Kate Forbes

In August 2015, Forbes was selected from an all-women shortlist by local SNP members as their candidate for the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency held by Dave Thompson who would not be standing at the next election. She was part of an SNP campaign to address the gender pay gap around employment in the Highlands.[10] She was elected in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, doubling her votes from her predecessor from 4995 to 9045.[3][11][12]

Forbes speaking at 2018 SNP Conference

As a backbencher, Forbes was Convener of the Scottish Parliament's Cross-Party Group on Gaelic. In March 2018, she delivered an entire speech to the parliament in Gaelic during a plenary debate on the language.[4] She has spoken in favour of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status as a possible way to protect the language.[13] She campaigned for local issues, such as: increasing the number of foster carers in the Highlands and also launched a national campaign to ban the use of plastic straws in Scotland.[14]

In May 2018, Forbes called on the government to let children practise religious belief in school without mockery, saying "I wanted to note that pupils should be allowed to explore, develop and understand the diversity of religious faith in Scotland because if they can understand it in school you will hope that as they go through the rest of their life they will be tolerant of people who believe that things are different to them."[15]

On 27 June 2018, she was appointed to the Scottish Government as Minister for Public Finance and Digital Economy, as part of a wider reshuffle announced by First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.[5][16] She was the first woman to be appointed to the government, who was born in the same decade as the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.

On 6 February 2020, she became the first woman to deliver the Scottish Budget upon Derek Mackay's resignation as Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work. Prior to this, no woman had delivered a Budget in either the Scottish Parliament or Westminster, although they have in the Welsh Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly, but those legislatures have fewer financial powers than Scotland's.[6]

From left to right; Jenny Gilruth, Forbes, Nicola Surgeon and Fiona Hyslop, outside Bute House, 2020

On 17 February, Forbes was appointed Cabinet Secretary for Finance—the first woman to hold the post.[7] Her response to MacKay's resignation was praised by opposition parties and the SNP, and is subject to speculation to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader, when she steps down in the future.

During the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary election, Forbes told business leaders she wanted a second independence referendum to be held once the "immediate impact" of the pandemic was over.[17]

On 6 May 2021, she was re-elected with a majority of 15,681 votes, 7,000 more than in the previous election.[8]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bank of England ordered a round of quantitative easing in order to keep UK borrowing affordable and interest rates low. SNP policy is that during the early years of independence Scotland would use sterling without a formal currency union and so would not have a central bank that could perform quantitative easing.[18] In December 2021 Forbes responded to a query on this issue and posed the question, "Would it be such a great loss not to be able to conduct quantitative easing?"[19][20] When the issue was raised at a session of First Minister's Question, Forbes' query was labelled "economically illiterate" by Labour MP Ian Murray.[21]

Ahead of Christmas 2021 Forbes delivered her budget in which she spoke of "very difficult choices" because of the "acute" problems posed by Covid.[22] All 32 of Scotland's Council leaders wrote to the Scottish Government to complain about Forbes' £371 million cut in real terms to local authority funding. Cosla President Alison Evison said, "Many in the meeting described this settlement for local government as the worst they had seen. Council leaders were clear last night that we could not sit back and simply accept this and there was a real strength of feeling that enough is enough."[23]

In March 2022 Forbes launched a report outlining Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation, which is her plan to improve Scotland's economy over the following 10 years.