Lorna Slater

Hannah White (HW): You entered government in 2021 as part of the Bute House Agreement [between the Scottish Greens and the SNP]. What role did you play in the negotiations that led to the agreement?

Lorna Slater (LS): The Bute House Agreement was not a coalition for two reasons. One is a strictly technical-definition reason in that formation of government talks did not take place. What happened was that Nicola Sturgeon [first minister 2014-23] decided that she would form a minority government and then invited us into it. What that meant was that we did not have access to the civil service in terms of negotiating the agreement. We were entirely on our own.

And the second reason why it wasn't a coalition was because we had these excluded items on the list. The Bute House Agreement was quite unusual in that way, because it excluded Patrick Harvie [co-leader of the Scottish Green Party] and myself – who ultimately became the two Green ministers – from collective responsibility in key areas where we knew the Scottish Greens and the SNP had fundamentally different positions and we could never agree. So for those two reasons, it wasn't a coalition. It was very, very unusual.

I was part of a team of people working on this. My role was to liaise with our party. The Scottish Greens are a democratic, members-led organisation. Nearly everything the Scottish Greens do is done by volunteers, so this negotiation, like everything else, needed to be led by volunteers. But equally we couldn't realistically ask a bunch of volunteers to quit their jobs for the summer and come and negotiate. So the rhythm of negotiation was that I would meet with the volunteer group, sometimes one of the other negotiators would be with us too, and we would get a steer from this volunteer group. We would go to the government during the day and undertake those negotiations, and in the evenings we'd meet again with the volunteer group. It was a really gruelling schedule because all those volunteers had day jobs and families. They were just normal folk. 

I was part of that, trying to liaise and pass information between members of our party who had a steer on what the party should try to get out of the Bute House Agreement and the people who were going into the room with the government, which was some sometimes me and sometimes other members of the team. So trying to keep that together and make sure that it really was a member-led process was where I fitted into it.

HW: What was your first day as a minister like?

LS: The first day I was invited along with Patrick Harvie to Bute House to meet the first minister at the time, Nicola Sturgeon. She invited me in for a one-on-one. It was the first time I had been alone with her one-on-one. She gave me a very lovely pep talk, welcomed me and said, “right, you're now the minister.” The instant you leave that room you are the minister and people start addressing you as “Minister”. Honestly they go “Minister!” after you down the stairs right away.

We got whisked across – well, we walked across town – to St Andrew’s House and were introduced to our private secretaries, who are the most wonderful, amazing people who make sure that you are in the right place, dressed appropriately, with the right notes in your hands at the right time, as well as making sure you comply with the ministerial code and defending your interests in the sense of your wellbeing. That’s what they do. So we met our private secretaries. 

And then there's a whisking through of inductions, where they introduce you to a whole bunch of people who become important later, but it is not apparent on the first day. You get a whole bunch of organisation charts and whisk through all this induction. Because there are not enough ministerial offices here, it took a few days or a couple of weeks even for us to get offices, so we were living out of our backpacks for the first couple of weeks until we got settled in.

HW: And you had only been an MSP for a few months…

LS: A few weeks even.

HW: …before you became a minister.

LS: I was elected in May and we broke up in June, so I think it was six weeks. But that six weeks isn't really normal parliamentary business because it is just a bit of filler. Nobody has any staff and parties haven't even allocated portfolios. So I hadn't really been an MSP. Somebody said to me – and I don't know if this is true, I'd have to check – that Patrick Harvie, who was made a minister at the same time as me, was the person who served longest as an MSP before getting made a minister and I'm the person who served the shortest. I don't know if that's actually true, because I think Màiri McAllan might have been the same position that she was also made a minister for the first time when she was first elected. She had been a special advisor though, so she did know what she was getting into.

That was a really interesting time for me, because I was doing things like giving ministerial statements and answering questions in front of committees without ever having seen anyone do it, because I hadn't been in here and I didn't watch parliamentary telly. Because of the way I had made my way onto the parliamentary list, I actually hadn't expected to be elected, so I hadn't planned for a political career. I was off in Germany during the pandemic building tidal turbines. That was my former job. I didn't ever imagine that I would have a political career, so it all came at me very suddenly.

HW: Did you find that your previous experience outside of politics helped?

LS: I’m an electro-mechanical engineer. Over the decades I did that, I moved into project management. The last project I worked on was the Orbital O2 tidal turbine. It was a Horizon 2020 project, so I was working with eleven companies in six countries to coordinate building it. So, in the sense of processing a lot of information, doing a lot of communication, chairing meetings, all of those skills were extremely useful.

What was entirely new to me was the theatre of the chamber, because I'd never watched it. The back and forth of how you answer questions, and having to change how you think about sharing information. Engineers, we tend to share all information. We are like, “Lay it all on the table. Let's get into the details.” You can't do that with government when you're being asked questions. Some information is confidential, some information is politically sensitive and other information is the agreed line. So that was a big change for me to go from the engineer saying “Right, let's lay all the data on the table”, to “I'm not allowed to say that. Here's what I'm allowed to say.” and choosing my words carefully. So that was a big challenge for me to learn that new style of communication.

Akash Paun (AP): As minister for green skills, circular economy and biodiversity, you were working to two cabinet secretaries. Initially it was Kate Forbes [cabinet secretary for finance and the economy 2020–23] and Michael Matheson [cabinet secretary for net zero, energy and transport 2018–23]. How did that work in practice to have those two senior figures – obviously not from the same party as you – that you reported to?

LS: It worked fairly well actually. In some ways I would say there were two things that I was accountable to: the two cabinet secretaries, but also the Bute House Agreement. The primary reason Patrick and I were brought into government was to enable us to deliver on that Bute House Agreement. My number one priority was to deliver on the things that were within my portfolio that were part of the Bute House Agreement. That was my top thinking.

In terms of accountability to the two cabinet secretaries, that obviously did exist. But they were under direction of the first minister to deliver the Bute House Agreement as well. We were all working with a very common aim. I had good relationships with both those cabinet secretaries. My portfolio was more within Mr Matheson's portfolio and so I met with him regularly, I think at least monthly, to give him an update of what was happening and hear from him. He was often very good about giving a steer – “make sure you get this out the door this month” – and that was very helpful. Kate Forbes and I also had a good relationship, although there was only one small part of my portfolio that was under her, which was the green skills bit. 

But again – and this was the interesting thing – because Patrick and I were in government, everything that was related to the Bute House Agreement tended to come across our desks. So we were kind of ‘ministers plus’, because we had our own portfolios plus the whole of the Bute House Agreement. So, for example, one of the first things that we worked on in government together was the National Strategy for Economic Transformation. That was something I worked on with Kate Forbes that wasn't strictly speaking within my portfolio. But because we had the Bute House Agreement and I was in government, I needed to do that.

Between Patrick and I, there was a kind of unofficial divvying up of the non-portfolio but still within Bute House matters, so that somebody had an eye on those things. There was an interesting situation where all of our Green MSPs became kind of like front-benchers, because they were also responsible for delivering the parts of Bute House that sat within their MSP portfolios. They weren't really opposition MSPs anymore. But equally they were not in government, so they were not privy to a lot of the confidential information. There was very careful information sharing, but sometimes we just couldn't share information with them so Patrick and I would have to take that on. That was challenging to keep all the Bute House balls in the air and then make sure that we were keeping up with the regular portfolio. 

There were things I hadn't even thought about that turned out to be really interesting. I was given the plant health portfolio, which isn't really anything to do with Bute House, but like everything once you open it up, it is really, really interesting. Plant health sits within a space where a lot of the powers were coming back from the EU and being repatriated, so there were a lot of Scottish statutory instruments and a lot of negotiation with UK government about import rules for plants. That was a really busy area that had nothing to do with my portfolio and it wasn't even politically sensitive. But it takes up a reasonable amount of time and, as I say, it's actually really interesting. And of course it's really, really important, because if you import plants that have diseases on them you could undermine your food production. It's really important to get those things right. Fascinating stuff.

AP: Did you feel that you got sufficient support from the civil service to be able to play that role across the workings of government?

LS: Absolutely. Within the context that all of these jobs are impossible – and I'm sure you've heard that before…is it even possible to keep on top of everything? 

I think Nicola Sturgeon very wisely gave us additional resources. We were given very senior private secretaries, so probably our private secretaries would have been more qualified to support cabinet secretaries. We were given dedicated Green special advisors. Although the special advisor team was one team and they worked well together, we had a higher proportion of support because we basically each had a special advisor. So that just helped keep the whole thing going. 

There were also very regular, monthly or fortnightly, meetings between the Green group and the deputy first minister [John Swinney] to sense-check how things were going. That was very, very regular. Although the agreement was 50 pages of policy, we all agreed that it should be based on trust and good communication. We all agreed that the paper was only there if it needed to be and that actually what we were going to do was work cooperatively together. I think that did work really well and everyone was in it with goodwill through some quite big challenges actually.

AP: Were there any times where you didn't feel you were given parity of treatment to SNP ministers as the smaller party?

LS: Probably the opposite actually. Because keeping a majority government is such a powerful thing, I suspect we probably had more influence. We had that other channel, rather than just going through cabinet or through normal processes. If I needed to get something done, I wouldn't necessarily go through my cabinet secretaries, I would go through our Bute House processes. That was a very effective way to get things done.
You would have seen in the press this sort of ‘Green tail wagging the SNP dog’ stuff, but we were very influential. We did make substantial changes. Partly because as a team we were quite effective actually and partly because we knew what we wanted. It was listed in the agreement. It was very clearly spelled out that ‘we need this.’ Every single part of that Bute House Agreement was ‘We just have to do this. If you want our seven votes, you need to deliver on these things.’ The first minister at the time, Nicola Sturgeon, and Humza [Yousaf, first minister 2023–24] till very, very near the end, were very committed to keeping that majority government. A minority government is not an easy thing to run.

In terms of the direction of travel – the progressive agenda, the climate agenda – we were in agreement on a lot of that stuff, so there wasn't any problem with the front-bench in the Greens because we largely agreed on that kind of stuff. We were able to get loads of stuff done.

AP: You were responsible for a brand new portfolio – did that give you a lot of scope to shape it and to determine what your priorities would be for government?

LS: No, I don't think so. Not a lot of scope. Much of my portfolio was pulled from other places. It would have been someone else's responsibility. For example, in my very first week, Michael Matheson pointed out to me that one of the first things I needed to do was get a review on incinerators going, which ultimately Dr [Colin] Church did. He wrote a brilliant report [the Independent Incineration Review, published 2022] which was really useful and which eventually led to us effectively being able to ban new incinerators. That was something which had been on the SNP list and was also a Green priority. I got to take that forward and ultimately get the credit for it, so that was a good one. 

The new national park was within my portfolio. I was able to take that forward to a certain point. Whether it will be deliverable now that we're out of government, I don't know. But that was one area unique to the Bute House Agreement that I was able to actively take forward. 

A lot of it was just nudging the dial a bit. Within my portfolio area, I was responsible for NatureScot [the Scottish government agency responsible for Scotland’s natural heritage]. NatureScot not only does an annual business plan but we were also working on developing the biodiversity strategy. What was very exciting in my first few months was that they came to me with this draft partnership plan. From the point of view of nature and biodiversity, I didn't think it was very ambitious, so I was able to say, “Start again. You've come to me as if I'm a minister of another party who's going to go, ‘Oh, well, that seems oh…’” Instead I was like, “No. Be more ambitious. Go away. Come back with something much more ambitious than this.” Because the civil servants in the biodiversity space are mostly scientists and experts, I felt they were energised by that. They loved that like, “Oh great, we're not being held back by political necessity. Let's go. Let's really push the envelope on what's possible here.” 

Rather than starting anything new, it was about changing the dial so that NatureScot is focused on that nature restoration piece and all their energy is around it. My instruction was that I needed them to do things that nobody else can do, because they had within their previous plans things which I thought other organisations could take. I was like, “You guys have nature restoration. The nature emergency in Scotland is for you, so you need to focus on that utterly.”

I think it was powerful changing those directions a little bit and supporting where organisations like the national parks wanted. This wasn't me leading; this was me opening up a bit of space. Where they wanted to do more nature restoration, they wanted to bring in beavers, they wanted some of this stuff, they knew that I'd have their back in a way that a minister from another party might not. 

Millie Mitchell (MM): How did you go about working on the new national park? Were there any particular challenges you faced in that policy journey?

LS: Not at the beginning. I think the challenges running up against it are happening now. In the early days, we started out working with the existing national parks. What would they like to see as we move towards having a national park network? Scotland is short of national parks for a country of our size. We have fewer than most countries do, so creating more was uncontroversial from the point of view of the national parks. But we dove into the governance. A lot of countries have a sort of national park board, rather than individual ones. Ours are quite individual. They only work very closely together because the people involved like and know each other and work well together. There are questions about how you codify that kind of excellent governance and knowledge sharing, whether you need to and how many parks. There was all this conversation about how that process might work, but they were largely sort of technical process questions about how parks are operated and what works well now and what the challenges are with the parks. And that process went very smoothly.

One of the things that I was very pleased with was that the creation of the new national park was considered quite an exciting project, so we had people within the civil service wanting to join. We got a really excellent team because we were able to take our pick of people who were very keen to work on it.

MM: Another policy you were involved in was the introduction of the Circular Economy Bill. What was your experience of developing the legislation and introducing to parliament as the responsible minister?

LS: The Circular Economy Bill was a really interesting one because it sits in this weird space within the constitutional settlement and within Scottish politics of things that we already have the power to do but aren't doing. People, especially the NGOs, would come to me and say, “We need this in legislation.” I'd be like, “We already have the power to do that. We're just not doing it.” And there are things that are not devolved, so people come and say, “We need to do X, Y and Z.” I’d be like, “We don't have the power to do those things. We can't do those things.” So it is a slightly weird bill in that it is taking as many powers as we could right up to the edge of devolution, but knowing that there's actually a tonne of powers we already have in this space that the Scottish government isn't using.

The big challenges in this area were really around the [United Kingdom] Internal Market Act [2020] and devolution, because – as we saw with the deposit return scheme – even where the Scottish parliament and Scottish government have fully devolved powers in areas, where we have passed legislation and have invested money, the UK government can disregard devolution and interfere with it. So that puts a big question over all of that stuff and what is actually feasible to take forward. It was the kind of shadow hanging over all of that. 

In terms of taking the bill forward, there was some quite ambitious stuff in there and then some tidying up of things around fines for littering and fly tipping – which everybody agrees are a good idea. It was what was called a framework bill. There are various conversations around about framework bills and the committee here that reviews these sorts of things agreed that it should be a framework bill. The reason is because if you're going to bring in, for example let's say, legislation on single-use vapes, you don't want to have to bring primary legislation in for the next single-use thing that comes along. Secondary legislation will do for the next plastic mayhem thing that comes along. So that's the idea with the Circular Economy Bill – it gives the Scottish government powers to do things. 

The problem is then taking those powers forward, like the deposit return scheme and some of the other things that will be coming up in Scotland. For example, the ‘take back’ scheme, organisations that sell a certain product – let’s say a tyre for a car or a mattress – the Scottish government does now have powers to make them take them back that product, but how does that even work in practice? Developing those sort of regulations is a big challenge. We have the power to do it, but it's not like you can just switch it on.

MM: How did you go about trying to resolve the disagreements with the UK government about the deposit return scheme’s compatibility with the UK Internal Market Act? What were the negotiations like?

LS: The two governments have this post-Brexit common framework which is intended to be how they agree areas of difference. It was always intended that Scotland should be able to diverge in devolved areas. That was always the intention. We knew we were going to bring the deposit return scheme in, because the regulations were passed for it in 2020. When the regulations were passed in Scotland, they described a system that at that time was common to what all nations of the UK had agreed they would do – a deposit return scheme with glass in it. We were just the first nation to get going on it, but everyone was going to do it. That was agreed. That was fine and done.

We asked for an exclusion for that, using this common framework process. Initially we had asked for a broad exclusion, because we were trying to do some stuff on banning single-use plastics to keep ourselves in line with EU regulations. In the first pass we said, “Would you give us a broad exclusion for single-use items, so we can cover plastics and the deposit return scheme? We'll just go from there.” That was refused. The UK government only gave us a very narrow exclusion just covering single-use plastic, which meant that we had to start that process over again for the deposit return scheme. The process had taken months to get even that narrow exclusion.

We started again. We went through the common framework process. That was progressing. We did all the things that we needed to do. Even up until January 2023, the UK government had published a paper saying that the devolved nations can decide what's in their deposit return schemes and they can still have glass. But by May 2023, Alister Jack [secretary of state for Scotland, 2019–24] had changed his mind. He invoked the UK Internal Market Act to stop us from doing that.

The frustrating part was this had been going on for years and years, but the common framework didn't do its job. It didn't bring the two governments in line, and it allowed the UK government to have a final veto. No matter how much money had been invested, no matter how much had been agreed politically, from my perspective, it was allowed to be wiped off the board at the whim of someone who had the power and could use it without having to justify it. There was no evidence presented. That was an absolute failure of devolution. It is so frustrating that a UK government can essentially wipe hundreds of millions of pounds of investment out using the Internal Market Act without any sort of evidence or recourse. Horrendous.

MM: In amongst all of this, you faced a vote of no confidence in yourself as a minister in parliament…

LS: I did, yes.

MM: What was that period like for you personally?

LS: The decision to not go ahead with the deposit return scheme was ultimately taken by cabinet. That was something I had taken to cabinet because it was a big decision. The UK government had imposed criteria on us that meant we couldn't take it forward. But the final decision was taken by the cabinet. The decision that was made was a collective one. And therefore, I knew I had the cabinet’s backing. At its base, the Bute House Agreement was a confidence and supply agreement. If we were unable to win votes of no confidence, we didn't have an agreement. So while that agreement stood, we needed to be able to win those and we were, in that instance, successfully able to do that. 

AP: You have spoken about this already, but the Bute House Agreement had specific “arrangements for cooperation and collaboration”. In practice, did they give you and Patrick Harvie significant ability to influence the government’s priorities beyond your ministerial portfolios?

LS: Within the bounds of what the Bute House Agreement was, certainly. The Bute House Agreement wasn't limited to our portfolios. There were elements of it across many ministerial portfolios, so absolutely. There's 50 pages of policy attached to the agreement. We were doing our best to progress on all of those things, not just what was within our portfolios.
As I said earlier, the interesting thing about the Bute House Agreement was that we all agreed we would put the paper aside and work together in a cooperative way. Functionally it was much more like a coalition. There were no papers that Patrick and I didn't see or weren't involved in, in terms of government policy. There were lots of things that were not even mentioned or thought of in the Bute House Agreement where we were in the room at least. Even if our perspective was not ultimately taken on board, we were able to at least have our say or have our comment on it.
In some cases, I think we were able to shift the dial in areas that weren't explicitly in the Bute House Agreement. I'll give you a specific example.

When Patrick and I entered government, we started conversations on what we call ‘demand management for road use’ – basically charging people to drive places. That's things like congestion charging, road tolls and other mechanisms for charging people to drive, which we know we need to implement and the Climate Change Committee says we have to implement. We are not going to meet our climate change targets without putting in demand management for driving. We're just not. But when we first entered government, you couldn't even say that in a meeting. It would be like, “Oh, we can't. It's not even possible.” It couldn't even be said. Whereas much more recently, even the transport minister at least mentioned it. It's been mentioned in papers. So while it isn't yet Scottish government policy to undertake it, it is at least part of the conversation now. 

So having Green ministers in the room did allow conversations to be moved along. For example, in the economics space, most people most of the time talk about growth. You will notice in a lot of Scottish government papers – even ones we weren't directly involved in – the word ‘growth’ has often been replaced with ‘prosperity’ and other words, because I was a real stickler for that. If you mean growth, say ‘growth’. But if you mean prosperity, don't use the word ‘growth’ as a substitute for prosperity. Let's be precise with our language there. Because growth on its own isn't inherently good. Growth can be good if it's in the sectors you want and if it's giving you the results you want, but prosperity is actually what we're trying to achieve. With things like the wellbeing economy, I think there has been a change in the language used in that space. 

I think there is a kind of a subtler influence that we were able to affect just by being in the room and bringing in slightly different language. Greens have a different approach to things, both in how we organise ourselves and how we see the world. Having a different flavour in the room does mix things up a bit.

AP: Did you have much leverage over budgets and spending decisions, and how did you use that?

LS: One of the things about the Bute House Agreement was that budgets were to be co-developed. That was definitely a joint project. It was a lengthy process. But, because our team had experience with negotiating budgets from being in opposition, it was something where our relationships with government were already good and we had a good level of experience within the team. Being in government just means you get to see another layer down and see it earlier in the decision making, but it was a process we were already familiar with.

The Bute House Agreement gave a good steer for what kind of areas were going to be important to us. Clearly anything about climate, equalities, child poverty – those were going to be where we wanted to focus. We obviously didn't always get what we wanted, but we were trying to shift the dial away from things like road building to all the things you would think we would ask for, like investing in public transport and active travel and making sure that NatureScot was adequately funded. Putting aside money for green priorities clearly was what we were going to ask for.

AP: Before the end of the agreement, while Nicola Sturgeon was first minister, how did the process for managing disputes work? What were the most serious disagreements that you had to resolve between the parties in that time?

LS: We didn't have any serious disagreements under Nicola Sturgeon. We didn't get into that until we were under Humza Yousaf. We didn't have any serious disagreements because we had a fortnightly meeting between the two teams, which was both intended to catch anything that was bubbling and also look ahead, “Okay, we've got this coming up. We've got this coming up.”

We only really had minor issues I think and they were often just miscommunications. We had a ‘no surprises’ agreement that we would let each other know if something was happening. It tended to be where the ‘no surprises’ had gone wrong, where we didn't necessarily have a big problem but it was like: “You just didn't tell us” or “We didn't tell you.” That happened on both sides and we just had to correct course. Because we were going into it with a large degree of trust and goodwill – a pro-independence majority government with a fairly common agenda on progressive issues and climate – this was pretty solid. We didn't have any serious issues going forward.

MM: In 2023, Nicola Sturgeon resigned as first minister and was replaced by Humza Yousaf. In that initial phase before the eventual breakdown of the relationship between yourselves and the SNP, how did you find working with Humza Yousaf as first minister?

LS: Very good. I like Humza Yousaf very much. He's very progressive. He put together the most progressive cabinet that we've ever seen in the Scottish parliament. Honestly it was a delight to work with him and his cabinet. That transition was actually relatively smooth.

Our first big challenge was his freezing of council tax. That was a big problem for us, because that is not Scottish Green policy. He broke the ‘no surprises rule’ by announcing it at conference without, as far as I know, consulting his own cabinet and certainly not us. That was a big problem for us, because the council tax freeze is a regressive taxation measure. It reduces money for local authorities, which deliver public services, and is something that the Scottish Greens had spoken very strongly against when we were in opposition. To then be in a position where, if we were going to stay in the agreement, we were going to be in a government having to sign off a budget with a council tax freeze – something we had campaigned against for years – was a real problem.

We had to do a lot of management of our members around that. Because it was done during conference seasons – I think it was done a week or two before our party conference – our members were outraged. They were properly angry with myself and Patrick Harvie, that we were even considering staying in a government that had a council tax freeze in their budget. Using that leverage [with the SNP], we did manage to get a few things on the table – cruise ship levy, carbon land tax, increased support for solar energy – as a bit of a trade-off. We managed to get that past our party in the terms of the conference. It allowed us to continue in the Bute House Agreement at that point. But that did kick off some distrust from our party toward the government and some discomfort with our party members about exactly what we were having to compromise. From that point, things got a little rocky.

MM: When that policy announced was announced, how did your first conversation with the government play out?

LS: Obviously I’m one person who is part of a team. My role as co-leader of the party means I'm often on the communicating side. It was a really difficult conversation to have saying, “ You’ve done this really, really difficult thing for us.” The agreement had been going so well. We didn’t want to collapse it. There was no desire to collapse the agreement on both sides. But we said, “You've put us in a really difficult position. We're going to need something back. And this can't happen again. You cannot do this again.” As I say, that just set the tone for a breach of trust in something that had gone along very smoothly. From then on, everything was just that little bit more difficult because that trust had been broken.

MM: How would you describe the differences in Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf’s leadership styles?

LS: As I say, they both share a progressive vision for Scotland and are both very effective communicators. 

Nicola Sturgeon obviously was very experienced in her role. When we came in, she was in the heart of her power and influence with John Swinney [then deputy first minister] by her side. She has a very powerful way of entering a room and of managing a meeting. You know who's in charge when Nicola Sturgeon’s running the show.

Humza Yousaf is much more personable, much warmer, and much more give-and-take. He's able to relax and have a bit of a chat. Sometimes we would sit and chat over sandwiches. You can have a bit more social interaction with him. It is just a slightly different personal style.

MM: How effectively do you feel either of those first ministers managed to progress the cause of Scottish independence during their tenures?

LS: That is an interesting question. I don't know if the role of progressing Scottish independence does sit with the first minister. If we're talking about constitutional questions, I suppose I see the first minister's job as being to demonstrate competence and the powers of the Scottish parliament. What we have is a devolution settlement and the first minister's job is to demonstrate both where that is working and where it is not working, because that's our key argument for independence: this settlement is not working for Scotland. I feel that communicating that challenge is the first minister’s role. I think both of them were very clear about, “We can’t do this because…”. 

That came up in my own portfolio time and again. In fact it came up in my job daily. I'd ask civil servants, “Why can't we do this?” The answer was, “It’s not devolved” or “We can’t do that” or “It’s affected by the Internal Market Act.” There’s always some reason we can't do a thing and it's extremely frustrating to the point where you're almost going ,“How can we even govern a country this way?” We haven't got the power to make the decisions that we need to make.

I think the cause of independence is not for any one person or party to lead. The cause of independence is for those people of Scotland who believe in it. It's currently around 50% of the people of Scotland. It is for us – the people of Scotland – to move forward the cause of independence.

AP: In April 2024, SNP ministers announced they were dropping the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. At least in public commentary, this was reported as a precipitating factor towards the end of the Bute House Agreement. When did you find out about that decision and what was your reaction to it?

LS: The climate change target thing wasn't something we found out about. It was something everybody knew. That was not a secret. That Scotland was not on track to meet its climate targets was not a surprise. Everybody knew that. The Climate Change Committee knew that. That was in the public domain. The question is what do you do about that. It was very clear – and had been clear for years to anyone who was caring to look – that you couldn't do enough six years out to meet them. You needed to make those changes 15 or 20 years ago. As the Scottish Greens, we always knew that those weren't achievable targets. In fact, when they were set we were told they weren't achievable. There was no question that everybody knew we weren’t going to hit them.

The question is how do you manage not hitting them. ENGOs [environmental non-governmental organisations] and other people in the environmental space want to see these ambitious targets, because they imagine that it will push you to more vigorous action. Ultimately that failed. It didn't drive action. It didn't move people forward. Now, with this short time remaining, all it does is make people throw up their hands and go, “Well, we can't do anything.” 

Maintaining targets that we knew we couldn't hit and that everybody's known for years that we weren't going to hit was a fiction that allowed the Scottish government to pat itself on the back and go, “Oh, we've got these fantastic targets”, while doing nothing. Nothing is probably unfair… but doing none of the hard stuff. I felt, and many people felt, that maintaining those targets was a bit of fiction that we were allowing to cover up for a lack of action.

I'm not sure that it was changing the targets to a different accounting model. Carbon budgeting is a perfectly fine way of accounting for carbon emissions. It's a perfectly sensible way of doing it. The challenge is: how do you move from this space of targets into action? That's where there's an impasse, because we've done all the low-hanging fruits. If we're going to meet our emissions targets – and I don't mean just 2030, I mean if we're going to meet 2045 – we have to do tough stuff. Like demand management charging for roads. Like really having a talk about what we're funding in terms of where agricultural subsidies go. We're going to have to have a real talk about how the North Sea oil and gas is phased down. We have to have a real talk about how we're going to insulate homes in Scotland. These are tough things that we have to figure out how to do and we've gone on long enough. They have to be picked up now. That's the impasse. You're going to see this playing out over the next couple of weeks, because if we change to carbon budgeting, fine. That's a perfectly sensible way of counting. But until you start making the changes, you're in a difficult place.

One thing that we have found in Scotland – and I think elsewhere in the UK as well – is that the consensus on the climate has crumbled. When those climate targets were set, everybody agreed, “Great, yes, let's do this.” But as soon as you try and bring anything forward to meet it – like a deposit return scheme, like highly protected marine areas, like a workplace parking levy – and as soon as you try to implement those policies to move it along, suddenly the consensus which we had a few years ago has collapsed. There is no parliamentary majority for climate action. Although we had a parliamentary majority for independence and a large number of the SNP are in favour of climate action, they started to lose their backbenchers. As we moved towards the end of the Bute House Agreement, what was happening was that Humza Yousaf was losing some of his backbenchers. The parliamentary arithmetic is brutal. There are seven Greens. I don't know how many backbenchers he had who were not happy with the situation, but if he had more than seven, it would have been done.

Because then we could not have won votes of no confidence anymore. With the threat of a vote of no confidence and not being able to pass a budget anymore, the agreement would have been over.

AP: Can you talk us through how the conversation with Humza Yousaf in which he dissolved the agreement took place?

LS: It was quite sudden. I think even up to two days beforehand he was saying the agreement was worth its weight in gold. Patrick and I were invited to Bute House. We had a very short conversation. The first minister said his bit, we said our bit and that was it. Then you would have seen us all in the press an hour or two later. So that was it. It was certainly within his power to dissolve the agreement. That was within his power. 

I still think there was a bit of a miscalculation there, because he was then subject to the threat of a vote of no confidence. He had just collapsed a confidence and supply agreement. I think it was a bit of miscalculation there. We were only supporting his budgets and his votes of confidence if we got this 50 pages of policy and all the other things that were in the Bute House Agreement, like Patrick and I being part of the government. You can’t take all that away and then still expect our support in votes of no confidence. That's not how it works. I still don't quite understand the calculation there. 

I am sad that it ended. Being part of a proudly progressive government with the first person of colour to be first minister in Scotland, proudly supporting Palestine… There were so many wonderful things about being part of that government that I am very sad that it ended.

HW: What achievement are you most proud of from your time in office?

LS: Oh well, I think we've got quite a list. The ban on new incineration was one within my portfolio. We were able to conserve budgets for things like active travel, for NatureScot, and I think for SEPA [Scottish Environmental Protection Agency] as well. There were a few budgets we were able to conserve. We were able to run things like the Nature Restoration Fund year on year, which has put hundreds of thousands – altogether millions – into rural communities doing nature restoration work.

We released beavers with the beaver strategy. There are now beavers all over Scotland. They'd been extinct here for 300 years and now they're everywhere. It’s just so wonderful that children nowadays will be growing up in Scotland alongside beavers when they had been extinct for 300 years. That's an exciting story to tell. We're changing the dial from this story of loss. We all grew up with every news article being the loss of species, the loss of habitat and extinctions. We're changing that. That is a change of direction. The story from now on will be one of nature gain: more habitats coming back, more different species being saved. That's exciting to be part of that change.

We were proud to be part of passing the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. That is another devolutionary challenge, because it was supported by an overwhelming majority of the Scottish parliament – members of every single party voted for it – and then the UK government shut it down on essentially a technicality. That kind of thing is extremely frustrating, but we were very proud to bring that agenda forward and support that.

I think we have quite a track record - free bus travel for under-22s, the Scottish Child Payment which is groundbreaking and changes things for so many families, the circular economy bill. The emergency rent freeze was a big one that definitely wouldn't have happened without Patrick Harvie championing it. We're still hopeful that there'll be something left of his Heat in Buildings Bill. Now that we're not in the room, we're worried they're going to water that down, but there’ll hopefully be something left of it. And Gillian Mackay’s [abortion] buffer zones bill.

I think there's a lot we can look back on from our time in government and say, “We were here. We made a difference.” In terms of legislation and policies that were enacted, but also that dial changing and subtle tonal shift which you'll hopefully see in a lot of documents for a long time going forward.

HW: Is there anything you regret about having chosen to go into government with the SNP?

LS: No, I think the right place for Greens is in government and I think we did a good job. I think we had an excellent team. I think we learned a lot. It's a steep learning curve. No one's going to lie about that. We know more now. We know what to ask for and what not to ask for. It was a really good experience. Greens should be in government and we need to have more Greens in government. That cooperative thing of two parties working together even when you know you have fundamental differences is good politics. I have so little time for this shouty politics where you're just attacking the person not the policy, where you're shouting insults across the chamber. It's much more interesting to put down the boxing gloves and say, “OK, we know we disagree on this stuff. Fine. What do we agree on? How do we move it forward?” That is an exciting thing to be part of and I'd like to do more of that.

HW: Have you given any advice to your counterparts in Westminster based on your experience in government? Or what advice would you give them?

LS: It would be wonderful to have some Greens in government in Westminster, but obviously with the first past the post voting system that's going to be a challenge. What's interesting is not just the Greens in Westminster, but there's Greens around the world of course. Our Bute House Agreement was inspired by – although actually deviated quite a bit from - the arrangement that the New Zealand Greens had with the Labour Party in power for a couple of different parliamentary terms. 

If you're going to go into government, as the New Zealand Greens said to us, you have to swallow some dead rats. Because of that collective responsibility, you are going to have to swallow some dead rats. You do have to sign up to things which you don’t agree with – like the council tax freeze – so that you can get stuff done. A wise lesson for us is that you have to hang your humility at the door. You will be known forever as the swallower of that dead rat, but you know what you got done. You're not going to win any favours. Your own team doesn't like you because you compromised. The opposition doesn't like you because they never liked you. You're not there to make friends. You're there to get stuff done and keeping focused on what your mission is gets you through.

I actually have enormous confidence in my Green colleagues down in London, because Greens everywhere have our key mission. Peace, equality, sustainability and radical local democracy are the four pillars of the Green movement. We know why we're there. We know what we're there to achieve and so you're able to navigate that because you always know where you’re heading. I know my colleagues in London would be able to do that as well. How exciting is it to have four Green [MPs]? I mean that's huge. We're so proud of them.

HW: What advice would you give to anyone becoming a minister for the first time about how to be effective?

LS: Look after your mental and physical wellbeing. The ministerial diary is brutal – there is not time to eat, there is not time to use the toilet, there is not time to look after your mental and physical health at all. But it's a marathon, not a sprint. You have to preserve whatever it is you need, whether it's eating a hot meal, seeing your kids, whatever it is, because people will always ask more of you than you can give. Nobody is going to protect you. You have to do that. So whether it's carving out that I need half an hour quiet for my lunch, I need to get home to put my kids to bed, whatever it is, you have to carve that out because nobody's going to do it for you. The pressure to do more, to be more, to be always available 24/7 is going to be there and only you can protect that out.

But if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. You will have seen here – I’m sure it’s the same in Westminster – minister after minister resigning over health issues. I'm not aware of any here but I know in Westminster, you hear stories of substance abuse and of people treating their staff badly. I'm sure a lot of that is related to not looking after your own wellbeing. So that has been my number one thing. You have to keep yourself well in order to be able to do your job. 

AP: And finally, are there any lessons that you have taken from the transition from government to into the backbenches? 

LS: A key thing is I think I'll be able to ask better questions. One of the things that frustrated me as a minister was that when you would go to the chamber with a ministerial statement about, say, the incineration review or deposit return scheme, instead of asking questions to get information or to find problems with your legislation, people would just ask you a ‘gotcha’ question. They're going for the attack: “Is it not true that you are an incompetent whatever?” How is that getting useful information? Sure they can then write a press release that, “Well, we decided the minister was incompetent.” But you could do a lot more effective legislating if you went and said, “Now I noticed that you've said this, but actually Germany is doing this with their deposit returns. And why have you not done it this way? And why do you think…?” If you actually crack it open a bit and ask some deeper questions, understand what's happening, instead of just going for that ‘gotcha’. 

I think that it's a shame that our politics in Scotland has got to that point where people just try to score a point rather than actually delving into it. Because I think, one – it lets the government get away with a bunch of stuff that could actually be properly looked into. And two – it means that everyone is working on a level of attacking and defending, rather than collaborating on actually making things better. Something I’m going to take into the backbench is asking and opening it up: “Why have you done it this way?” and ,“Tell me when this will get done.” Because governments are great for promising things. That's ministerial language – “in due course”, “after the consultation”. We love that sort of language because it doesn't pin government down. But “When exactly will you do this? Who will be involved specifically? Why have you made this decision?” I think those are much more useful questions and I wish more backbenchers asked them.