Jeane Freeman, who has died aged 72, held two critical roles in the SNP government at Holyrood, leading the Scottish government’s response to the Covid pandemic alongside Nicola Sturgeon and establishing Scotland’s first devolved social security system.
By no means a career politician but an instinctive campaigner from the outset, she entered elected politics a decade ago, and relatively late in life, after a varied career in nursing, criminal justice and the civil service. This followed a political journey from her family’s working-class, trade-unionist roots to the progressive nationalism of the 2014 independence referendum campaign, during which she championed women’s voices and famously took on the broadcaster Andrew Neil in a viral interview about whether the union benefited Scotland’s NHS.
Freeman co-founded the cross-party group Women for Independence in 2012, determined to push women’s experience to the heart of the debate that was gripping the country. Her rubric was “there’s no such thing as a stupid question”.
A fluent debater, she impressed Sturgeon, the incoming first minister, who persuaded Freeman to stand for the SNP at the 2016 Scottish parliament elections in the seat of Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley in her native Ayrshire.
Within weeks of her election she was appointed to what was ostensibly a junior ministerial post but with a significant remit – setting up Social Security Scotland, the agency to manage newly devolved welfare powers that were part of the Smith commission post-referendum settlement.
It would be based on “dignity, fairness and respect”, Freeman said, words that have been repeated over the past few days to evoke the woman herself. The framework she worked on was radically different from the UK Conservative model, recognising social security as a human right and guaranteeing that the private sector would not carry out disability assessments.
In June 2018, she was promoted to health secretary, a notoriously difficult portfolio even in ordinary times. Then came the global pandemic. Freeman regularly appeared at the Scottish government’s daily televised press conferences alongside Sturgeon, who described her as “steadfast, shouldering huge responsibility herself, but also giving me great support”.
Both Freeman and Sturgeon were later challenged about the decision to discharge elderly hospital patients to care homes during the early weeks of the pandemic in 2020 without a negative Covid test. Freeman was frank, saying that she understood the anger of bereaved relatives and insisting: “I made the best decisions I believed were possible with the information I had at the time.”
On learning of her death, the campaign group Care Home Relatives Scotland revealed that Freeman had contacted them on the day of their initial Holyrood demonstration in 2020 and added: “We held many meetings with her where we always felt she listened.”
Born in Newton, Ayrshire, Jeane was the youngest of four children and the only daughter of George Freeman, an aircraft fitter, and Annie (nee Jordan), a nurse whom Jeane recalled working 12-hour-shifts as a sister in a psychiatric hospital. The values of fairness and social responsibility, and in particular an appreciation of the postwar health service, was instilled in her by her father, who served with the RAF during the second world war.
After leaving Ayr academy, and initially training on the job as a nurse, she enrolled at the Glasgow College of Technology to study sociology and politics, becoming an active member of the Communist party’s student wing, and in 1979 was elected the first woman to lead the National Union of Students in Scotland.
She worked for a period in London, where she was briefly married to Dougie Herd, a disability campaigner and writer. In 1987 she returned to Scotland to establish Apex, a charity which helps people who have been through the criminal justice system to find employment. By now a member of the Labour party, in 1996 she was appointed OBE for her work there.
Freeman was recruited to the senior civil service in 1999 on the establishment of the Holyrood parliament. There she met Susan Stewart, who became her partner, and the pair entered into a civil partnership in 2007.
In 2001 she was appointed special adviser to the Scottish Labour first minister Jack McConnell, working on the NHS takeover from a private company of the hospital that would become a flagship for heart and lung care, the Golden Jubilee, and later became chair of the board.
McConnell described her as “one of the most formidable public figures of her generation” and “one of my oldest friends”. Others have recalled Freeman’s gift for friendship, playfulness and a dry sense of humour that sat alongside a fierce intelligence and work ethic.
Disillusioned with the Blair government and having quit the party, in 2005 Freeman left Holyrood to start her own consultancy as her views on Scotland’s constitutional future also evolved, culminating in her support for the Yes campaign.
Freeman retired after one term in 2021 and, despite the ongoing demands of giving evidence to both UK and Scottish Covid inquiries, she learned to swim and volunteered at the Beatson cancer centre in Glasgow, taking round the tea trolley.
After Stewart’s own recent retirement, the pair were readying for a new year trip to Vietnam when tests revealed Freeman had inoperable tumours in both lungs.
“We only had 25 days thereafter,” wrote Stewart, announcing her partner’s death. “Days which she faced with enormous courage, care for others and love for me.”
She is survived by Susan, her brother Jim, and her five nieces and nephews, Nicola, Louise, Andrew, Paul and Rachel.
• Jeane Tennent Freeman, politician, born 28 September 1953; died 7 February 2026
