SNP manifesto 2021 pledge query: FOI release

Information requested

You asked if the following commitments made in the 2021 SNP manifesto have been fulfilled by the Scottish Government. Please provide as much detail on the progress of each pledge:

1. Invest a further £1 billion over the next parliament to close the school attainment gap.

2. Invest an additional £500 million to support new jobs and reskill people.

3. Invest over £33 billion over the next five years in our National Infrastructure Mission.

4. Run Citizens’ Assemblies annually to look at some of the more complex issues we face as a country.

5. Establish a Citizens’ Assembly for those under the age of 16 to ensure the voices of the future are heard.

6. We will further expand medical school training places by at least 100 per year and double the number of places on the Widening Access to Medicine programme to help create a more diverse medical workforce.

7. We will double suicide prevention spending and support a range of activity, including doubling Scottish Ministers, special advisers and the Permanent Secretary are covered by the terms of the Lobbying (Scotland) Act 2016. See the number of Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training programme and SafeTalk programme trainers, by the end of the parliament.

8. Move to a 5-year funding cycle for eligible third sector and grassroots organisations that are at the forefront of saving lives.

9. Ensure maternity departments have dedicated facilities for women who are experiencing unexpected pregnancy complications.

10. Ask clinical experts in the National Screening Committee to examine the merits of lowering the current age thresholds and commit to acting on their advice.

Response

I enclose a copy of all of the information you requested.

The answer to your question is:

1. Invest a further £1 billion over the next parliament to close the school attainment gap.

A breakdown of the annual investment in the Scottish Attainment Challenge over the course of this parliamentary term is shown below.

Financial Year	Amount
2021/22	£214.4m*^
2022/23	£195.9m*^^
2023/24	£186.5m*
2024/25	£185.7m*
2025/26	£185m**
Sub-total	£967.5m
Further Scottish Government commitment to the Scottish Attainment Challenge
2026/27	c.£188.6m***
Total	£1.16 billion
*spent **forecast ***subject to passing of Scottish Budget in February 2026 ^includes one-off £20m Covid-19 PEF top-up ^^ includes one-off £4m Covid-19 Easter study support

2. Invest an additional £500 million to support new jobs and reskill people.

Expenditure to support new jobs and reskill people is core to multiple budget lines across the Scottish Government. However, the following Level 4 budget lines taken from Scottish Budget Documents for 2023-24 and 2026-27 are particularly relevant. They demonstrate that nominal expenditure has been consistently above the baseline year of 2021-22.

	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24	2024-25	2025-26	2026-27
Employability & Training	56.2	124.6	135.1
Employability				98.6	101.7	104.6
Enterprise, Trade & Investment	446.6	480.6	423.1	426.9	419.6	397.7
Scottish Funding Council	1,911.0	1,973.8	2,012.6	2,029.9	1.987.7	2,046.7
Lifelong Learning	20.6	22.9	22.7
Skills & Training	277.2	271.9	262.2
Lifelong Learning & Skills				251.3	258.7	256.4
Climate Action & Just Transition Fund	29.6	49.1	79.5
Energy Transitions				20.5	72.0	39.7
Just Transition Fund				29.1	15.9	15.9
TOTAL	£2741.2	£2922.9	£2935.2	£2856.3	£2855.6	£2861.0

Supporting documents - Scottish Budget: 2023 to 2024 - gov.scot

Supporting documents - Scottish Budget 2026 to 2027 - gov.scot

3. Invest over £33 billion over the next five years in our National Infrastructure Mission.

The Scottish Government has increased annual infrastructure investment in line with the definition of the National Infrastructure Mission, which required annual infrastructure investment in 2025/26 to be £1.5 billion higher than the £5.2 billion invested in 2019/20. Planned capital investment (including financial transactions) rises to £7.343 billion in 2025/26 meeting the Mission’s requirement for sustained realterms growth in annual infrastructure expenditure.

Detailed figures on capital spending over the period from 2021/22 to 2025/26 are published in the Scottish Budget supporting documents “Budget Split by HMT Aggregate”. While the aggregate of published annual figures varies slightly depending on classification and timing of allocations, the underlying commitment of the National Infrastructure Mission has been fulfilled.

Supporting documents - Scottish Budget: 2023 to 2024 - gov.scot

Supporting documents - Scottish Budget 2026 to 2027 - gov.scot

4. Run Citizens’ Assemblies annually to look at some of the more complex issues we face as a country.

The specific information being requested can be found here and contains the statement: Due to ongoing budget constraints, Citizens’ Assemblies committed to by Scottish Government have been postponed or are being delivered in a different form.

5. Establish a Citizens’ Assembly for those under the age of 16 to ensure the voices of the future are heard.

The specific information being requested can be found here and contains the statement: Due to ongoing budget constraints, Citizens’ Assemblies committed to by Scottish Government have been postponed or are being delivered in a different form.

6. We will further expand medical school training places by at least 100 per year and double the number of places on the Widening Access to Medicine programme to help create a more diverse medical workforce.

Since 2016, the Scottish Government has increased the annual medical undergraduate intake from 848 to 1.417 per year, representing a 67% increase.

As part of the 2021-22 Programme for Government (PfG), the Scottish Government committed to increasing the number of available medical school places by 500 over the lifetime of this Parliament,while also doubling the number of Widening Access (WA) from 60 to 120 when the commitment reached full implementation.

The first three years of this commitment were met following the creation of 300 additional places which have been distributed between Scotland's five medical schools. The number of WA students has increased to 110.

When considering the challenging financial position faced by the Scottish Government and the wider public sector, it was decided to pause this commitment in academic year 2024/25 while the Scottish Government considers the implications on the wider medical education pipeline.

7. We will double suicide prevention spending and support a range of activity, including doubling the number of Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training programme and SafeTalk programme trainers, by the end of the parliament.

In the 2021-22 Programme for Government, the Scottish Government committed to doubling specific funding for suicide prevention from £1.4 million to £2.8 million over the parliamentary term, supporting the  Creating Hope Together strategy. The incremental increases to the suicide prevention budget over the parliamentary term are outlined below:

Financial year	Allocated budget
2021/22	£1.4 million
22/23	£1.609 million
23/24	£2.699 million
2024/25	£2.6 million
2025/26	£2.8 million

8. Move to a 5-year funding cycle for eligible third sector and grassroots organisations that are at the forefront of saving lives.

The five year funding cycle we have introduced for third sector and grassroots organisations builds sustainability and allows for longer‑term interventions which will save lives. The guarantee of £18 million in the first year will enable long‑term investment and includes:
■ £5 million Local Support Fund to increase capacity in community and third sector organisations
■ £5 million Improvement Fund to improve outreach services, treatment, rehabilitation and aftercare, with dedicated support for women in response to rising numbers of drug deaths among women
■ £3 million Families and Children Fund to support children, young people and families affected by drug use
■ £5 million Recovery Fund for additional residential rehabilitation capacity

9. Ensure maternity departments have dedicated facilities for women who are experiencing unexpected pregnancy complications.

Scottish Government analysts carried out a scoping exercise across all 14 NHS Boards into the availability of services within Boards for miscarriage and unexpected pregnancy complications. Following analysis of responses, 1 national report and 14 individual NHS Board reports were produced with senior NHS board review and sign-off.

The reports were published in 2023, and can be found here: Key Messages - Miscarriage Care and Facilities in Scotland: Scoping Report National Overview - gov.scot

The results of the scoping exercise were used to inform development of a Delivery Framework for Miscarriage Care in Scotland which can be found here: Delivery Framework for Miscarriage Care in Scotland - gov.scot

Scottish Government has asked NHS Boards to assess what their service is delivering now, and report on their progress towards implementation of the framework. Annual and Local Delivery Plan guidance for NHS Boards for 2025-26 highlights improving miscarriage care and implementing the Delivery Framework as a specific planning priority. To help Boards with this a monitoring framework document, was issued to them on 28 August 2025.

Initial responses show that 11 out of 14 NHS Boards in Scotland have a separate room/area/ward away from the labour ward for women experiencing miscarriage and that NHS Boards who do not have a separate space for women experiencing miscarriage are working on doing so. To further support it, the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health announced funding of £1.5 million in 2025-26 to help NHS Boards implement the Delivery Framework.

You may also be interested to know that the Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that women and families who have experienced a pregnancy or baby loss receive high quality, sensitive bereavement care and support and we are funding and supporting the baby loss charity Sands to develop, and support NHS Boards to implement, the National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP) for pregnancy and baby loss in Scotland. Sands worked with health professionals, bereaved parents, baby loss charities and Royal Colleges to deliver the pathways, putting voices of bereaved parents at the heart of the development of the pathways.

The pathways provide health professionals with evidence-based care and describe best practice for bereavement care following a miscarriage, ectopic and molar pregnancy, termination of pregnancy for fetal anomaly, stillbirth, neonatal death, or the sudden unexpected death of an infant.

All 14 NHS Boards are now officially signed up to the NBCP, have appointed a NBCP lead and are at different stages of implementation. A link to the NBCP can be found here: https://www.nbcpscotland.org.uk/

10. Ask clinical experts in the National Screening Committee to examine the merits of lowering the current age thresholds and commit to acting on their advice.

The then Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport, Maree Todd, wrote to the UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC) on 27 July 2021, asking them to review the age ranges for both the cervical and breast screening programmes. The UKNSC did not respond formally in writing; however, discussion at official level confirmed that existing evidence would not support such a change in cervical screening, and that an age extension trial was underway for breast screening.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.