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NEW SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon announced ambitious plans to extend childcare and the living wage in her inaugural speech to the party conference in Perth at the weekend.
She said the SNP would not support the Conservatives in power at Westminster after the general election in May, though a deal with a Labour government could be possible.
Ms Sturgeon said she was “determined that we will make progress” on childcare.
“By the end of the next parliament, my commitment is that all three and four-year-olds and all eligible two-years-olds will receive, not 16 hours, but 30 hours of free childcare each week,”
she said.
And Ms Sturgeon, who will be installed as first minister by the Scottish Parliament this week, said the government had struck a living wage deal with its private-sector cleaning contractor, Mitie.
“That deal will see all 117 staff who are currently paid below the living wage brought up to that level by the end of this year,” she announced.
“And in future, although we cannot mandate it in law, each and every new Scottish government contract will have payment of the living wage as a central priority.”
Ms Sturgeon set out terms on which the SNP might deal with a Labour Westminster government if her party held the balance of power after the general election in May.
“They’d have to deliver real powers for our parliament” and “rethink the endless austerity that impoverishes our children,” she said.
“And they’d have to think again about putting a new generation of Trident nuclear weapons on the River Clyde.”
