NICOLA Sturgeon has said her hope and expectation is that next May’s Holyrood election will go ahead as planned. 

There have been calls for the vote to be pushed back because of the coronavirus pandemic and the fallout unleashed by the new mutant variant. 

On Monday, Labour MSP Colin Smyth told the Press and Journal he had concerns about holding the poll in just five months time.

“If we are continuing to battle this pandemic in March, it would be completely inappropriate for politicians at the same time to be running about trying to get people’s votes,” he said.

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“We should be absolutely laser-focused on tackling this pandemic, and until we have mass vaccination, the fear is that we are not going to get on top of this.”

Smyth pointed to 2001, when the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak forced a one month delay to local elections in England and Wales - the first time they'd been postponed since the second world war. 

That ultimately pushed back the General Election.  

“It strikes me that the events of the last 24 hours have shown that until we have got a vaccination and people are vaccinated on a mass scale, the government are never going to get this virus under control,” Smyth said.

“And I think if a single person – whether it is an activist campaigning, or somebody whose job it is to run the election – finds themselves contracting Covid as a result of that work, I think it would be something that would be quite appalling, and something we should be trying to do everything in our power to avoid.”

LibDem candidate Craig Harrow, agreed: “Serious consideration should be given to postponing the Scottish Parliament election, ensuring that the whole focus of the Scottish Government is on dealing with the pandemic and rolling out the vaccine rather than electioneering.”

Holyrood is currently in the final stages of passing the Scottish General Election (Coronavirus) Bill.

It will allow for the Presiding Officer to postpone the 2021 election by up to 6 months, under certain circumstances. 

It also puts in place provisions that would allow MSPs to extend the deadline for postal vote applications, and, if necessary, hold an all-postal election.

It could also see the election held over multiple days, if appropriate.

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Asked about a potential delay, Sturgeon said: “My hope and expectation, to be clear, is that it will go ahead as planned and I think as far as possible we want to allow our democratic processes to be unaffected, certainly in the sense that they are not postponed or or cancelled in any way.”

The First Minister said she hoped that the contingency arrangements in the new legislation would not be necessary. 

But, she added, it wasn’t just up her and her ministers; the electoral management board and the parliament would all have to be in agreement. 

“It would clearly not be right and proper for the government to unilaterally decide whether or not an election took place and what the basis for that was. So that legislation contains contingencies should they be necessary but I hope and at this stage, expect, that the Holyrood election will take place as scheduled.”