Has the SNP delivered on its manifesto promises from 2021? | UK News

John Swinney will set out his programme for government on Tuesday, making clear what he expects to get done over the final year of the Holyrood term.

A year of delivery is key to his aim of being re-elected as Scotland’s first minister next May.

And this programme should give us the full picture of what his party has done – and has not done – since the last election.

So this is a good moment to check in on the SNP’s 2021 manifesto – what has been delivered, what has been dropped, and what has been delayed?

It is fair at the outset to reflect that the SNP is onto its third leader and first minister since that election, so some changes to the agenda were inevitable.

The world has changed enormously too, from the tail end of the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, to the cost-of-living crisis and major changes of government in Westminster and Washington.

Some of those things have clearly contributed to the success or failure of the programme.

But what is a manifesto of a victorious party for, if not a yardstick of a government’s progress?

A two-page spread at the start of the SNP’s manifesto in 2021 outlined the party’s “next steps” – a list which contained 20 pledges for the parliamentary term.

Right at the top was a promise to increase NHS frontline spending by at least 20%.

That target has already been smashed, thanks to the huge increases in health spending post-pandemic – from 2020 to 2025 the NHS budget went up from about £12bn to over £16bn, which is closer to 30%.

A promise to increase NHS staff pay by an average of 4% has also been more than fulfilled, with double-digit inflation driving public sector pay deals higher.

But the next promise, of creating a National Care Service collapsed in slow motion across the parliamentary term.

Ministers may seek to blame the opposition for that one, but the range of groups which ended up turning against the government’s vision for the service was huge, and it had clearly become undeliverable.

The government also said it would freeze income tax rates and bands for the duration of the parliament.

Higher rate taxpayers in particular may have noticed that big changes were made to the system in the end – the higher and top rates were increased in 2023, and then a new “advanced rate” was added in 2024.

This is not unrelated to the swelling of NHS budgets and public sector pay deals, of course. All reflect the changing realities on the ground, but also the political choices made by the SNP.

Their instinct was to raise taxes rather than cut spending elsewhere – although as we will soon see, there has been belt-tightening too.

Another victim of circumstance was the goal to decarbonise the heating of one million homes by 2030.

The crisis in energy prices and the cost of living led ministers to conclude last year that it was “no longer considered achievable”.

Of course there is political context too – the Greens were kicked out of government by Humza Yousaf, and the heat in buildings bill drawn up by former minister Patrick Harvie was torn up on Mr Swinney’s watch.

There were a lot of policies in the manifesto aimed at young people, families and education.

Nicola Sturgeon famously made closing the attainment gap her top priority.

That has not yet happened – but the manifesto pledge to invest £1bn in the attainment fund has been maintained through the administrations of both of her successors.

The government has also more than met the promise to double the Scottish Child Payment to £20 a week – indeed it now stands at £27.15.

Local pilots are being run of the wraparound childcare service, although as it stands there is no indication of when or whether it will be rolled out nationwide.

But the pledge to provide free school breakfasts and lunches to every pupil has not been met, with universal rollout paused in favour of focusing on poorer families.

And a promise to recruit 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants has turned into one to restore the falling figures to the level they were at in 2023.

Likewise, the idea of providing every child in Scotland with a device to get online was the victim of budget cuts, with councils given the green light to spend the funding for it on pay deals.

There was also the idea of free bikes for all children of school age who cannot afford them.

The government ran an in-house pilot scheme, but it was subsequently moved to a “third sector partnership approach” run by Cycling Scotland.

In 2023 Patrick Harvie told MSPs that “a single national delivery model would not be the best way to meet the needs or intentions of the policy”, but that the government still puts money towards the scheme and that thousands of young people have benefitted.

Some pledges are harder to judge, at least from where we stand today.

There is much scrutiny on an ongoing basis as to whether the target of delivering a further 100,000 affordable homes by 2032 will be met.

The target was stretched to 110,000, but an internal memo from December 2023 suggested it was “at risk” due to sluggish approvals of new housing, and the housing budget was at one point cut before being reinstated.

But the government insists it is still working towards this goal, and the target date remains far enough away that it’s hard to forecast whether it will hit it.

See also the pledge to invest £500m to support new jobs and reskill people.

The Just Transition Fund has indeed been doling out this cash, but over a 10-year timescale rather than in the five-year Holyrood term.

The SNP also said it would invest £33bn in a national infrastructure mission.

Once again inflation has played havoc with the intention, and a report in 2023 concluded that it is “likely to take longer than expected” to achieve this target.

In October 2024 a progress report said ministers “cannot responsibly commit to additional major infrastructure projects or public-private partnerships in the near term”, and that the government was “focussing capital resources on the maintenance of existing assets to safeguard service delivery”.

On transport, the government hit its target of bringing Scotrail into public ownership – something which had actually been announced by ministers prior to the election.

But a pledge to decarbonise rail services by 2035 has been pushed back by a decade “due to constrained budgets and logistical requirements impacting adversely on the delivery programme”.

And the idea of removing the majority of fossil fuel buses from public transport by 2023 also proved far too lofty a target to meet.

Despite the government funding 800 zero-emission buses and coaches, Transform Scotland estimated last year that about 70% of the fleet still runs on diesel.

One topic that John Swinney has talked about relatively rarely since he became first minister, but which will surely have to feature in his next manifesto somewhere, is Scotland’s constitutional future.

The 2021 paper promised to hold an independence referendum after the Covid crisis was over.

Nicola Sturgeon’s attempt to force the issue via the Supreme Court fell flat, and talk of a “de facto referendum” ended with her resignation – not to mention the SNP’s massive losses in last year’s general election.

It’s hard to say whether her successors have managed to maintain relations with EU partners with a view to rejoining.

A diplomatic office was added in Copenhagen, but plans for another in Warsaw have not yet borne fruit and the idea of rejoining the European club remains as distant as independence.

Five of the 20 headline pledges have inarguably been delivered upon, and things like funding the NHS and the Scottish Child Payment are no small matter.

But at least as many have been dropped, while others have been delayed or kicked into the long grass.

The same story continues through the rest of the manifesto: free bus travel for under-22s and a ban on single-use plastics were delivered; alcohol advertising restrictions and annual citizens assemblies were scrapped.

Almost always there is a deeper story too – consider the pledge to simplify the gender recognition process.

There are plenty of reasons why this is the case, given the big changes in government here and circumstances more broadly.

But you can see why Swinney is so keen to set himself up for a year of delivery before he has to put his next manifesto to the public for a vote.