Nicola Sturgeon appoints John Swinney Covid Recovery Secretary in post-election reshuffle

Nicola Sturgeon has appointed John Swinney as minister in charge of Covid recovery in her new Cabinet after heeding opposition calls to end his troubled spell as Education Secretary.

Mr Swinney, who remained Deputy First Minister, was put in charge of mobilising "the Scottish Government and wider public, private and third sectors to ensure a strong recovery."

He will chair a cross-party steering group on recovery and his new portfolio will include a broad range of responsibilities, including leading on relations with the UK Government and public service reform.

Ms Sturgeon said the appointment of her deputy - the first in her post-election Cabinet reshuffle - in the new role was "a key step in getting Scotland’s recovery off to the right start."

But it came after Labour demanded that she replace Mr Swinney as Education Secretary following a series of debacles and "five years of drift and decline".

The party published a record detailing Mr Swinney's "litany of failures" in the last parliament including not closing the yawning attainment gap between wealthy and poor pupils and Scotland continuing to tumble down international league tables for literacy and numeracy.

Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour's deputy leader, said: "It is right that John Swinney has been moved on from his previous role. He has left a wake of damaging failures behind him that require urgent action to fix.

“Putting him in charge of our recovery is potentially gambling with the health and well-being of the nation. While we wish him well, he must demonstrate quickly that he is up to the job.”

Ms Sturgeon will complete her Cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday and is also expected to announce junior ministerial appointments. Scotland has no Health Secretary to deal with the pandemic after Jeane Freeman stepped down as an MSP.

Among the other ministers who retired at the election are Mike Russell, the Constitution Secretary, and Roseanna Cunningham, the Environment Secretary.

But Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat, urged Ms Sturgeon not to replace Mr Russell as a tangible sign she will focus on Covid rather than a separation referendum.

Unveiling the appointment, Ms Sturgeon said: "Our first priority as a government is to lead the country through the pandemic and into a recovery that supports our NHS, protects and creates jobs, backs our young people and contributes to our ambition to be a net zero nation."

Mr Swinney said: "Recovery in our schools, our health service, our economy and across our wider society is this government’s immediate priority and I am honoured to have been asked to lead that mission.

“I am determined that government will bring the same urgency that we applied to the actions we took to protect public health, to the actions we need to take to secure a fair and just recovery."

He said he would consult opposition parties next week on the steps that should be taken. Ms Sturgeon will hope he can repair frayed relations with parts the business community, particularly in hospitality, which are furious at her lockdown restrictions.

Her decision to appoint Mr Swinney Education Secretary following the 2016 Holyrood election was viewed as a signal that she was serious about her then "defining mission" to close the attainment gap.

Instead he ditched the SNP's flagship Education Bill, which would have transferred power over the running of schools, the curriculum and budgets from councils to headteachers following pressure from teaching unions.

He then capitulated to the powerful Educational Institute of Scotland union again, offering teachers an extraordinary 13.5 per cent pay rise over three years to stop them going out on strike.

Later the same year, 2019, Scotland's education system recorded its worst ever performance in the respected Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study in maths and science.

Record low scores meant it no longer performed above the international average in any of the three core subject areas, with the English education system boasting a significantly superior performance at science.

Although Mr Swinney poured extra funds into trying to close the attainment gap, opposition politicians pointed out that progress was so slow that it would take 35 years to be achieved.

The impartial Institute for Fiscal Studies recently reported that England, which has taken schools out of local authority control, has better outcomes on education despite spending less per pupil.

Last week research conducted by the Legatum Institute’s Centre for UK Prosperity concluded that Scotland's education system is the weakest performing in the UK.

Michael Marra, Labour's education spokesman, said: "In five years as Education Secretary John Swinney has accrued a litany of failures to his name. Time and time again, he has failed to meet the challenge posed by the pandemic and has now led the pupils of Scotland into yet another exams crisis.

“But John Swinney’s failings began before the pandemic. Educational standards have fallen on his watch, and the scandal that is the attainment gap has persisted stubbornly."

Speaking before the Covid Recovery Secretary appointment, he said Mr Swinney "cannot be the person to turn the situation around and the First Minister should act now."

He came close to losing his job last summer when teacher estimates of tens of thousands of pupils' grades were downgraded by a Scottish Qualifications Authority algorithm that disproportionately affected poorer pupils.

After days of defending the process, he performed a U-turn in the face of a threat of a vote of no confidence at Holyrood, but denied he was motivated by trying to save his career.

He told pupils they would not have to sit exams this year but instead they are being forced to take "assessments" conducted under exam conditions without study leave.