The leading contenders to replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister have said eradicating poverty would be their main goal if they took power in Scotland. Questioned in the final televised debate of the Scottish National party leadership campaign, Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes, the frontrunners in the contest, told a BBC audience that combating poverty was the centrepiece of their policy programme. The rivals, and the third candidate Ash Regan, were asked to reflect on Sturgeon’s pledge when she became first minister – that she could be judged on her successes with education – and to state what they would wish to be judged on. “Eradicating poverty is the heart of everything,” Yousaf, the Scottish health secretary, said. “Any inequality that we have, whether it’s in education, whether it’s in health, whether it’s in any other area of government, it always comes back to poverty. We must, if not eradicate it … substantially reduce poverty, whoever is first minister.” Forbes, the finance secretary who has been campaigning while on maternity leave, agreed. “Eradicating poverty is the reason I’m in politics. It’s what motivated me throughout my life. And it is what I want to be judged on,” she said. “There are deep seated social, economic inequalities in Scotland that all have their root in poverty, and the fact that poverty is too often multigenerational. We need to break that cycle and break it once and for all.” However, such pledges are freighted with risk, and will be used by opposition parties to attack the SNP’s record in government. Sturgeon has been repeatedly pilloried by opposition parties over the Scottish government’s track record on education. Earlier on Tuesday, it settled Scotland’s longest running teachers’ strike, which has seen every state school shut by industrial action. None of the three candidates chose achieving independence as the central goal of their time in office, although they all said independence might be won within five years if enough pro-union voters could be persuaded to vote yes. With several audience members at the BBC event castigating the SNP’s record on the NHS, Regan, a distant outlier in this race, said improving the health service would be her primary goal. She had consistently told party members she would “focus on the priorities of the people of Scotland and deliver for them and make a difference in that, and so, for me, it’d be the NHS … judge me on the delivery of the NHS”. The BBC debate in Edinburgh was a markedly more subdued and less intense event than previous televised hustings, particularly the explosive confrontations which marked the first debate hosted by STV a week ago. In the STV event, Forbes accused Yousaf of being a failure in government and said the SNP’s record was marred by mediocrity. Yousaf fired back, accusing Forbes of abandoning the progressive policies championed by Sturgeon which had helped the SNP win successive elections. After nearly two weeks of relentless campaigning and party hustings across Scotland, the candidates sought to restate their basic pitch to SNP members: Forbes insisted only she could reach out to voters who had not backed independence; Yousaf said only he could uphold Sturgeon’s progressive policies; Regan claimed only she would reinvigorate the party’s grassroots. Voting in the contest began on Monday 13 March, with the final result to be announced on Monday 27 March.