Swinney faces heat at first FMQs as the
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TFurthermore, not all of Holyrood’s MSPs were present, meaning the SNP group would have been big enough to wave through Forbes’s appointment unopposed.
Swinney’s motion looking for MSPs to back Forbes as a minister passed by 63 votes to 57, with three abstentions.
LibDem MSP and former group leader Willie Rennie said his party would not block Forbes’s appointment as a show of goodwill and their intention to take a “new approach” to Scottish politics.
He added: “We may have a difference of views on equalities, but Kate Forbes does deserve a chance to govern, putting those views to one side.”
In his response, Swinney said he wanted to see the Scottish Parliament “work more collaboratively”, and
HE Scottish Greens took aim at Kate Forbes’s position as Deputy First Minister in the first FMQs since the new SNP leadership team took over.
It came as John Swinney fielded questions from opposition MSPs in the Scottish Parliament in his debut as First Minister.
Patrick Harvie, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, raised concerns about Forbes’s appointment as Swinney’s deputy.
Harvie said: “The Scottish Greens have been clear that we acknowledge the SNP’s right to form a minority government, but we’ve been equally clear that the First Minister must quickly give a signal of the direction his government will take.
“Yesterday that signal came pretty clearly; progressive ministers sacked, and the second-most powerful job in government given to someone who has opposed LGBT people’s legal equality, who has expressed judgemental attitudes to abortion and who has even expressed the view that people who have families without being married are doing something wrong.
“Is this the Scottish Government’s vision for the future of Scotland – taking us back to the repressive values of the 1950s?”
Responding, Swinney insisted the SNP would govern from a “moderate left-of-centre position” and that Forbes’s views on social issues would not impact on party policy.
The First Minister said: “No, it’s not. It’s not the direction of the Scottish Government.
“The Government will be led from the moderate left-of-centre position that I have always occupied and which is the policy position of my party and which is supported by all of our members.