Kezia Dugdale has boasted that voters agree with Scottish Labour’s policies as another poll predicted her party will be overtaken by the Tories.
The Scottish Labour leader put increasing the basic rate of income tax by 1p and the top rate to 50p at the heart of her manifesto at a launch event in Edinburgh just eight days before voters go to the polls.
The document also includes plans to make an “effort” to bring decommissioning jobs to Dundee but Ms Dugdale was unable to explain what that meant in practice when pressed.
She said: “I’m going to follow Jenny Marra’s lead. Jenny Marra has been leading a campaign for years now to bring decommissioning jobs which will come from oil and gas to the city of Dundee, where there is the infrastructure, potential for more investment in that infrastructure, and skills to create new jobs and new opportunities which come from oil and gas.”
Ms Marra has spoken the likes of Shell and insists they are keen to invest.
Forth Ports, who own the Port of Dundee, recently ploughed £10 million to position the city as a key base for the multi-billion pound North Sea renewables and decommissioning sectors.
Ms Dugdale insisted she has delivered on her plan to turn around Labour’s fortunes and attacked suggestions her party did not speak up for people who voted against independence. Less than two hours after her speech, however, a poll for STV puts the Scottish Conservatives ahead of Labour on the regional list vote by two percentage points.
The Ipsos-MORI research found Kezia Dugdale’s party retained a one percentage point advantage over the Ruth Davidson’s on the constituency vote, seen as being less important due to the fact the SNP are likely to win the vast majority of first past the post seats.
More voters said they know what the Tories stand for when compared to Labour, believe the Tories look after the interests of voters more than Labour.
But Ms Dugdale insisted: “The problems with the Labour Party didn’t happen overnight and they’re not going to be fixed overnight.”
She cited Scottish Labour’s “clearer sense of values”, its plan to tax the rich to “stop the cuts”, her elevation of new candidates and its greater autonomy from the UK party.
Ms Dugdale insists Labour is the “only party offering an alternative to austerity” while her manifesto ruled out another independence referendum for the lifetime of the next parliament.
She added: “I take real umbrage at any suggestion you can trust the Tories with the Union. The Tories don’t defend the Union, they are the risk.”
Labour will scrap the council tax and replace it with a new system where the party claims 80% of households pay less, and heavily tax the richest 1% to pay for a Fair Start Fund for schools.
It will also promote a breakfast club in every primary school to help parents back to work.
Other policies include getting cancer test results within two weeks, scrapping all care charges, introducing a Scottish graduate certificate for school leavers, stopping Holyrood’s Presiding Officer coming from the majority party and shutting shops on New Year’s Day.
The SNP claimed Labour’s manifesto offered the lowest commitment to NHS funding of any party and short-changed the health service by at least £800 million over the next Parliament.
Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “It is clear the Labour party are preparing to let down Scotland’s valuable health service.”
