John Park, Labour’s campaign manager for the Scottish elections and shadow minister for the economy and skills, writes exclusively for Left Foot Forward on Labour's vision for Scotland.
John Park, Labour’s campaign manager for the Scottish elections and shadow minister for the economy and skills, writes exclusively for Left Foot Forward on Labour’s vision for Scotland; John is standing for Labour in the regional vote for Mid Scotland and Fife
The last time that Labour fought an election for the Scottish parliament, we were in government in Westminster and at Holyrood. This time around, we are in opposition in both parliaments – a first. We have learnt the lessons of our defeat in 2007. We’ve listened to people in Scotland and we have understood the frustration that people have about politicians who seem to promise everything, then let everyone down.
That’s why a key feature of our campaign is an unrelenting focus on the things that matter to ordinary Scots. Our commitments are things that will improve people’s lives and prospects every day. Together, they add up to a vision of Scotland that is modern, ambitious and makes sure that everyone gets on.
I wanted to write here to give people an idea of what we are campaigning for. If you want the full manifesto, it’s on our web page (pdf), but I want to give you an idea of our direction of travel, of what we are really about.
Take youth unemployment as an example of what drives us on. I, like many Scots, remember when the Tories left thousands of our young people on the scrapheap with no job to turn to and no way out of a life of little opportunity. So when the Tories came into government and made scrapping the future jobs fund one of their first acts, of course people in Scotland were worried. But in truth, Scotland’s problems didn’t just begin with the election of the Tories last year.
The SNP have been distracted by independence, and on their watch youth unemployment has risen by 350 per cent over two years. People struggle to comprehend the scale of that rise, but there is a real fear that we could sleepwalk into another generation of workers with low skills while many employers struggle to fill places because of skill shortages.
We now have a Tory government at Westminster which is reverting to type and an SNP government in Scotland that is too distracted using the levers of government to promote separation rather than standing up for jobs.
In the face of this, one of our most important pledges to the people of Scotland is to completely abolish youth unemployment by 2015. We’ll bring back the future jobs fund in Scotland and guarantee an apprenticeship to every qualified school-leaver who wants one. That’s a big ask, but we are committed to only pledging what we know we can deliver.
Not only will we abolish youth unemployment, but by building Scotland’s skills base and driving investment into our industries, Labour has set out plans to create 250,000 jobs in the next ten years. We’ll need to do that because the pace of economic change will only increase
We have also pledged to keep building the talents of people through our world class universities. Now, everyone knows that we can’t build a modern and successful Scotland if we put people off from going to university. It’s no surprise that Iain Gray was the first of the main party leaders to sign up to the NUS Scotland election pledges.
We have promised to reform the broken college bursary system, but will now set in place plans to reform university support too.
I know that I have concentrated here mainly on opportunities for Scotland’s young people, but I think that’s a key difference of approach between us and the SNP. Obviously, there are others like knife crime, local taxation and other important areas in our public services.
But the differences on youth unemployment are important to understand, because it’s not that the SNP are in favour of youth unemployment, or that they have plans to tackle it with which we disagree. The fundamental difference between us and the SNP is that they don’t have a plan to create jobs for young people. They don’t have a blueprint to create a modern Scotland where our young people have the opportunity to get on.
We have put a modern and dynamic set of policies to the Scottish people, we have focussed on what really matters and we will keep standing up for Scottish jobs; the voters will decide on May 5th.
30 Responses to “Vote 2011: Scottish Labour “will keep standing up for Scottish jobs””
David Wilson
RT @NorrieMacD: This reply by Rev Campell to Labour John Park is absolutely brilliant.Sums up Labour http://bit.ly/ewOfus @MarkEMacLachl …
WhyWhyWhy
Oh it’s John Ruddy, SLAB’s main apologist on the old tinternet at the moment.
How many sites do you spin on now?
How much does knife crime cost again?
Kerrs leaflets say 3 Billion.
Baker says 500 million.
The group who looked at the problem says knife crime counts for between 3 & 6% of the 500 million.
Baker says it must be true the 500 million figure was printed in a paper.
Kerr now claims the 3 billion was a misprint.
More SLAB lies and spin I say.
Keep spinning Mr Ruddy.
george anderson
Labour record
I still don’t understand how Gordon Brown managed to sell off all our gold reserves in batches when the price was at it’s lowest?
Do not forget PFI, the millstone that will drag our children down for decades to come? Labour built hospitals and schools so they could look good at the grand opening ceremonies, but desperately conspired to keep the financial reality off the books and the secret from the electorate, because they knew the truth – that every hospital built would actually cost the taxpayer the price of SIX hospitals.
John Ruddy
@13
Have a go at me – at least I use my real name. I’m not afraid of people knowing what I stand up for.
Funny how there hasnt been an explanation of why the Scottish Futures Trust is now recommending PPP to fund these new Schools. If they had said that at the beginning, we might have had a few built by now.
As for being a Scottish Labour “apologist”, I am the first to criticise when mistakes are made. Perhaps the cybernats are just narked that they arnt getting their own way on forums and newspaper comment pages any more?
Are they so scared of proper, adult debate that they have to resort to petty name calling, hiding being the anonymity of the keyboard?
John Ruddy
@8
Perhaps you would care to explain to the good people how this is different, given I’ve seen the email from SFT, and you havnt.