SNP members don't want or need a vote on the future of the party's co-operation agreement with the Greens, Humza Yousaf has insisted.
Speaking to LBC on Tuesday, the First Minister said there had already been a vote on the parties' working arrangement. He added that he won the SNP leadership election in 2023 on a platform of continuing the deal.
The question came ahead of a planned Scottish Greens EGM on the Green-SNP deal. Green members triggered an emergency meeting about the working relationship amid concerns over scrapped climate targets and the pausing of puberty blockers for under-18s in the wake of the Cass Review.
Sections of the SNP have long called for the deal to be reconsidered, including vocal government critics Fergus Ewing (below) and Joanna Cherry.
After the Green move, however, debate has reopened among the membership.
"We've already had a vote," Yousaf told journalists. "I, of course, stood on an election platform myself, just over a year ago, about maintaining the Green co-operation deal."
He went on: "And of course I'll continue to seek my colleagues' and indeed members' input into all policies within government.
"But I don't think a vote is what necessarily SNP members want at this time or indeed need at this time.
"What we have to get on with is governing in the best interests of the people of Scotland."
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He added that the SNP and Greens have achieved "a lot" together, and hoped their working relationship would continue.
It came after Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie confirmed he will quit if party members vote to leave the Bute House Agreement, though he dismissed a no confidence motion in him at Holyrood as “sordid political game-playing”.
The Green minister said he shares the “distress” of some in his party over the Scottish Government dropping its 2030 climate target and last week’s decision to pause the prescription of puberty blockers at Scotland’s only young person's gender clinics.
However, he argued leaving the powersharing deal with the SNP would be a “mistake”, insisting the Greens should not be a party which quits when “things get difficult”.
A date is expected to be set for an EGM shortly.
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