THE SNP needs to take some tough decisions on how much the public purse can afford, including payments for NHS services, free school meals and eye tests, according to a leading party strategist.
Kenny MacAskill, the justice spokesman, has written a book, Building a Nation, being published to coincide with the conference this week in Inverness.
In it he calls for the party to be clearer about its policy positions, arguing that it has failed to put forward a credible, coherent alternative to the coalition parties.
The Lothian MSP, a close associate of deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon, has called for the party to accept that constitutional change will be incremental.
He argues for the party's social democratic stance to be spelled out for voters, and for
it to be clearer about what it wants beyond independence.
Mr MacAskill said that foremost among the difficult choices for the party was to adopt more means-testing of welfare state provision.
He wrote that having a health service free at the point of delivery must be provided, ''but that does not mean every cosmetic operation must be funded or every consumer choice pandered to.
''In some instances, those who can afford to pay should make some contribution,'' Mr MacAskill said.
He also questioned whether the party should support state-funded eye tests for those buying designer spectacle frames, or free school lunches for those who could afford them.
Mr MacAskill also told the party that it should be less negative in its campaigning, either against the Scottish Executive or against devolution, and needed to present ''a credible alternative, not simply narrating a litany of executive failures or a mantra chant of British faults. Too often, the SNP is seen to oppose, not to promote, to castigate, not advocate. That must change.''
The Lothian MSP has also called for the SNP to accept that an independent Scotland would share agencies and services with England, such as its vehicle licensing agency. He also warned fellow Nationalists that the blockage on further constitutional change is in Scotland, not England.
The unthinkable Page 18
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