The Scottish National Party’s (SNP) Autumn Conference in Aberdeen recently came to a close, bringing an end to conference season for the major political parties (the Democratic Unionist Party’s Annual Conference occurs in late November each year).
The Liberal Democrat’s main conference news was a policy to boost NHS finance by putting a penny in the pound on income tax – followed by the introduction of an independent budget monitoring agency for the NHS. The party also called for targets to make mental health care waiting times the same as those for physical health.
Labour’s annual gathering in Brighton saw the party focus on the cost of drugs, scrapping prescription charges, free personal care and increasing the number of trainee MPs by nearly 50%.
The Conservative Party conference included Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledging £13bn to build and revamp 40 hospitals. Other major announcements were £200 million for replacing diagnostic scanning equipment, another £200 million to support UK life sciences and more support for mental health patients.
The SNP’s conference was mostly focused on Brexit and a second independence referendum, but the party did commit to ending non-residential social care charges.
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