Humza Yousaf
6th First Minister of Scotland
Humza Haroon Yousaf (born 7 April 1985) is a Scottish politician who served as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from March 2023 to May 2024. He served under his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon as justice secretary from 2018 to 2021 and then as health secretary from 2021 to 2023. He served as Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow Pollok from 2016 to 2026, having previously been a regional MSP for Glasgow from 2011 to 2016.
Born to Pakistani immigrants in Glasgow, Yousaf studied politics at the University of Glasgow, before working as a parliamentary assistant for Bashir Ahmad, the first Muslim and the first second-generation immigrant elected to the Scottish Parliament. Following Ahmad's death in 2009, Yousaf went on to work as a parliamentary assistant for both Alex Salmond and Sturgeon. Prior to his election at the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, he worked in the SNP's party headquarters as a communications officer. Appointed as a junior minister under Salmond in 2012, Yousaf served as Minister for External Affairs and International Development until 2014.
Yousaf supported Sturgeon's successful leadership bid in 2014 and after she was sworn in as first minister, he was subsequently appointed as Europe minister before being appointed Minister for Transport and the Islands in 2016. As part of a cabinet reshuffle of Sturgeon's second ministry in 2018, Yousaf was promoted to the cabinet as justice secretary. He introduced a controversial hate-speech bill to parliament which ultimately became law as the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.
“Humza Yousaf” enters the record as 6th First Minister of Scotland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Humza, Yousaf and First can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q174924. VIAF identifies the subject as 6761168049004038410002. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 2023, 2024 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Humza Yousaf” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.