Kate Forbes
Kate Elizabeth Forbes is a Scottish politician who has served as Deputy First Minister of Scotland and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic since May 2024. A member of the Scottish National Party, she previously served as Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy from 2020 to 2023. Forbes has been Member of the Scottish Parliament for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch since 2016.
Born in Dingwall, Forbes was raised in India and Scotland and was educated at a Scottish Gaelic-medium school, where she became fluent in Scottish Gaelic. She earned a BA degree in history at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and then an MSc in diaspora and migration history from the University of Edinburgh. After completing her degree, Forbes worked for a short time in the Scottish Parliament as a researcher for the SNP MSP Dave Thompson. Forbes was elected as an MSP at the 2016 Scottish Parliament election and quickly rose within the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon appointed Forbes as Minister for Public Finance and Digital Economy, serving as the deputy to the Finance Secretary, Derek Mackay. After Mackay resigned, Forbes was appointed Finance Secretary by Sturgeon. Her tenure was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland and its economic impact, and the cost of living crisis.
On announcement of Sturgeon's intention to resign as party leader and first minister, Forbes announced her candidacy for leader in the 2023 leadership election. This leadership bid drew significant attention due to her membership of the Free Church of Scotland, an evangelical Calvinist denomination with socially conservative positions, and her religious views on sexual ethics, including disavowal of sexual intercourse before marriage, opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and opposition to most forms of abortion. She lost the election to Humza Yousaf, taking 47.9 per cent of the vote to his 52.1 per cent in the final ballot. She subsequently left government to sit as a backbencher.
Following Yousaf's resignation in April 2024, Forbes was touted as a potential candidate to succeed him in the 2024 SNP leadership election but she ultimately chose not to stand and endorsed John Swinney. After Swinney became First Minister in May 2024, he appointed Forbes as Deputy First Minister of Scotland and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic in his government. On 4 August 2025, Forbes announced that she would be stepping down as an MSP at the 2026 election.
Early life and career
Early life
Kate Elizabeth Forbes was born in Dingwall in Ross and Cromarty, Scotland on 6 April 1990. She is the eldest of four siblings: her mother is a teacher and her father is an accountant. Her parents were missionaries for the evangelical Free Church of Scotland. She spent her early years in the village of Marybank, where her parents ran a small business. At an early age, Forbes moved to India for three years, where her father worked for various religious charities to provide healthcare to people who could not afford it. Forbes' father later studied for a PhD in the Indian Stock Exchange and managed hospitals, relying on charitable donations because he made no income.Education
She returned to Scotland and was taught in a Scottish Gaelic school, where she became fluent in the language. She returned to India when she was ten and studied at Woodstock School in the foothills of the Himalayas. Forbes returned to Scotland, this time in Glasgow, at the age of 15 where she attended a secondary school in the city before moving back to the Highlands to finish her schooling at Dingwall Academy.Forbes attended Selwyn College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 2011. She then studied at the University of Edinburgh, where she gained a Master of Science in Diaspora and Migration History in 2013.
Early career
Forbes joined the Scottish National Party in 2011, having previously been active in the party's youth wing the Young Scots for Independence.After graduating, Forbes worked in the Scottish Parliament in 2011 as a researcher for Dave Thompson, the SNP MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch. In February 2023, openDemocracy revealed her first, year-long job as a researcher was funded by Christian Action, Research and Education, which is known for its opposition to abortion and LGBT rights.
Forbes later studied to qualify as a chartered accountant and worked at Barclays for two years as a trainee graduate accountant.
Member of the Scottish Parliament (2016–present)
Election (2015–2016)
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. She was elected in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, doubling the majority from her predecessor from 4995 to 9045.Backbencher (2016–2018)
As a backbencher, Forbes was Convener of the Scottish Parliament's Cross-Party Group on Gaelic. She served on the Scottish Parliament’s Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, the Health and Sport Committee and the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. She also served as Parliamentary Liaison Officer for Finance and the Constitution.In 2017, Forbes launched The Final Straw, a national campaign to ban the use of plastic straws in Scotland. The campaign was supported by the Marine Conservation Society. Forbes wrote to all of Scotland's 32 councils to support the campaign, with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar being the first Scottish council to pledge to go plastic straw-free. Her campaign was successful after a ban of single-use plastic was introduced in August 2022.In March 2018, she delivered an entire speech to the parliament in Gaelic during a plenary debate on the language. She has spoken in favour of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status as a possible way to protect the language. She campaigned for local issues, such as increasing the number of foster carers in the Highlands, and raised concerns of a lack of teachers in specialist subjects in the Highlands.
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."
Forbes was awarded "One to Watch" at the 2018 Scottish Politician of the Year awards, having been nominated the previous year.
Sturgeon government (2018–2023)
Deputy Finance Secretary (2018–2020)
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. She supported the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work.In September 2018, The David Hume Institute reported that the government had made "no progress" on improving productivity in workplaces; Forbes commented that "over the last decade, productivity in Scotland has grown at more than three times the rate it has across the UK as a whole". In 2018, Forbes reiterated the SNP's commitment to 100 per cent broadband coverage throughout Scotland; the original 2021 completion target was later put back. Forbes opposed the proposal to devolve business rates to Scottish councils.
2020 Scottish Budget
On 6 February 2020, the day of the 2020 Scottish Budget, Derek Mackay resigned as the finance secretary, after the Scottish Sun reported he had inappropriately messaged a 16-year-old boy on social media. Forbes was left to deliver the budget hours later. Prior to this, no woman had delivered a Budget in either the Scottish Parliament or Westminster. Due to the late delivery of the UK Budget, Forbes raised concerns of the impact this would have on the passing of the Scottish Budget and told the Scottish Parliament there would be a very brief period for MSPs to scrutinise it.In the budget, she announced there would be no changes to income tax rates and that the threshold for upper rates will be frozen, calling it the "fairest and most progressive income tax system in the UK".
Cabinet Secretary for Finance (2020–2023)
On 17 February 2020, Forbes was appointed Cabinet Secretary for Finance—the first woman to hold the post. In the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, she was re-elected with a majority of 15,681 votes, 7,000 more than in the previous election. Sturgeon formed her third administration and re-appointed Forbes as Finance Secretary, with economy added to her portfolio, as Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy.In July 2022, John Swinney took on responsibility for the Finance and Economy portfolio as Forbes went on maternity leave. She is the first Cabinet Secretary in the Scottish Government to take maternity leave.
Forbes left the Scottish Government in March 2023 after Sturgeon resigned, and new First Minister Humza Yousaf offered her the role of Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands in his Government. This was deemed as a demotion and Forbes rejected Yousaf’s offer, therefore she left government on 28 March 2023.
COVID-19 pandemic
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bank of England ordered a round of quantitative easing 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. 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?" When the issue was raised at a session of First Minister's Questions, Forbes' query was labelled "economically illiterate" by Labour MP Ian Murray.Ahead of Christmas 2021 Forbes delivered her budget in which she spoke of "very difficult choices" because of the "acute" problems posed by Covid. 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."