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SNP pledges 30 hours’ free childcare for all three and four year olds
The Scottish Nationalist Party has pledged to expand early years education and childcare to 30 hours a week for all three and four year olds and vulnerable two year olds by 2021.
Unveiling their manifesto today, the SNP says it increased the availability of free early years education and childcare from 12.5 hours in 2007 to 16 hours a week for all three and four year olds – and also extended it to two year olds from low income households.
The party also pledged to scrap the two child cap on tax credits and the Rape Clause [by which women who have a third child born from rape can have access to tax credits, but must prove they have been raped] and to end the freeze on increases in benefit rates, saying they should increase at least in line with CPI inflation.
The SNP says it will support moves over the next Parliament to increase the Minimum Wage to the level of the real Living Wage and pledges a ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts.
It says that the party recognises “that at a time of rising inflation, public sector pay caps become unsustainable”. It pledges to work with the NHS to make sure recommendations to the independent pay review body are fair and will implement in full the body’s proposals. For the wider public sector, it says it is committed to “a fair outcome that takes account of both the public finances and the cost of living”. The manifesto says the party will also call for “tough new action to close the gender pay gap”.
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