General Election 2015: SNP to pitch itself as a party to benefit the whole of UK

Manifesto will promise to change the welfare system and foreign policy

Nicola Sturgeon on ‘The Andrew Marr Show’ (PA)

The SNP will today pitch itself as a party which can benefit the whole UK as it launches its manifesto, setting out its alternative to austerity and promising to change Britain’s welfare system and foreign policy.

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, is expected to unveil the party’s proposals for real-terms spending increases of 0.5 per cent a year at an event in Edinburgh, held only two and a half weeks before polling day.

She will also commit the party to voting on English issues such as NHS investment, saying that a “strong team” of SNP MPs holding the balance of power in a hung parliament at Westminster would be able to push for an increase in health spending across the UK.

The manifesto is also expected to call for fresh powers to be handed to the energy regulator Ofgem, allowing it to force utility companies to pass cuts in prices onto customers, and offer SNP support for Labour’s promise to reduce English university tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 a year.

The First Minister will also set out plans to reverse the Coalition’s £3bn of cuts to disability benefits and make the next UK government formally recognise Palestine to advance peace in the Middle East.

However, the other political parties will be scouring the document for more details on the SNP’s plans to hand Scotland full control over its finances. Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said the SNP’s “hokey cokey” over its plans for full fiscal autonomy was a “diversionary tactic” designed to distract voters from claims that it would cost the country £7.6bn. Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour Leader, said the policy would “cut Scotland off from UK-wide taxes, meaning an end to the UK pension and welfare state here”.

Ms Sturgeon said yesterday she was unable to guarantee that there will not be a second independence referendum in the next parliament, as the decision rested with the people of Scotland. Although she said her party was “not planning” for another vote, she said she could not guarantee Ed Miliband that one would not take place.

Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, will today call on her SNP counterpart to “prove her constructive credentials” by accepting that another referendum should not be held for a generation.

She will say: “How can people all across the UK possibly be asked to believe a leader who claims to have the interests of a country at heart which she still wants to break up?”

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