Attempts by Scotland’s new first minister, Humza Yousaf, to stamp his authority on his already beleaguered administration were scuppered by the arrest of the Scottish National party’s treasurer hours before a major policy statement.
Police Scotland said Colin Beattie, 71, the SNP MSP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh and a former banker, had been taken into custody on Tuesday morning and was being interviewed by detectives as part of an investigation into the party’s funding and finances. He was released without charge later that day, pending further investigation.
The move was announced as Yousaf prepared to deliver his “fresh vision” to MSPs, setting out the policy priorities of his new government after weeks of infighting and damaging revelations.
After the statement – which notably delayed, redrew or reversed a number of his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon’s key policies – opposition leaders told Yousaf that his government was “not functioning” and that any attempt at a relaunch had been “utterly torpedoed” by the arrest.
Beattie’s detention follows the arrest earlier this month of Peter Murrell, who is Sturgeon’s husband and a former chief executive of the SNP, at their home in Glasgow, and the seizure of a motorhome parked outside Murrell’s mother’s house in Fife. Murrell was later released without charge pending further investigation.
Yousaf told reporters at Holyrood that he would be talking to Beattie in due course about whether he would remain as party treasurer and as an SNP member of Holyrood’s public audit committee. He said Beattie’s arrest “was a very serious matter”, but added: “People are innocent until proven guilty.”
Yousaf acknowledged that the timing of Tuesday’s police action was “far from ideal”, but said he did not believe that the party was operating in a criminal way. He added: “We instructed a review into transparency and good governance, and of course with the issue around financial oversight, and I want some external input into that. So there is change that is needed within how the party is operated, and I have made that absolutely clear.”
Making his first significant policy statement since he was elected as SNP leader and became first minister last month, Yousaf told MSPs on Tuesday afternoon that he would delay the deposit return scheme for bottles and cans, take plans to restrict alcohol advertising “back to the drawing board”, take more time to build consensus around the planned national care service, and rejoin two international school league tables in order to increase the 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 felt their concerns had gone unheard by the previous administration, where the scheme was led by the SNP’s governing partners, the Scottish Greens, and he 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, build a “fair, green and growing” economy and 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 would now be delayed until 1 March, during which time measures would be introduced to simplify the process and support small businesses and the hospitality industry.
Yousaf 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, inviting experts and those with lived experienced as well as opposition colleagues.
The Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, dismissed the statement as “rehashed promises from the past that have never been delivered”. He said: “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.”
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.”
