Scottish election 2021: Leaders’ debate factual checked

The five leaders of Scotland’s major political parties took part in their first televised debate on the 2021 Holyrood election campaign.

In front of a “virtual” audience, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, the Conservatives Douglas Ross, the Labor Party, Anas Sarwar, Willie Rennie of the Liberal Democrats and Lorna Slater of the Greens set out their policies and made a series of demands.

We looked at some of them.

The Prime Minister has spoken about the Scottish Government’s measures to reduce emissions.

It is correct that the equivalent of 97.4% of Scotland’s electricity needs in 2020 comes from renewable energy.

This is an impressive increase of 24% in 2010.

But it is noteworthy that the Scottish Government’s goal, set in 2011, was to achieve 100% from renewable sources by 2020.

That target was nail-bitingly missed.

The Scottish Conservative leader has accused the SNP of not reforming the council’s taxes.

Nicola Sturgeon argued that it was frozen while the SNP was in office and lower in Scotland.

The abolition or reform of council taxes has indeed been promised three times, but changes are limited.

In 2007, the incoming SNP administration said the “hated council burden” would be replaced by a local income tax.

As a minority administration, it could not get sufficient support for it, but the tax did start to freeze.

When it gained a majority in 2011, it continued to freeze and began negotiating reforms that resulted in people with larger homes paying slightly more.

After a nine-year freeze, the councils briefly allowed it to increase, and froze it again last year and for 2021-22.

The SNP leader argued that taxes in Scotland were lower. At volume D, the average Scottish bill in 2020-21 is £ 1308, in Wales £ 1667 and in England £ 1818.

Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar has criticized the Prime Minister’s record of poverty.

The first part of the claim is correct. Scottish government statistics published last week estimated that 24% of children (240,000 children per year) are living in relative poverty after housing costs in 2017-20.

But the allegation about the electorate of the prime minister is more difficult to get to the end of the matter. Nicola Sturgeon is MSP for Glasgow Southside.

According to Scottish Labor, this was shown from research done by Loughborough University published in 2019. The academics say they are now doing research in Westminster constituencies and not Holyrood, and that their methodology has improved significantly since the 50% figure.

Nicola Sturgeon’s Holyrood constituency is in the Westminster constituency of Glasgow South, where child poverty rates are significantly below 50%.

ELECTION OF SCOTLAND: THE BASIS

What elections are taking place? On 6 May, people across Scotland will vote to elect 129 members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). The party that wins the most seats will form the Scottish Government. Find out more here.

What powers does the Scottish Parliament have? MSPs pass laws on most aspects of daily life in Scotland, such as health, education and transport. They also have control over some taxes and welfare benefits. Defense, foreign policy and immigration are decided by the British Parliament.

How do I vote? Everyone who lives in Scotland and is registered to vote is eligible, as long as they are 16 years or older on election day. You can register to vote online.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: ‘We have 1,500 young people waiting more than a year for mental health support’

This is correct. The most recent official waiting time statistics for Scottish services for children and teenagers for mental health (known as Camhs) showed that in December there were 1,560 patients waiting longer than 52 weeks.

Female representation at Holyrood is nowhere near the 50:50 that fighters want. Only 36% of the current chamber is female, just in front of Westminster but behind the Welsh parliament.

Across the eight Scottish parliaments, women in five regions are on the green list. In the other three regions, men who are already MSPs are at the top of the list.

Based on the list of declared candidates for the seats, there appear to be more female candidates than the candidates for the Scottish Greens. Nominations have not yet been finalized, but as it stands now, it looks like the party will have more than half, but perhaps not as many as 70% of its candidates as female.

And having a significant number of women on the lists can no longer get women in parliament. To do this, they must be in winning seats or standing high on a party’s regional list.

In 2016, half of the green candidates were indeed women. The party won six seats, but ended up with five male MSPs and only one female representative – Alison Johnstone in Lothian.

The Scottish Greens later made it clear on the basis of polls that 70% of those elected from their party were women – seven female MSPs and three men.