.

Scotland is an energy-rich country and a net exporter of energy. Scotland has immense clean, green, renewable energy potential through wind, tidal, green hydrogen, and hydroelectric power production. Scotland has 40% of Europe’s potential for onshore and offshore renewable energy.

Scotland’s energy must be used for the collective good, not for private profit.

This can power jobs, prosperity, and a rapid transformation of Scotland’s economy. Scotland’s renewable energy potential can power homes, public buildings, critical infrastructure, and workplaces – ending fuel poverty, creating jobs, and supercharging economic recovery.

Over 7,000 square kilometres of Scotland’s seabed have been auctioned off for the construction of the biggest offshore windfarm project in Scottish history – sold for just £700 million. That’s just one-third of the original estimated value set by Crown Estates Scotland.

None of the winning bidders are based in Scotland. Over 20% of the total has been grabbed at fire-sale prices by two of the globe’s biggest polluters, BP and Shell.

There are no guarantees that ScotWind investments will deliver substantial new jobs in Scotland.

Economists have calculated that a National Energy Company could have seen an annual income to the Scottish government of at least £5.5 billion – far more than the £50-90 million that will be received every year.

Private energy companies will make pure profit on ScotWind after the first year. They could recover the cost of their initial fees for the seabed licences in just two days. Experience makes it clear that none of this profit will “trickle down” to working-class people in Scotland; Shell and BP receive more in public subsidies than they pay in tax.

Their profiteering is wealth lost to Scotland. We need a National Energy Company, and democratic public ownership of the production and distribution of energy.

From 1 April 2022, our energy bills are rising by an average of £700 – a price hike that working-class people just can’t afford. As many as one in three households in Scotland already experience fuel poverty.

At the same time, private energy companies made £750 in profit every second in 2021.

No one should have to choose between a warm meal and a warm home.

Private energy barons hold a monopoly on the supply of energy in Scotland, including renewables. Big polluters like Shell and BP receive more in subsidies than they pay in taxes, despite soaring profits. While millions face runaway energy bills, the CEO of BP – which takes in £900 per second in profit – likened his company to “a cash machine”.

Scotland is an energy-rich country; it can afford to end fuel poverty, or continue to subsidise private profiteering – but we can’t do both.

We need democratic public ownership of energy production and supply in Scotland. The SSP supports the creation of a National Energy Company to direct an energy policy that is for people, not for profit.

Public money heavily subsidises oil barons and fossil fuel billionaires – but that doesn’t turn into secure jobs for offshore workers. The North Sea oil and gas sector has seen almost 200,000 job losses since 2014, and conditions are getting worse. 82% of sector workers want jobs outside of oil and gas – half of them in renewables.

Workers are not the obstacle to a green transition – they are the solution!

Despite Scottish Government promises, figures from the Office for National Statistics have shown that the number of ‘green’ jobs in Scotland continues to lag behind, having fallen by almost 4,000 between 2016 and 2021.

In 2010, the SNP government promised 28,000 jobs by 2020 in the offshore wind industry alone. The latest available figures show a measly 1,400 actual jobs – twenty times fewer than promised.

Building jackets for offshore windfarms in Indonesia, and shipping them 7,000 miles to Scotland, while yards like BiFab are mothballed, is unsustainable and unacceptable. Instead, let’s bring manufacturing jobs back to Scotland.

Bring shipyards, turbine manufacturers, and marine technology production into public ownership – creating 70,000 well-paid, secure, unionised jobs in Scotland in the next 20 years. Provide retraining for fossil fuel workers without prohibitive cost or loss of income.

Fight Poverty, Pollution, and Isolation

Learn more: Free Public Transport

We face catastrophic climate crises, rampant poverty, and growing inequality. We all rely on public transport in some form. That means we need a free public transport system fit for the 21st century.

Road traffic accounts for 73% of air pollution – cars alone for 45% of it. We need free public transport to fight poverty and pollution together.

The Scottish Socialist Party supports the democratic public ownership of public transport in Scotland. That includes buses, rail, ferries, subway, and tram networks.

Privatisation and deregulation of public transport services have resulted in soaring fares, job losses, and cuts to essential services in local communities around the country. Public transport should be a public service, not a money-making machine for a handful of millionaire capitalist owners who make a packet out of the privatisation racket.

Needless competition between rival privatised bus companies creates traffic chaos. Train timetables are being slashed, and ticket offices shut. Fares are rising beyond people’s reach, leaving the poorest in terrible social isolation. Ferry services face chaos due to ageing ferries.

We want to make different branches of public transport cooperative, not competitive. Deliver a connected system that improves access, with a single ticket, multi-service system linking Scotland together, and incentivise more public transport use through free public transport, routes that fit community needs, and accessible services.

We can and must build a public transport is a service democratically accountable to the communities it serves, with democratic, elected boards of management involving workers, communities, passengers, and representatives of local and national government.

For over 20 years, the SSP has pioneered the fight for a vastly expanded, integrated, free public transport system – when every other political party opposed the idea. SSP MSPs introduced a free public transport Bill to Holyrood in 2006.

Free public transport fights poverty and pollution together by reducing car dependency and improving accessibility for everyone. Free public transport and expanded service provision bring communities together and tackle loneliness and isolation. It also brings improved access to job opportunities, public services, retail, sports, hospitality, and leisure – returning on the public investment by boosting our economy right when it needs it most.

The public already pays for public transport through personal costs and heavy subsidies to private companies. Instead, let’s fund free public transport.

Free public transport is already an established principle, with fare-free travel already on offer to many people. This is a small-scale version of what the SSP has argued for over 20 years. We need to expand free public transport to include everyone. This has already been done in cities across Europe.

COP26 delegates were given the benefit of free public transport, while the public were left with rip-off fares and unreliable services. If free public transport is good enough for COP26, it’s good enough for all of us.

The SSP fully supports transport workers taking action over pay, jobs, and conditions.

The STUC’s “Green Jobs in Scotland” research has found that 60,000 jobs could be created in Scotland by upgrading and operating public transport – including 33,845 jobs in the first two years through an investment of £3.9 billion.

In comparison, the UK’s failed Test and Trace system cost £37 billion in its first year.

Scandals like job losses at Alexander Dennis must never be allowed to happen again. Instead, as part of a Socialist Green New Deal, manufacturing sites and shipyards can be taken into public ownership, creating jobs and rebuilding our essential manufacturing base.

Land, Rural Communities, Agriculture, and Food Security

Land is the foundation of our environment and ownership of the land is the foundation of our economy. Our food, our oxygen, and our water are too important to leave in the hands of a few private landlords and companies. Having democratic control of land and the resources land provides is essential to fighting the climate crisis and delivering a Socialist Green New Deal.

Scotland’s wealth comes from Scotland’s land, but 70% of rural Scotland is owned by just 1,125 landlords – the largest private landlord being multi-billionaire Anders Povlsen, who pays taxes in Denmark. The SSP calls for breaking up private, often anonymous, landlord monopolies and return land to community ownership.

This includes bringing landed estates and corporate farms into democratic public ownership, to produce for local and national needs, not private export, and local management of sea fisheries, where environmental sustainability is a key priority alongside community sustainability. Scotland currently imports half of its food – greatly increasing both the unnecessary carbon footprint and personal cost of our diet, and leaving our food supply dangerously vulnerable to disruptions in global trade.

Instead, we can significantly increase the production of nutritious food for consumption here in Scotland – creating jobs, reducing food poverty, ensuring continued food security in the 21st century, improving public health, and reducing greenhouse emissions. Democratic control of land and agriculture fights poverty and pollution together.

We demand full Trade Union rights and protections, and improved pay and conditions, for all current and future farm and fisheries workers.

The SSP calls for the establishment of a national body to promote and support localised plant food production in all its forms, the expansion of the number of community gardens and allotments in Scotland (and protection of existing allotments) – allied to new democratic land management councils that put workers and communities in control of land and land usage with grants to enable small farmers and other food producers to establish local farming co-operatives.

The SSP will establish community-run supermarkets specialising in healthy local produce at the cheapest possible retail prices, making nationally grown fruit and vegetables available for those who need it, starting with areas of high deprivation – ending food bank dependence and food poverty, and building a healthier Scotland.

We support action to increase Scotland’s biodiversity and improve levels of carbon sequestration by ecologically restoring or protecting 35% of the land – with public funding for public jobs in land management to meet this target. This can offset 39% of Scotland’s current greenhouse gas emissions and substantially improve air quality, water quality, and both immediate and long-term healthcare outcomes.

Our plans for land reform can support a renewed rural economy, through democratic public ownership, towards providing for regional use rather than exports. Together with building 20,000 new council homes for affordable rent across Scotland’s rural communities and improving free public transport infrastructure in rural communities to improve access to social, leisure, shopping, health, and other services, this will reverse rural population decline and poverty.

The Scottish Socialist Party opposes onshore hydraulic fracking in Scotland and supports an explicit ban. We support a ban on Fox hunting.

Self-Determination and an Independent Socialist Scotland

The Scottish Socialist Party has always supported self-determination and Scottish independence. We are socialists, not nationalists, and campaign for an independent, socialist Scotland.

The SSP cooperates constructively with other supporters of independence, including other political parties and non-party campaign groups – but without sacrificing our distinct, socialist case for independence.

The SSP supports a referendum on Scottish independence, at a time of Scotland’s choice. But we believe that the SNP/Green coalition promises of a referendum in the near future are hollow and unreliable.

Under the monopoly of the SNP, the movement for Scottish independence has become toothless. A movement needs direction and momentum, and we simply don’t have enough.

Independence requires the support of a majority of people in Scotland – and the majority of people in Scotland are the working class. To win independence, and to make it a success, we need a vision for change that mobilises and empowers the working class.

The only successful vision for independence is one that prioritises and improves the lives and prospects of working-class people – based on better economic security, industrial renewal in a Socialist Green New Deal, and a more inclusive, participatory democracy.

We can’t leave our self-determination to lawyers and judges debating the Scotland Act. With a Tory majority government in Westminster opposed to the right to self-determination, forcing progress requires the collective, mass effort of the working class and working-class organisations, mobilised around a transformative, radical programme for change.

Independence must ensure that Scotland has the powers to take the necessary radical action to deal with the challenges of the 21st century. This means our own currency and democratic public ownership of key industries.

We call for scrapping the SNP’s fatally flawed “Sustainable Growth Commission” plan, which would undemocratically tie us to Westminster, the Bank of England, and to NATO. Replace it with a radical, transformative plan for independence.

An independent Scotland must withdraw from NATO and remove nuclear weapons from its territory. The SSP is opposed to nuclear weapons in Scotland.

Scotland’s future relationship with the European Union, EFTA, and other institutions of the European Single Market can only be decided in a democratic, informed, participatory process after independence is complete.

We will resist Westminster interference in devolved matters and oppose Westminster’s anti-devolution power grabs.

A Modern Democratic Republic

The Scottish Socialist Party will enshrine the foundations of a modern nation in a written constitution for an independent socialist Scotland.

We call for convening a directly elected Constitutional Assembly, representative of Scotland’s regional, gender, and ethnic diversity, to draw up options for a new constitution for Scotland, which would be put to a further referendum vote.

The SSP supports abolishing the Monarchy, hereditary nobility, and the House of Lords to create a modern democratic republic.

A Working-Class Democracy

The SSP knows that power revolves around control of the means of production and the wealth workers create. We can only build a stronger democracy through the public ownership and democratic management of key parts of the economy.

Democracy does not begin and end at the ballot box. Let’s build inclusive, participatory, and accountable structures for local and national democratic management involving communities and community groups, workers and Trade Unions, publicly-run organisations, and elected local representatives.

We must introduce and build participatory democracy at the community level by establishing local assemblies with the power to make and veto decisions that affect their community.

This includes new powers to allow community councils, community forums, and tenants organisations consultative votes annually on a local authority’s budget and service proposals.

The SSP wants to increase in the maximum number of councillors per ward, to allow greater proportionality and more representative local government, with ALL Scottish elections conducted under a genuinely proportional system – scrapping the anti-democratic first-past-the-post system in Scotland.

Elected representatives from the SSP are committed to only taking home the equivalent of the average wage of the community they represent. Elected positions should be a way to rise with your class, not out of it.

The SSP recognises that the Trade Union movement is the single biggest mass membership organisation in the country. Repealing anti-Trade Union laws, and building fighting Trade Unions, is vital in strengthening democratic participation and working-class political power. Anti-Trade Union and anti-strike laws are an attack on the rights of freedom of association and freedom of speech.

The provision of information is vital for democracy’s continuing health – we can’t trust private profiteers who monopolise the news and digital environments. We support an initiative to distribute annual vouchers to citizens, allowing them to donate a fixed sum of tax revenue to non-commercial media outlets of their choice. Media organisations seeking such funding would have to accept no advertising. All produced material would be public domain and available to all online.

We support the open-source software movement, and call for all public bodies to use open source software where available and appropriate.

Demand a “No Cuts Budget”!

The Scottish Socialist Party calls for No Cuts Budgets across Scotland – whether at local government, Holyrood, or Westminster – and an end to the discredited austerity agenda.

We reject the “Punch and Judy” politics that is played out between Holyrood and local governments – a game that always leaves working-class communities facing cuts, closures, and job losses.

The SSP campaigns for devolving fiscal and tax-raising powers to Holyrood – and keeping them there in independence. Taxes raised in Scotland should be controlled democratically in Scotland. That includes Income Tax; National Insurance Contributions; VAT; duties on alcohol, tobacco, and fuel; Corporation Tax; Capital Gains Tax; Road Tax; oil revenues; Air Passenger Duty, etc.

Scrap the Council Tax

The SNP and Green parties have broken long-standing promises to replace the discredited and unfair Council Tax system. Instead of delivering a system of local funding that is fair and effective, the SNP/Green coalition wants local authorities to fill funding gaps by hiking Council Tax yet again.

This means that, under the SNP/Green coalition, Council Tax could soar in 2022 – at a time when living costs are rising and incomes are falling.

The SSP has always been clear that it will scrap the regressive Council Tax and replace it with the Scottish Service Tax – a progressive income tax, with payment scaled to the ability to pay.

This will tie local tax to household income, not outdated property values. Under these proposals, the majority will be substantially better off, the wealthiest will pay their fair share, and local funding will be greatly increased.

The SSP also supports scrapping domestic water charges, and financing household water with the Scottish Service Tax instead.

Universal Basic Services

The SSP supports a Universal Basic Services model to deliver public services which are publicly funded, publicly owned, democratically run, and free at the point of need.

Incorporating the principle of Universalism into public services means that everyone has unconditional access to public services as a fundamental right – without personal cost, funded by general progressive taxation, and managed in a democratic manner.

This means that public services will be designed to be used by everyone, no matter who they are, and that governments will not be able to justify discredited austerity cuts by stigmatising people who use public services.

It’s a fact that countries which are more equal are happier, healthier, and more prosperous. Universalism removes barriers that create inequality and poverty.

The SSP has shown its commitment to Universal Basic Services in introducing Parliamentary Bills for free school meals and an end to prescription charges, and by supporting the implementation of free period products in Scotland.

We support free universal healthcare and education, and demand free social care, free public transport, and free access to leisure and cultural spaces.

That means removing admission charges for gyms, swimming pools, and sports centres, and restoring public access to well-maintained playing fields.

It means ensuring that well-funded local youth facilities are available in every community, run democratically by young people.

The SSP believes that we must deliver the democratic public ownership of banks and finance, and support and develop local money advice centres and credit unions.

The SSP knows that there are no public services without workers. That’s why we fully support workers in the fight for better pay, conditions, and job security – including in strike action.

Tax Pandemic Profiteers, End PFI Robbery

Audit Scotland has confirmed that Scotland is being robbed by PFI.

They found that “the Scottish public sector will make payments worth over four times the capital value of the assets built (over £40 billion) with £27 billion still to be paid between now and 2047/48”.

That means taxpayers are paying the private sector far too much for new infrastructure developments – leaving less for essential public services like schools and the NHS.

This is robbery started by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, carried on by the SNP/Green coalition government.

Instead, we must renegotiate rip-off PFI contracts to free up billions of pounds for jobs, services, care, and the NHS.

We need redistributive, progressive systems of taxation in Scotland to stop runaway inequality and provide proper funding for public services.

The SSP demands a “Windfall Tax” on pandemic profiteers, to stop the richest getting richer while working-class communities are devastated by the impact of Coronavirus.

The Scottish Socialist Party pioneers the policy of a Maximum Income at 10x the legal Minimum Wage. This radical step will stop billions of pounds being monopolised by small number of individuals – from where it does not “trickle down”.

The SSP calls for an increase of Capital Gains Tax to 40%.

We support a “Wealth Tax” of 5% on households with a net worth over £1 million, and will empower Local Authorities to levy a Land Value Tax on properties worth over £1 million.

At a national and international level, the SSP calls for rigorous new laws to prevent big businesses and the super-wealthy from avoiding taxation through global tax havens. Both the UK and the European Union are enablers of these tax haven networks.

Publicly owned, publicly funded, free at the point of use

Learn more: National Care Service

The Scottish Socialist Party has pioneered the campaign for a National Care Service in Scotland.

Scotland’s care needs are only going to keep growing. We need a resilient, well-funded, needs-based, publicly owned National Care Service to make sure we have a suitable system of care.

There are now many plans for care from other parties that talk about a “National Care Service”. But only the SSP is clear that we need a National Care Service which is publicly owned, publicly funded, and free at the point of need. That means removing the private ownership, provision, and profiteering from care, and bringing care into democratic public ownership.

The Common Weal think-tank called COVID-19 deaths in Scottish care homes “the single greatest failure in devolved government since the creation of the Scottish Parliament“. There has been a Coronavirus catastrophe in Scotland’s care homes – caused by poverty pay conditions, austerity in care provision, and putting private profiteering before the needs of care workers and residents.

A Panelbase poll revealed that 69% of the population strongly support a National Care Service which, like the NHS, is “free at the point of need, paid for out of general taxation, publicly owned and run with facilities regularly inspected to ensure they are fit for the 21st century”. The proportion of women over 55 supporting the proposal reached 78%.

No one should have to worry about money when looking for care – but that is what private profiteering does to vital public services. Private care creates an unequal system where care and care quality is distributed on the basis of wealth, not on need. Those with greater needs but fewer savings face living with unsuitable levels of care.

Care homes spend, on average, just £6 per day on food per resident. The average weekly care home fees in Scotland are over £600 for residential care and more than £800 for nursing care. Many service users are required to sell their home, plunder their assets, or rely on family “top-ups” to fund care – and the system offers no flexibility to reflect people’s changing needs.

One in seven service users in Britain pays more than £100,000 per year in care costs. Almost 80% of that adult social care provision is provided by ‘for-profit’ companies who take a significant proportion of money out of the public purse and distribute it to shareholders around the world, rather than to care workers and service quality.

We wouldn’t accept this kind of system in our NHS, and we can’t accept it in care.

The public already pays the bill for private care through care fees, public grants, social security spending, personal debt, and corporate tax loopholes. Scotland’s big private care firms move money taken from the NHS, local councils, and residents to secret tax havens. £1.5bn “leaks” out of the care system through tax haven scams and into private hands every year.

According to the Competition and Markets Authority, the care home industry was worth £16bn in 2018 with 5,500 different providers operating 11,300 homes and 456,000 beds for older people. Yet, as Professor Allyson Pollock has pointed out, “it is virtually impossible to track where that public money is going”.

Large private care providers hide profit, and therefore pay less tax, by paying rent to subsidiary companies in the same corporate network, but which are based in tax havens. Care homes are underfunded and undermaintained, and self-funding service users are being made to pay more and more to support the system while billions are being sent to tax havens.

We can afford a National Care Service – but we cannot afford tax havens and private profiteering.

The Scottish Socialist Party knows that private profiteering in care fatally compromises care quality and working conditions. There are 1,100 care home providers whose fiduciary responsibility to shareholders outweighs the wider public interest. Retaining private ownership and provision of care is fundamentally incompatible with Scotland’s urgent and growing care needs.

The Scottish and UK Government proposals for reforming social care simply do not go anywhere near far enough. The “National Care Service” proposed by the Scottish Government is nothing of the sort. “Bureaucratic window dressing” will not alleviate the staffing crisis in care, deliver a single minute of care, or bring down care costs for service users.

The SSP supports a National Care Service delivered through local authorities, with a national body responsible for ensuring adequate resources, monitoring standards, and sectoral collective bargaining.

Care workers have faced the Coronavirus crisis while dealing with the crisis of poverty pay and unsafe work.

209,690 workers – mostly women – are facing unacceptable and unsustainable pressure in unfair conditions. Audit Scotland has revealed that almost a quarter of care workers leave within three months over low pay, poor conditions, and overwork.

Three out of every four care workers report having to carry out unpaid training on their own time.

A fifth of care workers do not have permanent contracts; one in ten are on zero-hour contracts. Carers are paid as little as £10.50 an hour – and most low-paid care workers are women or migrants.

One-third of care home staff resign within a year over poor conditions – a loss of experience that undermines care quality. 52% of Scotland’s care homes report daily job vacancies.

This causes worker burnout, a mental health crisis, a high staff turnover, chronic understaffing, and dangerous levels of overwork which puts workers and service users at risk. 75% of care workers report not having enough time to delver an adequate standard of care.

The National Care Home Contract between COSLA and Care Scotland sets a lower rate of pay for care home nurses than their NHS counterparts and offers inferior workplace benefits. As a result of poor working conditions, 91% of care homes have difficulty filling nurse vacancies.

Despite this crisis in care, in May 2020, the SNP and the Tories worked together to shut down collective bargaining for private care workers – siding with each other, and with private profiteering, over workers yet again.

The SSP supports Trade Union demands for a £15 per hour minimum wage for care workers, including paid travel time and paid overnight shifts, with guaranteed minimum and maximum workings hours. We must ensure full average wages for sick/self-isolating workers to protect carers and service users, and to prevent another care home COVID catastrophe.

Carers are highly skilled, essential workers who do invaluable work that must be valued properly. Carers need career-long training programmes and real opportunities for continuous professional progression to reduce high staff turnover in care.

Unpaid Carers and Disabled People

Not every carer is a care worker and not everybody receiving care lives in a care home. In fact, most carers are family members. Unpaid carers have been invisible to the government for too long.

The Coronavirus crisis led to a significant increase in the number of unpaid carers in Scotland – up to over 1 million in the summer of 2020. One in five of us will be carers for a loved one at some point in our lives, but austerity has destroyed support available to carers. Carers need change.

Unpaid carers need support which is at minimum the equivalent of 40 paid hours per week the national minimum wage – which should be raised to two-thirds of the male median earnings, rising with inflation. The SSP calls for expanding eligibility for financial support for carers to carers under 16, carers in full-time education, pension recipients, and carers in employment.

Carers must have access to a minimum of 14 nights of respite a year, or the equivalent in hours at a time of their choice.

Young carers face significant barriers to services, education, and wellbeing – particularly during the pandemic period. We will release funding to ensure that every school in Scotland employs a young carers’ worker to offer practical support, advocacy, and wellbeing checks for young carers.

We must offer specialised, accessible support for carers seeking to re-enter education and employment. We must also ensure that there is an expansion and improvement in resources, advice, and support for disabled people to obtain and retain suitable employment, with equal access to career progression.

The SSP will put carers, disabled people, and DPOs at the centre of identifying local care priorities, supported by a publicly owned, publicly funded National Care Service which delivers care free at the point of need.

We welcome that Social Security Scotland “regard social security as a human right” and “are committed to ensuring that those who are entitled to Disability Assistance are able to access it whilst being treated with dignity, fairness and respect” from spring 2022.

The SSP calls for safe reopening of day centres, respite services, and other community-based support that have been closed since lockdown – and expand service provision to meet needs.

A suitable and accessible home is a human right. We will deliver funding to install household adaptations to meet the needs of disabled people, without cost to residents, and ensure that a suitable number of accessible homes are included in new public housing projects.

We need comprehensive and enforced standards of accessibility on all public transport, and increased resources to promote and provide training in British Sign Language in workplaces and education.

Universal Basic Income

The Scottish Socialist Party supports the implementation of a Universal Basic Income in Scotland.

Universal Basic Income, set at a level which will lift people out of extreme poverty, is a critical alternative to the current system of social security in the UK.

Raising every household income with a Universal Basic Income will strengthen our economy through increased economic activity, allow everyone to save more for the future, and give every worker greater leverage in the fight against low pay and poor conditions.

Emergency Action to Reduce Poverty

The Scottish Socialist Party opposes attacks on pensions in the UK. We must increase the State Pension to match the average state pension in the European Union. The SSP condemns the removal of the pension triple lock.

The SSP calls for an immediate halt to all benefit sanctions, and the end the dehumanising treatment of social security applicants. We must end intrusive means testing in social security applications.

We condemn the false media-driven hysteria about overclaiming social security. In fact, people in the UK are underclaiming social security, leading to £15 billion money people are entitled to being unclaimed in 2021.

The SSP calls for special funding to enable Scotland’s local authorities to recruit and train welfare rights workers with special responsibility for identifying and assisting people who are failing to receive benefits to which they are entitled.

The Scottish Socialist Party demands emergency action to reduce household and personal debts, including writing off all Local Authority housing debt, Council Tax arrears, and household water and energy debts.

We need new legislation to outlaw banks charging customers to access their own money, and charging customers who exceed their agreed overdraft limit – with refunds backdated five years.

The SSP will use a publicly owned, not-for-profit National Energy Company to provide cheaper, locally-sourced, and sustainable energy – end fuel poverty in Scotland.

End to the imposition of pre-payment meters on those who owe debts to gas and electricity companies, and refunds backdated by five years to households that have been forced to pay the higher charges associated with pre-payment meters.

We continue to support making free, nutritious school meals – made with locally-produced ingredients – available to every pupil in Scotland, without means-testing.

The SSP fully supports the implementation of free period products across Scotland.

The National Health Service

The Coronavirus pandemic has been the greatest crisis faced by our NHS and by healthcare workers. It is unlikely to be the last. We need a resilient, publicly-owned NHS fit for the 21st century.

The NHS crisis in staffing and capacity did NOT begin with the Coronavirus. Understaffing, overwork, and reduced capacity have been growing problems for many years under Labour, Tory, and SNP/Green administrations. Everyone in Scotland has worked hard to buy our governments time to increase NHS capacity during the pandemic – but they have not held up their end.

We can only reverse the NHS crisis of understaffing, high staff turnover, and dangerous overwork with improved pay and conditions for frontline health workers and an urgent national recruitment drive.

We fully support a restorative 15% pay rise for NHS workers. We will ensure student nurses are paid at least the new national minimum wage rate of two-thirds the male median earning (rising with inflation) – including travel time.

We must reverse SNP cuts to thousands of hospital beds since 2010, and increase the number of NHS beds to allow a mean occupancy rate of 85% in general wards, and 75% in Intensive Care.

We will defend a National Health Service which is publicly owned, publicly funded, and free at the point of need. We oppose all private involvement in healthcare, support services, and management. Statutory requirements that emergency healthcare is provided to all in need, without charge, must be maintained.

SSP MSPs introduced a Holyrood Bill to end prescription charges. We continue to oppose prescription charges in Scotland.

Scotland’s NHS is being ripped off by PFI robbery – Labour mismanagement continued by the SNP/Green coalition government. We must end PFI robbery – renegotiating rip-off contracts to free up billions of pounds for the NHS.

We oppose hospital closures and other service cuts where there is still a population requiring local service. We must restore access to physical and mental healthcare in local areas, working closely with social services and a new National Care Service.

The SSP calls for a special charge on private healthcare providers to compensate the public for the public education and training of healthcare workers.

Scotland’s Mental Health Emergency

We must address Scotland’s mental health crisis at its material causes – precarious hand-to-mouth living, alienation, disenfranchisement, poverty, and insecure housing.

The SSP will fund an increase in the number of community psychiatric nurses in Scotland, expand the range of accessible services nationwide, and bring down appalling waiting times.

We must create, and properly equip, free counselling and talking therapy services.

Scotland’s Drugs Deaths Crisis

Every life lost to drugs-related deaths is a tragedy. Every life has value, and drugs use does not reduce the humanity of the user. Drug abuse and drug-related deaths are health issues – physical, mental, and societal health. We need informed, empathetic, and wellbeing-led solutions.

Until drug classification is devolved, Holyrood and local authorities must use existing powers over health, policing, justice, and public services to intervene and save lives.

The SSP supports decriminalising drug possession and use to stop the deadly cycle of incarceration, addiction, alienation, crime, incarceration, and self-destruction. The SSP was the first political party in Scotland to make this demand.

We must end the waste of legal resources devoted to arresting and prosecuting people for the possession of narcotics for personal use. Instead, direct resources and funding towards informed, scientific, and empathetic strategies for harm reduction led by experts and those with lived experience.

Reduce Scotland’s prison population through expanding and properly resourcing alternatives to custody for those convicted of drug use or possession and who do not pose a risk of violence.

Reduce the risk of overdose – and the causes of drug-related crime – by creating space for a medically prescribed, cleaner product in a safe environment. We support safe use sites with access to clean needles, life-saving equipment, medical care, and free facilities to test for contaminants.

We must make substantial emergency funding available for detox and rehabilitation centres, with effective follow-up care which is integrated with healthcare, housing provision, and job guarantees.

• Higher and Further Education
  • The Scottish Socialist Party has always backed education workers and learners, at all levels of education. We know that education workers have faced real attacks on their pay, pensions, and job conditions – and that the Scottish Government isn’t listening.
  • Oppose the introduction of tuition fees in Scotland.
  • Insecure, short-term contracts for researchers and educators undermine education quality and attack academic freedom. Replace precarious, casualised employment with guaranteed minimum and maximum hour contracts for every worker who wants one.
  • Oppose any and all attempts to replace Further Education lecturers in “Fire and Rehire” attacks. A lecturer is a lecturer and should be paid a lecturer’s wage, with guaranteed adequate lesson preparation, marking time, and continual professional development.
  • Remove the automatic places for business sector representation on college boards, replacing them with representatives from worker’s unions, students, local and national government, and local communities.
  • Expand open, free public access to published research in Scotland.
• Students
  • Reintroduce student grants to support working-class students.
  • Allow students to claim housing benefit; allow students who are carers to access financial support.
  • Replace unsuitable, expensive, and exploitative private student accommodation with quality, publicly-owned accommodation subject to capped and controlled rent.
  • End age discrimination against student workers with a higher minimum wage at two-thirds of the male median earning, rising with inflation, for all workers over the age of 16.
• Primary and Secondary Education, and the Attainment Gap
  • The attainment gap is the result of poverty and class inequality – we can only close it by tackling poverty in Scotland.
  • Abolish the charity status of private schools.
  • Tens of thousands of Scotland’s learners are also young carers. Care responsibilities should never be a barrier to a strong education.
  • To support learners and their families, we need quality pre-school care for babies and younger children, and free after-school care for all Primary and Secondary school pupils.
  • Publicly funded nursery places for all pre-school children, and funding for after-school, weekend, and holiday clubs in every region for school-age children.
  • Work towards a maximum class size of 20. Increase investment in new school infrastructure and hire more education workers to make this possible – a long-term solution to staffing shortages that does not rely on the precarious employment of supply teachers.
  • Broaden the criteria of assessment in schools to ensure attainment is not overly reliant on formal exams.
  • Nutritious free school meals for all Primary and Secondary pupils in Scotland, without means-testing.
  • Make free toothpaste, toothbrushes, and dental floss available to every school pupil.

Fighting Racism with Socialism

The SSP stands for the unity of all workers against racism, poverty, and the capitalist system of ruthless exploitation that spawns them. United working-class people can, have, and will again defeat racism.

Racism is not purely personal prejudice – it is structural, and the solutions are structural. We must build a Scotland of working-class cooperation – not capitalist competition.

Scotland’s minority communities, including recent migrants and Gypsy, Roma & Traveller peoples, face barriers accessing essential public services such as healthcare, social care, housing, and education. We want to build a Scotland of quality, publicly-owned, universal public services to bring down barriers to access – and to ensure an inclusive, needs-based economy for people and not for private profit.

We support global calls for the prosecution of police officers and other state authority figures involved in brutality; the removal from positions of authority those identified as far-right activists, and the demilitarisation of policing.

The SSP supports the campaign for justice for Sheku Bayoh and his family.

The Scottish Socialist Party fully opposes the UK Government’s “Nationality and Borders Bill”. Government power to arbitrarily strip people of citizenship is a fundamental threat to civil liberty.

We congratulate everyone who took part in the March 2021 Kenmure Street protest action.

The SSP supports an independent immigration system for Scotland that improves migrant life quality, and that does not reduce people to a pure economic utility.

The UK must allow safe travel routes for refugees and asylum seekers, provide emergency aid to people attempting to cross the English Channel, and stop criminalising those who attempt to save lives.

We call for increased funding for asylum seeker and refugee advocacy groups, legal aid, and community support – with fully-equipped specialist services for the unique circumstances of LGBT+ people seeking asylum.

Justice and Decarceration

The Scottish Socialist Party demand a reverse all cuts to Legal Aid, and expanded funding for Legal Aid services.

We support a fast-track appeals system to deal with suspected miscarriages of justice sooner, and greater public accountability for judges and sheriffs – with the involvement of organisations such as the Law Society of Scotland, civil groups, and victim support organisations.

This includes establishing new community, regional, and national police boards which hold the police to account, and include elected councillors, MSPs, and directly elected community representatives.

Reduce Scotland’s prison population through expanding and properly resourcing alternatives to custody for those who do not pose a risk of violence.

Expand and properly fund an expansion of prison and post-incarceration rehabilitation programmes, including education, skills training, psychiatric and psychological support, addiction services, and access to amenities that needs are met.

We support extending the right to vote to prisoners.

The SSP will strongly resist, and reverse, all privatisation in prison services. For-profit incarceration creates an unacceptable conflict of interest within the justice system.

Safer Communities

Every community should be a safe community, and everyone has the right to go about their life in safety.

Recent events have brought new impetus to the conversation about how our culture perpetuates violence against women. This is an important conversation with significant implications – and there are steps that can be taken right now to reduce risk and make our communities safer for everyone.

The SSP’s plan for free public transport, and expanded transport service provision, will help ensure that everyone can get home safely at night.

Urban planners and public bodies must design and improve public spaces with safe travel in mind, including proper street lighting and safer walking routes.

The Scottish Socialist Party calls for decriminalising sex work in Scotland.

recognise that those who buy sex are abusers, and increase resources to protect sex workers and provide access to vital care and support services

There has been a significant escalation of domestic abuse rates during the pandemic, particularly during lockdown periods. We need a Scotland-wide strategy to reduce high rates of domestic abuse.

LGBT+ young people are greatly overrepresented among the young homeless population, with discrimination being a significant factor in their being made homeless. 56% of homeless applicants for housing cite abuse, relationship breakdowns, or being ejected from their home as the reason for their application.

There is therefore an urgent need for an expansion in social housing across Scotland, to maintain a surplus of safe, suitable, quickly accessible accommodation in all regions.

We also require increased funding for agencies and organisations which provide refuge, helplines, and drop-in centres for people at risk of violence and abuse.

The SSP calls for an expansion of resources for social work services to support a zero-tolerance approach to abuse and the risk of abuse, with increased resources dedicated to the supervision of sex offenders.

This must include early and effective rehabilitation-focused intervention to prevent first-time offenders escalating into patterns of violent behaviour.

Establish special secure units to provide intensive rehabilitation for sex offenders who are judged to pose a continuing risk to the public.

• The Scottish Socialist Party is an Internationalist party. We build solidarity with workers throughout the world, in a common struggle for justice and an end to war and exploitation.
• Scottish independence is an opportunity for Scotland to change and improve its relationship with the rest of the world – a truly internationalist Scotland that welcomes refugees and supports all those struggling worldwide against political, economic, and national oppression. It should not repeat the actions of the UK.
• Withdraw an independent Scotland from NATO, and permanently remove nuclear weapons from Scotland’s land, sea, and airspace. Sign the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and demand its enforcement.
• Scotland’s future relationship with the European Union and other European institutions can only be decided after independence, not before, and only by a robust and participatory democratic process, not by politicians.
• The SSP remains resolute that the invasion of Iraq was a criminal act, and that the perpetrators of that crime should face justice.
• End Scotland’s involvement in Britain’s wars around the world, and withdraw support for regimes such as Saudi Arabia. The UK Government is actively assisting and facilitating crimes against the people of Yemen.
• Prohibit the use of Scottish infrastructure and airspace for the transport of US military personnel and hardware and the “rendition” of people to illegal blacksites.
• Support the global boycott of the state of Israel in solidarity with the people of Palestine. The SSP condemns the system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians, the destruction of Palestinian homes and the creation of illegal settlements, and the siege of Gaza.
• Solidarity with the people of Central and South America, and the Caribbean, who live under the constant threat of “regime change” orchestrated by the United States. The SSP calls for an end to the American blockade of Cuba, and an end to sanctions imposed on Venezuela.
• People in the “Global South” are among the most at risk from the Climate Crisis. Rising sea levels, ecological damage, and extreme weather conditions are a fundamental risk to life. Action on the Climate Crisis requires an end to global capitalist exploitation and justice for Indigenous peoples.
• Ensure that safe travel routes exist for refugees and asylum seekers to reach Britain without risk to life, in compliance with international law. The SSP condemns the UK Government’s disregard for human life.
• Solidarity with people around the world organising against racism, racial violence, and the racist institutions of capitalism.
• The immediate and total cancellation of debt from the poor countries of the “Global South” to the rich countries of the “Global North”. Replace international lending institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund with an international clearing organisation – to ensure debts are written off and reparation paid to countries who have suffered at the hands of the current system.
• Refound the World Trade Organisation as a Fair Trade Organisation that ensures minimum environmental and social standards are met in internationally traded products. This new organisation would be democratic – and the system of ‘green room’ decision making, where more powerful countries plan strategies in private – would be banned.
• Support coordinated global action against tax havens and capitalist financial systems that facilitate money laundering and the robbery of the global working-class – including the City of London.