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12. Defence & Deterrent – Scotland Secure 🟡
Faslane is the operational home of the continuous at-sea deterrent. Lossiemouth is the northern Quick Reaction Alert and maritime patrol hub.
The Peoples Future Scotland
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11. Scotland Runs Scotland 🔴
Immigration, nationality and asylum are reserved in full. So are the main taxes, National Insurance, VAT, corporation tax and monetary policy.
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10. Scotland Leads the Future 🟡
Scotland already has a dense cluster in photonics, quantum, semiconductors and sensing, a nationally hosted supercomputer, Europe’s leading small-satellite manufacturing base, and a licensed vertical spaceport.
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9. Scotland Builds the World Again 🟢
Naval yards on the Clyde and at Rosyth are among the busiest in Europe. The last commercial yard on the lower Clyde has no hull in the build hall. Ministers announced in March 2026 that they intended to award four public vessels directly to Ferguson Marine.
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8. Powerhouse Scotland – Bills That Cost What They Cost 🟡
Scotland exported 21.7 TWh of electricity in 2025 and imported 0.9 TWh. Net exports were 20.8 TWh, with an indicative wholesale value of £1.7 billion.
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7. Scots Trained, Scots First 🟡
Scotland still reports skill-shortage vacancies in trades, engineering, digital work and care. Modern Apprenticeship starts fell in 2025/26 after a flat post-pandemic recovery.
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6. Back to Basics – World-Class Education 🟢
Education is fully devolved. The last comparable international test of fifteen-year-olds placed Scotland at or near the OECD average in mathematics and science, below England, and well below its own early-2000s scores.
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5. Fires Out First 🟢
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service exists to put trained people and a working appliance at the incident. That is a matter of minutes, of a crew of four or five, and of whether a retained firefighter on an island or in a glen can leave work when the pager sounds. Fire and rescue is fully devolved.
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4. Lives Saved Faster 🟢
When a person collapses with a cardiac arrest, a major stroke or catastrophic bleeding, the interval that matters is the one between the 999 answer and effective intervention.
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3. Streets Safe Again 🟢
Policing in Scotland is devolved. Scotland decides on officer numbers, deployment, control rooms, search practices, and most criminal law related to knife crime.
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2. Fairer, Simpler, Lower Taxes 🟡
Scotland already sets the rates and bands on most earned income. It does not set the personal allowance, National Insurance, inheritance tax, corporation tax, VAT, or most capital taxes. Any serious account of tax has to start there.
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1. An NHS That Works – Free Forever 🟢
This item answers a narrower question than whether people value the NHS. It asks whether the waits, blocked hospital flows, and the gap between stated standards and what patients actually get stem from a lack of Scottish powers or from how those powers have been used.