Kezia Dugdale today wrote for the P&J, here is what the Scottish Labour leader said.
The single most important investment any government can make is in education, and the single most important policy we can pursue in education is cutting the gap between the richest and the rest in our classrooms.
The Press and Journal and Courier’s report card on the SNP Government has gone into a level of depth we haven’t seen before on the SNP’s record – and on attainment the SNP have failed.
We can’t afford another lost generation. We need to give our young people the skills to compete for the jobs of the future, but that won’t happen when the SNP budget cuts hundreds of millions of pounds from schools and public services.
Education has been at the heart of everything I do as Scottish Labour leader. It’s the key to building a stronger economy and a fairer nation.
With the new powers coming to Scotland we don’t have to cut into our future. That’s why faced with the choice between using the powers of the Scottish Parliament to invest in our future or carrying on the SNP’s cuts to schools and services, Labour will use the powers to invest.
We’d cut the gap between the richest and the rest by delivering £1,000 of extra funding for each of the poorest pupils. We’d give that extra funding straight to head teachers, who know how to invest it better than a minister sitting behind a desk in Edinburgh.
We can make these promises because we are the only party being honest about how we are paying for them. We’ll use the new powers including asking the richest 1% to pay a 50p top rate of tax on earnings over £150,000 a year. That’s a policy the SNP claim to support but won’t implement, using Tory excuses for not acting.
We will use that money to stop the cuts and invest in education.
I think, at a time when tax avoidance by the richest has been exposed on such a wide scale, it’s time to ask the richest to pay their fair share to invest in our future.
