Nicol Stephen (born 23 March 1960) is Deputy First Minister of Scotland, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and a Member of the Scottish Parliament for Aberdeen South.
He was educated at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen and at the University of Aberdeen, where he obtained an LLB in 1980. He then took his Diploma in Legal Practice at Edinburgh University and worked for a number of years as a solicitor before moving into corporate finance as a senior manager with Deloitte & Touche.
He was elected to Grampian Regional Council in 1982 (as Scotland's youngest councillor) and was Chair of Grampian's Economic and Planning Committee from 1986 to 1991. He was also a founding director of Grampian Enterprise, the local enterprise company for the North East of Scotland, now known as Scottish Enterprise Grampian.
He was briefly a Member of Parliament for the Kincardine and Deeside constituency, elected in the 1991 by-election following the death of Conservative Alick Buchanan-Smith. He was a member of the Liberal Democrat treasury team and spokesperson on small business during his time in the House of Commons. The seat returned to the Conservatives at the 1992 General Election, when it was won by George Kynoch.
Since his election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, he has been a Minister in the Scottish Executive, first as Deputy Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning from 1999 to 2000, then as Deputy Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs from 2000 to 2001, and as Deputy Minister for Education and Young People from 2001 - 2003. Following the 2003 Election, he was appointed Minister for Transport.
His involvement in the award of the Scottish rail franchise to First ScotRail was controversial, with accusations of impropriety arising from his previous work with First Group.
Further controversy was engendered by his approval of the M74 Northern Extension, going against the findings of a Public Inquiry conducted by a senior civil servant.
Along with Mike Rumbles, he was one of two candidates in the election to succeed Jim Wallace as leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and was declared winner on the 23rd of June, 2005. As the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the smaller partner in the governing coalition in Scotland, he therefore became Deputy First Minister of Scotland. He is also Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning (again since June 2005).
See also
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol_Stephen under GFDL
