Election 2021: Sturgeon, Sarwar, Ross, Harvie and Rennie and what they told us on key issues

With the polls opening tomorrow, we look at what Nicola Sturgeon, Anas Sarwar, Douglas Ross, Patrick Harvie and Willie Rennie told us on a range of topics.

click on the links below to see the full interview with each of the party leaders.

EDUCATION

Nicola Sturgeon: “I think it’s been work in progress and the progress is good progress, particularly in Glasgow we are seeing many more young people leave school with qualifications and good qualifications and we have seen the attainment gap narrow. I think that is a credit to teachers, parents and kids across the city and yes, I would say there is good progress.”

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon, SNP leader, quizzed on attainment gap, poverty, drug deaths and council tax in Glasgow

Anas Sarwar: “We want 3000 new teachers, 100 ASN teachers that is the kind of bold action we neem. One other thing is the summer comeback pass. We want to sue the summer months, the opportunity of the lockdown ending and the summer months to give every child free access to sport to cultural facilities and activities so they can re-kindle those= friendships and make new friendships after the school holidays.”

Willie Rennie: “On education we want to make sure that every minute counts in the classroom. Kids have lost out on a lot in the last year. That means recruit more teachers, ending the casualization of the workforce, there’s been a massive increase in that. One in ten teachers now is on a casual contract, that’s unacceptable and needs to stop. We need to make the Pupil Equity Fund, which was our ides, we put it in place and persuaded the government, it took six years to persuade them to do it, because it closes the attainment gap.”

NHS

Anas Sarwar: “We know that there are 7000 missing cancer diagnoses in the past year. We know that despite this pandemic cancer remains Scotland’s biggest killer and that’s why I want us to catch up on all those missed screening plans. I want us to have rapid diagnosis centres in every health board area across Scotland.”

READ MORE: Glasgow Times quizzes Anas Sarwar manifesto costings, what he stands for and private schools

Douglas Ross: “I think it’s right we continue to invest in the NHS and that’s why I’m giving this cast iron guarantee that Scottish Conservatives will see investment in our NHS to the tune of more than £2bn additional support over and above the funding that’s already going in. I think that’s what people want to see after the most difficult 12 months we’ve been through. They want to see it continue to be supported.”

READ MORE: Election 2021: Douglas Ross interview on poverty, NHS, drug deaths and a second independence referendum

DRUGS DEATHS

Nicola Sturgeon: “We have been taking action, we have been making interventions to try to turn around the drugs deaths situations but we can’t look at the number and conclude that what we’re doing is enough or necessarily that it’s all the right things and that’s why I’ve been pretty open about the need to do more and do different things.

Willie Rennie: “I’d been to visit Turning Point in Glasgow and was impressed by the outreach work they were doing. I could see the benefits of changing to a Portuguese model, changing to a health issue rather than a criminal issue. Using commissions and compulsory treatment rather than sending people to jail. I could see the benefit of looking at personal support, providing housing, job support, health support all of that wrapped around the individual to make sure we can break them from this cycle.”

READ MORE: Leader interview: Willie Rennie, Why do the Liberal Democrats matter in Glasgow?

Douglas Ross: “I don’t believe there’s one silver bullet to address the shocking figures of the numbers of Glaswegians and Scots who lose their lives as a result of drug related deaths and it is a national shame. It’s a shame on our country that Scotland not only has the highest amount of drug deaths in the United Kingdom but in Europe and possible even the world. I have advocated and Scottish Conservatives have advocated for more funding going into rehab and clearly, we got a win from the Scottish Government with the £20m funding pledge being restored and I think it was wrong to cut that.”

CHILD POVERTY

Nicola Sturgeon: “Child poverty is far too high but Scotland has the lowest child poverty rates of all the UK nations and we’ve taken and these are not my words, it’s how child poverty campaign groups have described it, we’ve taken the game changing action of establishing the Scottish Child Payment. That is up and running, it will extend over the next parliament and we’ll double the value of it over the next parliament to lift children out of poverty.

Anas Sarwar: “Child Poverty is massively on the rise. Almost 50% of children in Glasgow Southside live in poverty. We have the constituency of the First Minister having one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country. That’s not good enough.

“Huge housing challenges, challenges around youth unemployment and unemployment generally. We’ve seen in previous economic downturns where people have lost work and never gone on to work again in their lives, we can’t have a lost generation.”

Willie Rennie: “We need to increase the Child Payment, put it up to £20 and extend it beyond six years, but that’s not a long-term solution. If that’s all they’re going to get in life it’s not a great hope, is it? “You’ve got to give people hope rather than always being dependent on the state. We don’t want that. That’s not my ambition. I want them to do much better than that, but that’s necessary to provide that safety net, but let’s dream a bit bigger than this.”

Patrick Harvie: “Universal Basic Income has been Green policy for many, many years and it’s really encouraging to see that it’s attracting support from a much wider audience now and people recognizing that for decades we’ve seen increases in productivity, increases in economic activity benefiting a very few people, particularly those who are already the wealthiest. If we want to have an economy where we all benefit, where productivity benefits everybody, you need a wide range of solutions.

“Universal Basic Income is a really important way of ensuring everybody gets a fair share of the economic activity because we all create that economic wealth.”

READ MORE:Election 2021: Scottish Greens' Patrick Harvie on climate change, economy and Alex Salmond's Alba Party

INDEPENDENCE

Nicola Sturgeon “I think a majority of people in Glasgow want Scotland to become independent and want that choice. The other parties, certainly Labour, the Tories and Liberals, they think politicians should decide Scotland’s future. We think the people should decide the future.”

we are seeing cuts to welfare at a UK level that are plunging more kids into poverty, so it is a very stark example of how we have one hand tied behind our backs and the action that we are taking is helping to tackle child poverty is being neutralized and undermined by the action another government is taking.”

Patrick Harvie: “The position of the greens on independence has always been democratically decided by our members as long as I’ve been a member there’s always been a majority in favour of independence and I think that’s only grown as people see not only how the debate in 2014 went but some of the limits of devolution at the moment.

“If you want a genuinely sustainable energy system, it’s not enough to be responsible for fuel poverty when you can’t regulate the energy market.  If you want a more fair and equal society it’s not enough to be responsible for the consequences of poverty without controlling the economic levers. So, it’s really about completing a journey to self-government. And yes, taking a role on the world stage advocating for the kind of sustainable, pro peace policies that we don’t see from the UK Government.”

Anas Sarwar: “I support Scotland staying part of the United Kingdom. I don’t apologise for the fact that we remain part of the United Kingdom. I believe in, as I say, what unites us not what divides us that means I want to break down barriers, I don’t want to create new barriers. I opposed Brexit, that’s why I don’t support independence. I actually believe in an idea bigger than independence, it’s called interdependence, and it’s called working together with other nations to confront the big challenges facing our community, facing our society and facing our world.”

Willie Rennie: “We are in favour of partnership with our neighbours, whether that’s the UK or Europe. we are saying people shouldn’t get distracted by another independence referendum which will take years and be exhausting and divisive when we should be focusing on these massive challenges. We can’t afford to take our eye off the ball like Nicola Sturgeon admitted on the drugs crisis.”

Douglas Ross: “I want to stop another referendum because I think it would be divisive and damaging particularly in our recovery phase. Nicola Sturgeon has now confirmed she wants to hold that second independence referendum in the first couple of years of this parliament and she’s accepted that  means during the recovery as we’re looking to protect people’s jobs, trying  to  rebuild our economy, trying to get  back to normal, the SNP want to take  us through a second damaging, divisive independence referendum and  clearly we were able to stop that five years ago by more than doubling the number of Conservative  MSPs which stopped the SNP getting  a majority and stopped another independence referendum. We can do that again at this election by people backing the Scottish Conservatives to stop that independence referendum and make sure our absolute focus is 100% on recovery from Covid-19.”