Bute House Agreement: Scottish Greens to hold vote on future of powersharing with SNP at Holyrood

Scottish Green members will vote on whether to press ahead with the Bute House Agreement.

Scottish Green co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater arrive at Bute House in Edinburgh. Picture: Lesley Martin/PA Wire

The Scottish Greens have been forced to let members vote on whether to continue with the Bute House Agreement amid anger and frustration from some members over the party supporting the Scottish Government scrap its landmark legally-binding 2030 climate target.

Green members raised concerns over the Bute House Agreement at a fiery meeting on Thursday night.

The Greens said the result of the vote, to be held at a forthcoming extraordinary general meeting (EGM), would be binding on the party.

The date of the meeting will be announced in due course, but Greens also said they have told the SNP about the ballot.

Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie said when that takes place he will be urging members to vote in favour of the deal, so the party could “put Green values into practice” in government.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, he said “many” members had been calling for an EGM to discuss the future of the agreement.

But Mr Harvie said: “As part of the Scottish Government, we’re making a difference on a far bigger scale than ever before.”

The meeting led to Green councillor for Leith, Chas Booth, writing to the party’s executive, demanding an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) be held “as soon as reasonably possible to consider withdrawing from the Bute House Agreement”.

Mr Booth’s demand comes at the same time as the party’s LGBT wing also launched a petition questioning the future of the powersharing deal after the prescription of puberty blockers in Scotland was paused.

The Rainbow Greens hit out following the announcement from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde that the prescription of puberty blockers for new patients at the gender identity service based at the Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow would be paused.

Some figures in the SNP have already spoken out against the Bute House Agreement – which brought Greens into government for the first time anywhere in the UK when it was agreed following the 2021 Holyrood election.

The deal crucially gave the SNP a majority in the Scottish Parliament when its voters there were combined with those of the seven Green MSPs, but more recently figures in Humza Yousaf’s party, including former leadership candidate Kate Forbes and party stalwart Fergus Ewing, have criticised it.

Mr Harvie and fellow co-leader Lorna Slater have made a request to the party’s standing orders committee as well as party members including Mr Booth appealing to the Greens’ executive committee for the Bute House Agreement to be reconsidered.

Ms Slater said: “The intention, as a democratic party, is to give members the opportunity to debate and decide how the party moves forward, how we continue to build on the progress we have made on our manifesto commitments and to deliver our vision of a fairer, greener Scotland.

“We have achieved more for people and planet in the past 32 months than other parties have in decades. Now we want to hear from our members on how they want us to continue this progress.

“Not everything in politics is easy, as we have seen over recent years, months and days, but our strength as a green movement is in standing up against those destructive forces who would set fire to everything we have achieved if given half the chance.”