Bute House Agreement

The Bute House Agreement was a formal power-sharing deal between the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party, signed in August 2021 at Bute House — the First Minister's official Edinburgh residence. It was the first such agreement at Holyrood and gave the Greens two ministerial posts (Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater as junior ministers), in exchange for their support on the SNP government's budget and programme for government.

The agreement collapsed in April 2024 after the Scottish Greens withdrew, citing the SNP government's decision to scrap its 2030 climate targets — a core Green commitment under the deal. Both ministerial posts were terminated. The collapse removed the SNP's working majority, forcing the government to seek case-by-case opposition support for budget votes during the remaining months of the parliamentary term before the 2026 election.

In the context of the 2026 Holyrood election, the Bute House Agreement's collapse is cited as evidence of the risks any minority SNP government would face — and as the reason why the SNP's projected majority would be so significant: it would remove the need for any coalition partner. The agreement is also the backdrop to SNP-Green tensions in 2026, where both parties are competing for overlapping left-of-centre votes.