SECURING a long-term recovery from the Covid pandemic will be the “overriding ambition” of the SNP if it is re-elected to power next month, Nicola Sturgeon has pledged.

The First Minister said there would be “no limit” to her party’s ambitions for boosting the economy and creating new jobs.

Infrastructure investment of more than £33 billion over the next five years could support some 45,000 jobs, Sturgeon said, adding that plans to build 100,000 affordable homes over the next decade could support a further 14,000 jobs a year.

The pledge came as the First Minister confirmed that the planned re-opening of hospitality would go ahead.

She told yesterday’s Covid-19 briefing that the country will move from Level 4 to Level 3 on Monday.

It means cafes, restaurants and beer gardens can open, along with non-essential shops, gyms, swimming pools, libraries and museums.

Updated guidance is being published on collecting customer contact details, requiring venues to take down contact details for all customers, not just the lead member of each group.

Sturgeon said this “additional precaution” was needed to help with contact tracing in the event of a Covid outbreak.

She also said it was expected that all of Scotland would move to Level 2 on May 17 – allowing people to meet in “small numbers” in homes for the first time in many months.

She added that “if circumstances permit” the intention is for Scotland to move to Level 1 restrictions from June 7, before moving to Level 0 in “late June”.

The First Minister said that by the “deeper part of the summer” she hoped “something much more like normality” would be possible.

“We are hopeful, very hopeful, of seeing sustained progress,” she said.

The party is also planning a £10 million fund to help companies implement a four-day working week for employees, with more work on this possible “as and when Scotland gains full control of employment rights”.

She made the commitments as she insisted “bold” and “ambitious” choices were needed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic – which she said had “upended our economy and pushed our society to its very limits”.

Addressing the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) annual congress, Sturgeon stressed: “In learning the lessons of how we handled the pandemic, our recovery cannot simply involve turning the clock back to 2019.

“We must be bold and we must be ambitious and we must choose a recovery for the long term. If re-elected, this will be an SNP government’s overriding ambition and we will not waste any time in going about it.”

An SNP government would deliver a 10-year strategy for “economic transformation” within six months of being elected, Sturgeon said.

She added: “Investment in infrastructure will underpin that economic transformation. Our national infrastructure mission will increase annual investment by £1.5bn to almost £7bn by 2025-26.

“This will deliver a total investment value of over £33bn in the next five years, and it is estimated to support 45,000 jobs directly over that period, providing benefits across Scottish supply chains.”

Sturgeon added: “During the pandemic some companies have used disgraceful fire and re-hire tactics to undermine wages and conditions.

“The SNP will continue to push the UK Government to act, but it has so far refused to take the necessary steps to ban these exploitative practices.”

Meanwhile, Sturgeon said in the last week there had been “continued welcome evidence” that coronavirus cases are continuing to fall. Average daily case numbers have now fallen by more than 90% since early January.

Scotland yesterday recorded two deaths from coronavirus and 178 positive tests in the previous 24 hours. It brought the death toll to 7644. The daily test positivity rate was 1.4%, down from 2.5%.

There were 106 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, up two in 24 hours, and 13 patients were in intensive care, down one. Some 2,750,052 people had received their first dose of a vaccine and 797,267 had received their second dose.