John Swinney, SNP leadership favourite, backed transgender self-ID at 16 and an LGBT curriculum

John Swinney, the loyal ex-deputy first minister to Nicola Sturgeon, is tipped to replace Humza Yousaf as Scotland’s First Minister.

Mr Swinney has been an MSP since the inception of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, first for North Tayside and since 2011 for Perthshire North. He also served as a Westminster MP for Tayside North from 1997 to 2001.

The Sturgeon ally was one of the most prominent SNP politicians to back Mr Yousaf to take over as leader.

Here The Telegraph looks at where Mr Swinney stands on some key issues:

Trans rights and LGBT issues

As deputy first minister, Mr Swinney voted for the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would have allowed children as young as 16 to apply to legally change their gender without any accompanying medical evidence.

He was accused of misleading fellow SNP MSPs over the Bill, allegedly promising that it would be a free vote and that they could vote “with their conscience” before allegedly U-turning and telling colleagues there was a three-line whip.

While serving as education secretary for the Scottish Government, he announced in 2018 that Scotland would be “the first country in the world” to have an LGBT-inclusive education “embedded” into the school curriculum.

Climate

Mr Swinney has been vocal on climate change and net zero and voted for the Climate Change Bill in 2019 – which reduced the target to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

He said that Scotland was “rightly recognised as a world-leader in tackling climate change” and that the SNP was “leading by example” on the environment.

He has more recently been one of the leading figures behind the controversial Deposit Return Scheme, an SNP and Green Party initiative to encourage the recycling of drinks bottles and cans.

The scheme, which charges producers 20p for each bottle produced and passes the cost onto the consumer who can claim it back by recycling it, has been met by concern from small businesses.

Last year, Mr Swinney said that the scheme was one of the “necessary interventions to tackle the climate emergency”, telling the BBC: “The climate emergency is with us, it’s a real and pressing problem and we need to take the steps to address it”.

Independence

Mr Swinney is a staunch supporter of Scottish independence. When he backed Mr Yousaf in the previous leadership contest, he said that the First Minister would “widen our support in attracting new supporters to Scottish independence”.

In 2022, Mr Swinney claimed that Scotland would be back in the European Union as an independent country, and using its own currency, within a decade.