Ash Regan, the Alba party MSP, may be raising the price Humza Yousaf will have to pay to secure her support in the no confidence vote next week. In a letter released this morning she focused on Scottish independence, protection for women, and governance issues. (See 9.50am.)

Now, according to PA Media, Regan has suggested investment in the Grangemouth refinery could be a price of her support for Yousaf in the confidence vote. As PA reports, in a letter to party members Regan said investment in the refinery – due to shut as early as next year and shift to an import and export terminal – would be a key demand for her support for Yousaf. Alba has launched a campaign to sustain jobs at the refinery.

Regan said:

A sign of good faith would be a significant government investment, reinforcing the campaign to save the Grangemouth refinery from closure.

I am requesting the undertaking to produce such an initiative in the early course.

I am hopeful that the first minister will commit to such an initiative in the near future as a sign of our shared dedication to Scotland’s welfare.

Angela van den Bogerd, the former Post Office executive who played a leading role in defending the prosecution of the post officer operators who are now recognised as innocent, has told the Post Office inquiry that issues raised by colleagues relating to the Horizon IT system were “outside my knowledge scope”, PA Media reports. PA says:

On her second day of giving evidence at the inquiry on Friday, van den Bogerd was asked about the cases of several individual subpostmasters and their branches.

The inquiry was shown an email from fraud analyst Helen Rose sent to van den Bogerd on February 13 2013 about the audit record query (ARQ) logs being provided by Fujitsu for use in court. Rose expressed concerns that in some cases the logs “would not be giving a true picture” in court, and later said: “I don’t know where to go with this.”

Asked by Jason Beer KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, if Rose was raising a broader issue about IT systems, van den Bogerd said: “That’s not how I read this.”

Van den Bogerd confirmed she did not do anything with the contents of the emails and that she expected Rose to raise the issue “through her reporting line”.

Beer asked: “That didn’t ring any alarm bells?”

Van den Bogerd replied: “Not for me at the time.”

Beer continued: “Is it one of those things that it’s just somebody else’s job, Ms van den Bogerd?”

Van den Bogerd said: “Well it was outside my knowledge scope, so I wouldn’t have had the knowledge to know what to do with that. Now, I would obviously look at this very, very differently.”

The inquiry was also shown a series of letters and emails concerning the case of Martin Griffiths, who was sacked from his Hope Farm Post Office branch in Cheshire in July 2013. Griffiths deliberately stepped in front of an oncoming bus on September 23 2013, after he had been deemed culpable for an armed robbery at his branch in May of that year.

He had also previously written to the Post Office in July 2013 about a £39,000 shortfall at his branch between February 2012 and May 2013.

An email shared by Alan Bates to Post Office executives from Griffiths’ mother on the same day said “the Post Office had driven him to suicide”.

The email was eventually forwarded to van den Bogerd with suggestions to hire a specialist media lawyer.

Beer asked: “The immediate reaction was not what can we the Post Office do to help this man’s family, was it?”

Van ven Bogerd replied: “Not at this point.”

Beer continued: “Is that what it was like working in the Post Office at this time? That the first thought was, we need a media lawyer?”

Van den Bogerd replied: “In all my time with Post Office from very, very early on, I was very conscious that PR was very important.”

Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Green party’s co-leader, has said that Humza Yousaf is not able to unite the Scottish parliament and that the SNP should find a new leader.

Speaking to PA Media, Harvie said:

Very clearly, [Yousaf] doesn’t have the confidence of parliament, I think that’s going to be clear. We said very clearly the responsibility of the decision is on him. He needs to bear the consequences of that reckless and damaging decision [ending the power-sharing deal with the Greens].

I think it’s pretty clear he’s not the person who is going to be able to bring together a majority of parliament.

Asked if there was any way back for Yousaf in terms of working with the Greens, Harvie said the first minister had “broken trust”. He went on:

He still hasn’t really given any clarity on why he made such a dramatic U-turn and broken a promise on which he was elected as first minister.

So it’s very difficult to see how you can have a conversation that leads to a constructive outcome on the basis of that lack of trust.

According to Sky News, Humza Yousaf told reporters:

I intend to fight that vote of no confidence. I’ve got every intention of winning that vote of no confidence.

Yousaf seemed to be talking about the confidence vote into him personally. (Labour wants a separate no confidence vote, into the government as a whole, but Yousaf is in a stronger position to see off that one – see 12.02pm.) According to Sky News, when asked why he was confident, Yousaf replied:

I believe in our ability to be able to work with, negotiate, compromise where necessary. We’ve shown that in the past.

I’ll be looking to do that over the next coming days with the opposition leaders.

And with that, I’m quite confident, very confident, in fact, that we’ll be able to win that vote of confidence.

That makes it sound as if Ash Regan will get what she wants. See 9.33am and 9.50am.

Humza Yousaf has held out an olive branch to the Scottish Greens, saying that he recognises that they feel hurt as a result of his decision to end the SNP/Greens’ power-sharing deal. “I empathise with their position because I understand how they must be feeling,” he said.

These are from the Scotsman’s Alistair Grant.

“I’m confident I can win that vote,” he says.

The FM says he understands the anger and hurt of the Greens and he will be reaching out to them.

The SNP and the Greens have many shared interests, he adds.

Yousaf says ending the Bute House Agreement was the right thing to do.

But he said he will be speaking to Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater about what happened.

“I empathise with their position because I understand how they must be feeling.”

The FM said he will be writing to every party leader in Holyrood to seek a meeting. He said he would urge the Greens to reconsider their position.

The Greens said last night that they would vote against Yousaf in the Tory no confidence motion into his position as first minister. But they have not said how they would vote on the alternative Labour motion, expressing no confidence in the government as a whole.

This motion, if successful, would force all government ministers to resign and could trigger an early election. (See 11.22am.)

Humza Yousaf has told journalists that he will not be resigning and that he will be fighting the confidence vote, Alistair Grant from the Scotsman reports.

There has been speculation that Yousaf might resign ahead of the confidence vote, or votes, next week.

As Chris McCall from the Daily Record reports, Humza Yousaf is in Dundee, where he is about to announce £80m for affordable housing.

But McCall says he does not think the journalists who are there to cover the visit will have many questions about housing.

Stormont’s health minister Robin Swann has refused to rule out resigning if a budget for Northern Ireland agreed by the power-sharing executive is passed in its current form, PA Media reports. PA says:

The Ulster Unionist minister has called on the Stormont assembly to “strategically review” and change the draft budget, which he has warned could devastate already strained health services in Northern Ireland.

Swann broke ranks as the only member of the four-party power-sharing administration to refuse to back the spending plan which was agreed by his ministerial colleagues yesterday.

It has developed into the first major row within the restored power-sharing administration, undermining the unified approach ministers had previously been keen to project as they pressed the UK government for more money.

While the health service has been allocated more than half the £14.5bn resource budget available to the devolved government, Swann has said it falls well short of the money needed to maintain services at safe levels.

Swann told the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster programme:

What I am saying is a diminished health service, a health service that is actually ravaged by millions of pounds worth of cuts, is bad for people’s health.

I believed that going into this executive .. we heard from across the political parties, across the political spectrum, that health was going to be a priority, waiting list initiatives were going to be a priority. And when I looked at the allocation that was being proposed for health, I don’t see that reflected in the actions or the proposals that were taken.

Asked if he would resign if the budget does not get amended, Swann replied:

I think we as a party will make those calls when we see how this develops through time and I think it will be a number of weeks where we see this budget work out.

Downing Street has refused to endorse a suggestion from Micheál Martin, the Irish tánaiste (deputy PM), that the Rwanda policy is already having a deterrent effect.

As the Daily Telegraph reports in its splash, 80% of recent asylum seekers arriving in Ireland have come from Northern Ireland. Martin suggsted that this was because the Rwanda policy was “impacting on Ireland”. He said: “Maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have.”

Asked if the UK government agreed with Martin’s suggestion, a No 10 spokesperson told journalists at the lobby briefing:

It is too early to jump to specific conclusions about the impact of the Act and treaty in terms of migrant behaviour.

Of course we will monitor this very closely and we already work very closely as you would expect with the Irish government, including on matters relating to asylum.

But of course, the intention behind the Act is to have it serve as a deterrent and that is why we are working to get flights off the ground as swiftly as possible.

Ash Regan, the only Alba party MSP, will not back Labour’s motion of no confidence in the Scottish government (see 10.53am), a spokesperson for the party has said. In a statement Alba said:

Anas Sarwar’s grandstanding is just an attempt to remain relevant. However, unionist parties should beware in their glee. As much as Humza Yousaf and the SNP find themselves in a tricky predicament, independence supporters will not turn back to the yoke of Tory and Labour mediocrity. Alba Party are now ensuring that independence supporters have a party they can turn to.

There are 63 SNP MSPs in the Scottish parliament and 64 MSPs from the Conservatives, Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.

Assuming those four opposition parties all vote solidly together, the SNP needs Regan, a former SNP MSP, to vote with them to avoid defeat. Her vote would lead to a 64-64 tie, but in those circumstances the presiding officer, Alison Johnstone, would, by convention, vote against a no confidence motion.

The Tory no confidence motion was intended to force the resignation of Humza Yousaf. But the Labour one (see 10.53am) is more serious, because it is intended to force an early election.

And it is not hard to see why the two opposition parties at Holyrood are pursuing different tactics. The Conservatives are currently the second largest party in the Scottish parliament, but the polls suggest they could lose almost a third of their seats if an election were held now. But Labour might come close to doubling their number of MSPs.

Currently the SNP have 63 seats, the Tories 31 and Labour 22. This Ballot Box Scotland seat projection says current polling suggests an election would leave the SNP with 46 seats, Labour would end up with 41, and the Tories would be down to 22.

Will the Scottish Conservatives back the Labour no confidence motion in the government? Given what Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, has said about the SNP government, it is hard to see how they could defend not voting with Labour. But, in terms of electoral logic, it would be a classic example of turkeys legislating for the December 25 festive holiday bill.

The Scottish Greens said yesterday they would vote for the Tory no confidence motion. They have a particular grievance againt Yousaf, who sacked the two Green ministers when he abruptly cancelled the SNP/Green power-sharing deal yesterday. But the Greens are more supportive of the SNP as a whole. According to the recent polling, they might gain seats in an early election (going from eight MSPs to 10). But the Greens are pro-independence, and the polls suggest the pro-independence majority in the parliamnet would disappear after an early election.

The Liberal Democrats have got every incentive to push for an early election. Currently they have just four seats, but the seat projection suggests an election now would give them 10.

At Holyrood Scottish Labour has now tabled its own no confidence motion. And it is significantly different from the one tabled by the Scottish Conservatives yesterday.

The Tory is about no confidence in Humza Yousaf as first minister. If he were to lose, he might feel honour bound to resign, but he could in theory just ignore it.

The Labour one is a no confidence motion in the Scottish government. And if a no confidence vote in the government passes, the first minister and all other ministers are required to resign. The parliament then has 28 days to elect a new first minister, by a simple majority. If it cannot do that, parliament is dissolved and an early election is held.

Explaining his party’s move, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said:

Scottish Labour has no confidence in Humza Yousaf or this SNP Government, that is why we are laying a motion today to this effect to say that the parliament has no confidence in the Scottish government.

It is for the people of Scotland to decide who is first minister, not just a group of SNP members.

Removing Humza Yousaf alone will not deliver the change we need, we need to get rid of the entire SNP government which has left almost one in six Scots on an NHS waiting list, public finances in chaos and public services at breaking point.

The people of Scotland deserve a fresh start, this can only come with a Scottish election.

Sarwar also said he thought Yousaf’s resignation was now inevitable.

It’s a matter now of when, not if, Humza Yousaf will step down as first minister.

This is from LBC’s Gina Davidson.

Stephen Flynn is viewed by some people as the most talented politician in the SNP and, in his interview on the Today programme, he was asked if he would stand for the leadership if Humza Yousaf were to resign. He replied:

I have been asked this question previously the last time there was a leadership contest in the Scottish National party, and I was very clear in my view that I believe that the party leader should have the ability to be the first minister of Scotland.

I have not been dissuaded from that view since I made those comments well over a year ago, but the most important thing for me here is to get on with the job of supporting the first minister over the coming days as he fights back and he wins this vote of no confidence next week.

When it was put to him that this was not a clear no, Flynn replied:

Of course, implicit in my answer is the fact that I believe that the party leader should have the ability to be first minister of Scotland. As you and all your listeners know I am a member of parliament in Westminster, I do not have the ability to be the first minister of Scotland, so I am sure people can read between the lines in that regard.

This answer seemed to leave open the possibility that, if Flynn could get elected to the Scottish parliament in a byelection, then he might be interested. But making a leadership bid contingent on this being able to happen might be very problematic.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, defended Humza Yousaf in an interview on the Today programme this morning and said that the first minister was right to abandon the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens.

Describing Yousaf as a “man of profound integrity”, he said:

I firmly believe it [ending the deal with the Greens] was the right thing to do, because the first minister wanted to reset the focus of the Scottish Government on the priorities of the Scottish people. That of course means providing jobs and opportunities for our young people, growing the economy, protecting our NHS from the worst excesses of … Westminster and dealing with the cost-of-living crisis. He was absolutely right to do that.

Flynn urged MSPs from all parties to think about the consequences of bringing down Yousaf – a move that could, in certain circumstances, lead to an early election in Scotland.

I would simply say to politicians from across the political spectrum that now is the time for cool heads, calm words, to reflect and to think about the consequences of their actions.

This remark seemed to be aimed both at both SNP and Conservative MSPs; if there were an early Scottish election, both parties would probably lose seats.

Flynn said he spoke to Yousaf last night and found him in a '“reflective” mood, but also determined “to come out fighting because he believes in what he says”.

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has cancelled a planned speech at Strathclyde University as he battles for his political life, PA Media reports.

Yousaf was due to speak about the labour strategy in an independent Scotland, take part in a Q&A session and take questions from the press. But a source close to the first minister confirmed to PA this morning the event had been cancelled.

Given the reception Yousaf got from journalists when he held a press conference yesterday, this decision is not surprising.

The Alba MSP Ash Regan has now published on X the text of her letter to Humza Yousaf suggesting what he needs to do to secure her support in the no confidence vote next week.

As well as asking for assurances relating to the rights of women and “competent governance”, she is asking Yousaf to support her proposed Scottish parliament powers referendum bill. This is a reference to an Alba party plan to get round the fact that Westminster can stop the Scottish government holding a referendum on independence by instead getting the Scottish government to hold a referendum on whether it should have the power to hold an independence referendum. Alba believes Westminster would not be able to stop such a vote.

Good morning. A week today many of the results from the local elections will be in, the Conservatives are expected to be doing very badly and Rishi Sunak’s leadership will be on the line. Many Tory think Sunak could be facing a no confidence vote within days.

And so it must be some relief in Downing Street that there is another political leader in the UK in even more trouble than Sunak. Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, is facing an actual no confidence vote next week, not just a hypothetical one, and, as Severin Carrell explains in our overnight story, there is a real chance he could be out of his job within days.

To win the no confidence vote, Yousaf needs to secure the support of Ash Regan, a former SNP MSP who came third in the leadership contest Yousaf won last year and who subsequently defected to Alba, Alex Salmond’s party. Alba is a bit more aggressively pro-independence than the SNP, and more socially conservative (or less “woke”, as critics of the SNP might say).

Late last night, in an interview with the BBC’s World Tonight, Regan gave her first proper indication of what Yousaf will need to do to secure her vote. She told the programme:

I have written to the first minister today with a number of issues that I’ve raised with him on progress made towards independence, on how he will defend the rights of women and children and a return to competent governance.

My vote will depend on really what Humza comes back with in response to my letter.

I’m not setting out specific demands as such, I’m putting the ball into Humza’s court for him to come back to me and explain to me how he will make progress in a couple of these areas, particularly around the return to a competent government.

She said the SNP used to be a competent government. But she went on:

Unfortunately it has lost its focus over the last few years, it has gone down pursuing some policies that are not popular with the public, many of those were policies that really stemmed from the coalition agreement with the Green party.

On the basis of this interview, it does not seem impossible to imagine Yousaf saying or doing enough to secure her vote. Yousaf is scheduled to be giving a speech later, so we may hear more from him on this as the day goes on.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: MPs debate private members bill, starting with one introduced by Maria Miller requiring the government to give higher diplomatic status to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

9.45am: Angela van den Bogard, a former Post Office executive, resumes giving evidence to the Post Office Horizon inquiry.

Morning: Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, are on a visit in the north-east of England highlighting cost of living issues. They are giving interviews. Rishi Sunak is visiting a factory in Hertfordshire, but he is not expected to speak to reporters.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Noon: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, is due to give a speech at Strathclyde University.

And David Cameron, the foreign secretary, is in Mongolia, on the final day of his tour of Central Asia.

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