The BDA Manifesto for 2026 Elections - Scotland - Webinar
This manifesto sets out the priorities and challenges facing dietetics in Scotland, and some of the solutions we believe political parties can take to address them. The BDA will use this as a basis to engage policy teams, brief parliamentarians, and ensure dietetics, and the wider food environment, is firmly on the political radar as a vital part of health and care ahead of Holyrood 2026 Elections.
This webinar was held in August 2025, with Scotland members to gather feedback on the manifesto key asks.
The BDA's Manifesto for Holyrood 2026
Dietitians: The Keys to Prevention and Early Intervention
Improvements in life expectancy in Scotland have stalled, and Scotland's health is worsening. UK Government austerity, the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently the cost-of-living crisis have eroded the health of our population and widened inequality.
The current government has made it clear that prevention is a key priority, and the ambition to prevent illness and tackle inequality must be matched with investment, workforce planning and infrastructure.
Nutrition is one of the most powerful, evidence-based tools we have to prevent ill health and reduce inequalities, access to dietitians is essential to turn the ship around in Scotland, they must be recognised as essential across sectors.
That's why we're calling on the next Scottish Government to take action in three areas: supporting the dietetic workforce, investing in education and training and trusting dietitians on food policy and prescribing.
1. Support the Dietetic Workforce
The preventative action and early interventions dietitians undertake saves the NHS millions of pounds. To realise Scotland’s vision of reducing the burden of care from acute settings to community-based and to properly embed preventative approaches, dietitians need support and action from the Scottish Government. We call on political parties to commit to:
- Provide targeted funding to support the integration of dietitians within primary care settings, such as GP practices and within wider public health roles. This is a critical opportunity to integrate dietitians in the prevention agenda, relieving other medical professionals and to test alternative models of early dietetic intervention.
- Mandate AHP executive leadership across the system by requiring all NHS Boards to appoint an Executive Director of AHPs, and all Integration Joint Boards to include a Professional Advisor for AHPs. Their unique skills and patient-centred perspective are not just complementary, they are critical.
- Commit to fair pay by fully funding workforce planning by addressing real-terms pay decline through above inflation pay rises and publishing a clear timeline for restoring NHS pay to competitive levels.
- Champion primary prescribing rights for dietitians who have undergone the necessary training, collaborating with and exerting pressure on the UK Government to explore how this could be achieved in Scotland, ensuring the digital infrastructure is in place to support primary prescribing.
Why does this matter?
Scotland’s dietetic workforce plays a vital role in acute care and across communities, yet its capacity to lead the shift towards prevention remains limited at a time of urgent need. Dietitians are not embedded in primary care, opportunities for strategic leadership through executive roles on Health Boards and IJBs are absent, and specialist public health nutrition posts are scarce.
- We propose that funding be directed to dietetic departments to enable the implementation of a structured test of change. Without dedicated investment, departments are unlikely to have the capacity to initiate such innovation, given current workforce pressures and vacancy rates. This represents a missed opportunity to advance preventative care and reduce downstream demand on acute services.
- Not a single NHS Scotland Health Board has an AHP, including dietitians, on its board nor do they have voting rights. Only 13 out of 31 Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) has any AHP representation on it with varying ability to influence, which leaves a critical gap in strategic decision-making and undermining efforts to deliver preventative, community-based care.
- It’s time to trust dietitians to issue primary prescriptions for diet-related conditions. Diet-related GLP-1 drugs are seeing increasing development and demand bringing both potential benefits and risks. We think that it’s more crucial than ever that their use is properly supervised by dietitians who can prescribe without having to go through a GP - a process that unnecessarily creates bureaucratic burden, takes up capacity and causes delay.
Prevention in practice: Opportunity to Tackle Liver Disease
Chronic liver disease in Scotland is projected to rise by 54% by 2044, affecting 1 in 5 people. If dietitians were enabled to practice in primary care settings, a mobile fibro scanner service, delivered in rural towns, could enable earlier diagnosis and rapid referral into dietetic-led lifestyle interventions. Support could then be offered digitally or in groups, mirroring the Scottish Government’s Type 2 Diabetes framework and preventing progression to cirrhosis.
2. Invest in Education and Training
Widening access helps expand the talent pool and ensures a sustainable pipeline of future professionals to meet rising demand and support the shift towards community-based, preventative care. We call on political parties to commit to:
- Implement innovative, sustainable solutions to fund ‘Earn as you learn’ and graduate apprenticeship pathways, ensuring people can advance their careers without leaving employment or relocating. By investing in these routes, Government will not only widen participation and strengthen local workforces but also ensure that communities across Scotland benefit from a sustainable pipeline of skilled dietitians.
- Dietetic and wider AHP students should be offered the same financial bursary as their nursing and paramedicine counterparts. There has been considerable work done already in this area with the AHP Education and Workforce Review and it is now a case of delivering against those actions.
- Guarantee all dietitians equitable access to high-quality practice-based learning through a national framework, with protected paid time for skills development at every career stage. This would ensure stronger collaboration and co-ordination between HEIs, NHS Boards and NHS Delivery.
Why does this matter?
Addressing the current workforce challenges and seizing the opportunity to grow and diversify the dietetic profession, is critical to delivering a healthier, fairer future for Scotland. We ask the next Scottish Government to commit to expanding access to the dietetic profession by developing and funding a wider range of entry routes, designed in full consultation dietitians and Higher Education Institutions.
Dietetic teams across Scotland, particularly in rural and remote areas, are facing serious recruitment and retention challenges. In places like Highland, shortages at Band 5 and 6 are draining capacity and limiting support for the very communities who need it most. At the same time, there is strong interest from applicants at Band 4 who could progress with the right training opportunities, yet dietetics currently has no apprenticeship or ‘Earn as You Learn’ routes. HCPC data also shows a worrying decline in the number of dietetic registrants in Scotland, a trend that new earn-and-learn pathways could help to reverse.
3. Trust Dietitians on Food Policy
We call on political parties to commit to:
- Expand free school meals to all primary school children as a priority, expand into secondary schools and improve food education in schools more generally through a whole-school approach.
- Regulate for a healthy food environment through progressing a code of practice for local authorities to restrict unhealthy food advertising outdoors and implement regulations on unhealthy food promotions without delay.
- Ensure that the Good Food Nation agenda considers dietitians as vital in their plans, as expertise in public health, nutrition and wellbeing we are key to improving the challenges faced by the Good Food Nation agenda such as food insecurity, shaping local food plans, supporting food education, and reducing diet-related illnesses which are a consequence of a poor food system.
Why does this matter?
Dietitians are qualified and regulated professionals. They are the experts on dietary health and nutrition. We believe that they have an enormous potential to improve public health if we trust their expertise and priorities, dietitians should be front and centre of food policy development, ensuring that we follow the science to improve public health.
Scotland’s food system is failing to support health and wellbeing, with rising levels of food insecurity, poor diets, and widespread exposure to unhealthy, high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) products. Without urgent action, diet-related illness will continue to drive health inequalities and undermine efforts to meet national child poverty targets. Although the Scottish Government has committed to expanding universal free school meals (UFSM) to all primary pupils by 2026, delays risk missing the opportunity to improve children’s health now. Schools also lack the consistent support needed to deliver holistic food education, from cooking and growing skills to fostering a healthy eating culture.
Your voice matters
Our manifesto sets out clear priorities for the next Scottish Government, but to make real change, we need members across Scotland to help amplify these asks.
We encourage you to use our Political 101 Toolkit [LINK] to contact your local MSPs, candidates, and community leaders. Share the manifesto, highlight why these issues matter in your area, and show the impact of dietetics and AHPs on people’s lives.
Together, we can make sure our profession’s voice is heard loud and clear in the run-up to the election.