Katy is standing as the Scottish Labour candidate for Cunninghame South in the 2026 Scottish Parliament Elections.
She most recently served as a West Scotland Regional List MSP from 2021 to 2026, and she was the MP for North Ayrshire and Arran from 2005 to 2015, a constituency which included much of Cunninghame South.
Katy is a strong campaigner for social justice, greater investment in communities, for well-funded public services and for increased public ownership. She fights for the Scottish Parliament to use all its powers to deliver on these issues.
Ayrshire continues to suffer the effects of deindustrialisation which is why Katy campaigns for an industrial strategy which would deliver well-paid and secure jobs and ensure that local communities benefit from the growth in new green industries. She also fights for strengthened rights for trade unions and workers.
As an MSP, Katy has exposed the failures of the Scottish Government to deliver improvements in our public services like the NHS and schools, the neglect of social housing, the cuts to local government funding and the tragically high levels of drugs-related deaths.
She has served as Scottish Labour’s Spokesperson on Community Safety since 2021 and has been a strong advocate for action to address violence against women and girls, to tackle sexism and misogyny, for independent legal advice and representation for rape survivors, for better funding for rape crisis and women’s aid services, and for investment in our fire service to reduce response times to incidents which have risen due to SNP cuts.
Katy was appointed as a Peer in the House of Lords in 2020 on a platform of abolishing the unelected Lords. This is a position which she continues to hold and she voted to abolish the Lords while serving as an MP. She took a leave of absence from the Lords to take up her seat as an MSP in 2021.