Scottish Greens call meeting over future of Bute House Agreement

Co-leader Lorna Slater said the purpose of the meeting is to allow members the opportunity to decide how the party “moves forward”.

She said: “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.”

The party has not announced when the meeting will be but the BBC understands that the meeting will be held about four weeks after members have been emailed to inform them of it.

In a statement to the Scottish parliament, Energy Secretary Mairi McAllan accepted that the 2030 net-zero target was out of reach.

She said the government must act to chart a course to 2045 at a pace and scale which was feasible, fair and just.

Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie said he was “angry and disappointed” following the announcement.

The vote will be binding, according to a party source, and it will be held around four weeks after members have been emailed to inform them of it, a process which should happen soon.

The Bute House agreement is described as a “shared draft policy programme” in areas of mutual interest such as climate change, economic recovery from the pandemic and child poverty.

It also takes in the natural environment, energy and the constitution.

Both the Scottish Greens and the SNP advocate for an independent Scotland.

The Scottish government’s decision to abandon its 2030 emissions target put the Greens in the firing line for criticism more often aimed at the senior partners in the deal.

The Conservatives’ Douglas Lumsden described SNP secretary Mairi McAllan’s announcement that the target was being scrapped as “humiliating for the Greens, who have ditched environmentalism for nationalism.”

First Minister and SNP leader Humza Yousaf has also come under pressure from within his own party to end the power-sharing deal.

Kate Forbes, whom Mr Yousaf only narrowly defeated in the party leadership contest just over a year ago, is among those who have called for the Bute House agreement to go.

In December she said “nearly all the issues that have lost us support in the last year are found in the Bute House agreement and not in the SNP manifesto.”

The Greens, said Ms Forbes, had a progressive, ideological agenda which was unpopular in the country at large and were also hitting rural communities with over-regulation and tax hikes.

The party, led jointly by Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, has been involved in several difficult policy issues, with legislation stalling on issues as varied as protecting the oceans, recycling bottles and making it easier to change gender.