{"id":530447,"date":"2026-04-14T14:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T14:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530447\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T14:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T14:55:10","slug":"scottish-parliament-election-2026-greens-pledge-free-bus-travel-for-everyone-in-manifesto-as-parties-hit-campaign-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530447\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Parliament election 2026: Greens pledge free bus travel for everyone in manifesto as parties hit campaign trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Analysis\"Trans rights support reiterated in manifestopublished at 15:07 BST<\/p>\n

15:07 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"David Henderson
Scotland news correspondent<\/p>\n

The last Scottish Parliament saw a drawn-out and difficult debate on sex, gender and trans rights.<\/p>\n

The Scottish Greens manifesto shows this issue has not gone away.<\/p>\n

Back in September, their two leaders, Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer, told the BBC’s Scotcast<\/a> that backing trans rights was a red line for their party. <\/p>\n

Today, their support remains clear.<\/p>\n

The manifesto says there’s a “hate campaign against them”, and the Greens want this addressed through school education, anti-bullying programmes, and greater protection under the criminal law.<\/p>\n

There’s also a pledge to ensuring access to “gender-affirming healthcare”, which they claim in their manifesto is effectively denied to some by 200-year-long waiting lists.<\/p>\n

This treatment is intended to help people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were registered at birth.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been the subject of intense medical and political debate and has become a polarised culture war issue.<\/p>\n

The Scottish Greens also say they’ll continue to call on the UK government to remove its block on gender recognition legislation.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Holyrood voted to reform the way transgender people in Scotland could obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate, the document that legally changes a person’s sex on their birth certificate.<\/p>\n

The UK Conservative government blocked this change from becoming law, saying it would adversely impact UK equality legislation.<\/p>\n

How gender recognition should work remains unresolved in Scotland and was largely parked as an electoral issue until now. The Scottish Greens manifesto shows it\u2019s not been forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trans rights support reiterated in manifestopublished at 15:07 BST 15:07 BST David HendersonScotland news correspondent The last Scottish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-530447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}