Nicola Sturgeon has pledged almost to double the amount of free childcare for families if she wins the next Scottish Parliament elections.
The new SNP leader said her party would increase the hours of childcare available to three and four-year-olds from 16 hours a week to 30 hours a week if it won in 2016.
The move would take the annual bill for free childcare to more than £700m and the move would also see dozens of new nurseries built and hundreds of jobs created.
Miss Sturgeon used her address to the SNP conference in Perth to also pledge NHS spending will increase by more than inflation for the next five years if the party is returned to power.
Critics last night questioned how the pledges would be paid for and pointed out the SNP campaigned for a Yes vote in the referendum saying a big expansion in childcare provision was only affordable with independence.
Miss Sturgeon said: “I pledge that our 2016 manifesto will set out an ambitious plan to increase childcare provision.
“By the end of the next parliament, my commitment is that all three and four-year-olds and all eligible two-year-olds will receive, not 16 hours, but 30 hours of free childcare each week.
“Education will be a big priority for my Government. I want comprehensive childcare to give our young people the best start in life and a bridge to a better future.”
Miss Sturgeon said she wanted building work on nurseries and the education sector to be “one of our biggest infrastructure projects for the next parliament”.
In January, Miss Sturgeon claimed long-term plans to give free childcare to all youngsters under the age of five could only be afforded with independence.
She said the “costs of providing increase childcare with devolution would have to be met from within a fixed budget by cutting other services”.
Scottish Conservative deputy leader Jackson Carlaw said: “It’s puzzling to see the SNP commit to things that were supposedly only possible in the utopia of a separate state.”
Miss Sturgeon, a former Scottish health secretary, said the NHS would also be a priority in her government, as she vowed its budget would “rise in real terms for each and every year of the next parliament” if the SNP wins power again in 2016. She also pledged a scheme which cuts business rates for smaller businesses would be extended until 2020.
A promise that “every new Scottish Government contract will have payment of the living wage as a central priority” was also announced with a pledge to pay the living wage to 117 cleaners at the Scottish Government.
A spokesman for Scottish Labour Party said: “We are pleased that Nicola Sturgeon has finally recognised that her Government needs to take action now.
“It’s just a shame that for the last three years her Government said this wasn’t possible without independence.”
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