A new initiative to bring Scotland together: First Minister's speech - 26 February 2025

Good morning everyone.

Thank you very much for being here this morning.

This is my first press conference as First Minister here in Bute House and it comes, of course, following the successful passage of the budget yesterday – something that, just a few short months ago, a fair few considered improbable, if not impossible.

This is my first budget as First Minister, and I regard it as an important milestone in the progress of the government.

Not only does Scotland have a new First Minster – providing the leadership to address the issues that matter to the public - but we also have the resources agreed to tackle the issues that matter to the public, above all, to renew and strengthen our National Health Service. To deliver on the commitments that we have made to the public and Scotland.

My approach to this budget was clear.

First, it must prioritise the health service – and it has.

This is a budget that will make it easier for people to get appointments with their GP, it will reduce waiting times, and it will ensure people receive the care that they need, when they need it.

Second, it must support people in the midst of an ongoing cost-of-living crisis – and it does.

A majority of Scots will pay less tax than if they lived in England. A winter fuel allowance has been restored for pensioners in Scotland. Extensive childcare support, measures to eradicate child poverty, free prescriptions, more affordable homes – all secured by the budget.

And third, it must be a budget designed to attract maximum support – a budget that showed it was possible for parties to work together in parliament for the benefit of the people of Scotland. And it did.

Yesterday’s vote demonstrated that partnership and collaboration are possible. And that is something precious, something vitally important in itself.

Over the past few months, I have been working to a very simple formula: hope plus delivery equals trust.

Hope – offering a path to greater prosperity. For example, ensuring that we make the most of our vast energy wealth, so that an energy rich Scotland also means energy rich Scots. More jobs, better paid jobs – tangible benefits, including, above all, lower energy bills for households and businesses.

Delivery – getting our public services back on track after a decade and more of unprecedented knocks. Above all, rebuilding our NHS.

And trust, because I know that there is a huge amount of anger and frustration with government, with politics, and an overwhelming desire for living standards to improve.

Trust in government, all governments, is at record lows. Poll numbers tell the story, but I hear it time and again in the conversations I have in all parts of the country.

We’ve lived through some of the toughest years that any of us can remember. Standards of living have been squeezed, there is less money in people’s pockets at the end of each month. It is no wonder we are angry, no wonder we want living standards to improve.

At the start of the year, I warned that failure to pass the budget would send a signal that Parliament and politics could not deliver. That failure would only serve the interests of an increasingly extreme far right and leave devolution dangerously exposed.

But the budget has passed, and a different story can be told.

Our politics – our Parliament – have demonstrated that they work.

Storm clouds are gathering – we can all see them. The threat from the far right is real. But that leaves me all the more convinced that working together is not only the right choice, but the only choice.

That is why I want to share with you a new initiative to bring Scotland together in common cause.

More unites us than divides us. That is often said. Now is the moment to make that real.

By uniting behind shared values; shared standards of behaviour; and shared political norms.

And unite against the rise of the far right. We must all step up.

And, as First Minister, I will do exactly that. My role begins by bringing people together.

So I want to set out details of an initiative that will begin by bringing representatives from civic society, from our churches, our trades unions, from our charities together with the leaders of Scotland’s parliamentary parties.

This gathering, to be held at the end of April, one year before the next Scottish election is a chance to work together, for decency, democracy and respect.

I will extend an invitation to leaders from all the parliamentary parties – and wider civic society – to join me in this critical endeavour.

I want us to work together to agree a common approach to asserting the values of our country, to bringing people together and creating a cohesive society where everyone feels at home.

These are pivotal moments for our country and for our future. If we are to build trust in our politics, we must deliver public services that work better for the people that we serve.

And the Budget enables us to do so. But we must do more. It is time to come together to draw a line in the sand. To set out who we are and what we believe in.

Because a politics of fear is a politics of despair. It is a politics that will divide us and destroy so much of what we hold dear.

I want us to be ready for whatever this age of uncertainty throws at us, for us to be united in the face of the undoubted challenges that lie ahead.

It was a mobilisation of mainstream Scotland that delivered our parliament a quarter of a century ago. And I have no doubt, it is by mobilising mainstream Scotland that we can protect those things we care about the most, those things that are most important to us today.