Scotland’s New First Minister Sets Out 100-Day Priorities After Holyrood Election

Scotland’s new First Minister, appointed following the formation of a government in the Holyrood parliament after the May 7 elections, set out a programme of immediate priorities for the first hundred days in office that focused on several areas of persistent public concern in Scotland: NHS waiting times, the reliability of ferry services on the island and west coast routes, and measures to attract inward economic investment to counter the structural challenges facing Scotland’s rural and post-industrial communities.

The NHS waiting list in Scotland had grown substantially during the pandemic years and had not returned to pre-pandemic levels despite sustained investment and workforce recruitment. The waiting time problem was consistently cited in Scottish public opinion research as the most significant domestic policy concern, and the new administration’s commitment to treating it as a priority was designed both to acknowledge the public anxiety and to distinguish the new government’s approach from the record of its predecessor.

The ferry service crisis, which had generated intense political controversy following the delayed delivery and mechanical problems of new vessels intended to replace ageing CalMac fleet ships, had caused real hardship for communities on islands and remote peninsulas whose economic and social viability depends on reliable marine connections to the mainland. The commitment to addressing ferry reliability went beyond the technical issue of vessel availability to encompass the governance of the public sector operator and the resilience of supply chain and maintenance arrangements.

Economic development priorities reflected the continuing challenges facing Scottish regions outside Edinburgh and Glasgow, where productivity, wages and employment rates lag the national average and where demographic ageing is accelerating as younger workers move to cities or south of the border.