Scotland’s new first minister, Humza Yousaf, has set out a “fresh vision” for his next three years in government that delays, redraws or reverses a number of his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon’s key policies.
But opposition leaders said any attempt at a relaunch had been “utterly torpedoed” by the arrest earlier on Tuesday of the SNP treasurer, Colin Beattie, amid the ongoing police investigation into the party’s funding and finances.
Making his first major policy statement since he was elected first minister last month, Yousaf told MSPs on Tuesday afternoon that he would delay the controversial deposit return scheme, take plans to restrict alcohol advertising “back to the drawing board” and rejoin two international school league tables in order to increase available comparable data on Scotland’s education performance.
Announcing a delay of almost a year to the widely criticised bottle recycling scheme, Yousaf acknowledged that businesses had felt their concerns went unheard by the previous administration, where the scheme was led by the SNP’s governing partners, the Scottish Greens, and promised a reset of the relationship between business and government.
Telling Scottish businesses directly that “my door is always open to you”, he said the three missions he was setting out – to tackle poverty, to build a “fair, green and growing” economy, and to improve public services – all depended on a thriving business sector in Scotland.
Blaming the UK government for creating uncertainty around the deposit return scheme by delaying the decision to exclude the scheme from the Internal Market Act, Yousaf announced that the launch of the scheme would now be delayed until 1 March, during which time measures will be introduced to simplify the process and support small businesses and hospitality.
But the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, dismissed the statement as “rehashed promises from the past that have never been delivered”.
“But what Humza Yousaf can’t escape from is that he is not now running a functioning government. This is an SNP that is mired in scandal, mired in division, talking to themselves and about themselves,” he added.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats’ leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, said: “Everyone, including those SNP backbenchers otherwise engaged today, knows this first minister’s relaunch has been utterly torpedoed.
“And while he is focused on the turmoil within his own party, NHS waiting time targets are still being missed, more ferries are breaking down and record amounts of sewage are being dumped into Scotland’s rivers.”
In advance of the statement, Kate Forbes – who Yousaf narrowly beat to the leadership – launched an analysis with the pro-independence thinktank Common Weal that called for the Scottish government to do “more with the powers it has” to create a wellbeing economy that will eradicate poverty.
Yousaf himself promised to invest a further £1.3bn in the Scottish Child Payment over the next three years and said he would be even bolder on redistributive taxation, as he repeated his campaign pledge to convene an anti-poverty summit, to which he said he would invite experts and those with lived experience of the problem as well as opposition colleagues.
