Scottish Labour’s Davy Russell has won the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election.

Mr Russell took top spot with 8,559 votes. The SNP placed second with 7,957 votes, with Reform UK closely taking third with 7,088 votes.

The new MSP said he was “proud” to have been elected, adding: “I said in this campaign that I will put this community, our community first.

“I will work every single day to do that.”

The by-election was called following the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie.

The Scottish government minister died in March at the age of 57, having last year taken medical leave to undergo treatment for secondary breast cancer.

South Lanarkshire councillor Katy Loudon had hoped to retain the Holyrood seat for the SNP, given her party’s heavy losses to Labour at last year’s UK general election.

First Minister John Swinney congratulated Mr Russell following the result.

In a post on X, the SNP leader said Ms Loudon had “fought a superb SNP campaign”.

He added: “We have made progress since the election last year but not enough. We still have work to do and we will do it.”

All eyes were also on Reform UK and whether it would enjoy a “tartan bounce” in light of the party’s recent slew of local election wins in England.

With Reform UK never having won an election in Scotland, party deputy leader Richard Tice said candidate Ross Lambie coming in third was a “massive boost for us”.

He added: “It’s a fantastic result, just a few hundred votes away from the SNP, nobody predicted that.

“I think that sets us up with excitement and momentum for the next 11 months into the Holyrood elections.”

Mr Russell said the constituents had voted to “take a new direction” with his party.

He added: “Like the people here in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, and right across Scotland, we all feel we have been let down by the SNP.

“They’ve broken our NHS, wasted our money, and after nearly two decades they don’t deserve another chance.”

Mr Russell said the community had also “sent a message” to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage “and his mob tonight”.

He added: “The poison of Reform isn’t us, it isn’t Scotland, and we don’t want your division here.

“Reform have no real answers to the issues we face, and they can’t beat the SNP here or replace them across Scotland.”

Mr Russell said his party was ready to “fix” the NHS and “end the SNP’s addiction to wasting your money”.

He added: “The road to a new direction for Scotland in 2026 – with Anas Sarwar as first minister and a Scottish Labour government – begins right here. So, let’s go and win it together.”

Ten candidates went head-to-head in the Holyrood by-election:

• Collette Bradley, Scottish Socialist Party – 278 votes
• Andy Brady, Scottish Family Party – 219 votes
• Ross Lambie, Reform UK – 7,088 votes
• Katy Loudon, Scottish National Party (SNP) – 7,957 votes
• Janice MacKay, UK Independence Party (UKIP) – 50 votes
• Ann McGuinness, Scottish Green Party – 695 votes
• Aisha Mir, Scottish Liberal Democrats – 533 votes
• Richard Nelson, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party – 1,621 votes
• Davy Russell, Scottish Labour Party – 8,559 votes
• Marc Wilkinson, Independent – 109 votes

The votes were verified and manually counted at South Lanarkshire Council headquarters in Hamilton.

Campaigning became heated in the run up to the by-election, with Reform UK accused of running a “racist” ad on Facebook against Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.

Reform leader Mr Farage continued to double down, accusing his rival of “sectarian politics”.

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In response, the Scottish Labour MSP branded Mr Farage a “poisonous little man” and accused him of running a “campaign of dirt and smear”.

First Minister Mr Swinney had earlier warned it was a “two-horse race” between the SNP and Reform UK, urging voters to “defeat the gutter politics” of Mr Farage.

With less than a year to go before the Scottish parliament election, the result potentially offers a snapshot of how the political landscape north of the border could look in 2026.

Mr Sarwar said: “I think people need to change the script, because we’ve proven the pollsters wrong.

“We’ve proven the commentators wrong, we’ve proven the bookies wrong. We’ve proven John Swinney wrong and so many others wrong too.”

Nearly £450m is being invested in the NHS in England to cut hospital waiting times and tackle persistently failing trusts, the health secretary has announced.

Wes Streeting says his NHS reforms aim to deliver around 40 new centres to fast-track treatment for patients, up to 15 mental health crisis assessment units and almost 500 new ambulances.

It is part of an attempt to shift patients away from A&E and avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.

“No patient should ever be left waiting for hours in hospital corridors or for an ambulance which ought to arrive in minutes,” said Mr Streeting.

“The package of investment and reforms we are announcing today will help the NHS treat more patients in the community, so they don’t end up stuck on trolleys in A&E,” he added.

In an example of the challenge facing the health secretary, Sky News on Wednesday revealed the scale of England’s mental health crisis, exacerbated by a shortage of specialist beds and an overwhelmed social care network.

The new Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for England says more needs to be done to drive down long waits, cut delayed discharges and improve care for patients.

The document requires Trusts to reduce the number of patients waiting over 12 hours and make progress on “eliminating corridor care”. It is estimated “over 800,000 people a month will receive more timely care”.

A&E league tables published

A&E “league tables” will be published to drive up performance, including driving down delayed discharges from hospital. This can often impact elderly people when they are fit to leave but have additional care needs which require the involvement of social care teams.

The plan also sets out aims to cut ambulance waiting times for category 2 patients – like those suffering stroke, heart attack, sepsis or major trauma – from 35 to 30 minutes. A previous target of 18 minutes has been repeatedly missed.

Trusts have also been told to tackle lengthy ambulance handover delays by meeting a maximum 45-minute target for patients to enter A&E.

The aim is to avoid a repeat of a crisis last winter when patients were waiting hours for beds and regularly being treated in corridors – so-called corridor care.

Among the other plans revealed by NHS England are: virtual wards, where patients are monitored by hospital staff from their home, and a greater role for paramedics and urgent community response teams to treat people in the community to avoid hospital admission.

Some reforms ‘lack ambition’

Royal College of Emergency Medicine president Dr Adrian Boyle accepted the plan had “some good and some bad” points but also that NHS England had acknowledged “the shameful situation being experienced by patients and clinicians across the country’s emergency departments”.

In a statement, Mr Boyle said: “Some parts lack ambition – for example accepting that 10% of people will face A&E waits of more than 12 hours, when no patient should.

“Also maintaining the four-hour standard at 78% when the stated aim is that 95% of patients should move through the emergency department within this time – something which hasn’t happened for a decade.”

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Association of Ambulance Chief Executives managing director Anna Parry said: “Handover delays have the greatest detrimental impact on ambulance resources and create unnecessary delays and additional harm for thousands of patients each year.

“The elimination of corridor care and the focus on reducing 12-hour waits at emergency departments is also welcomed.”

The Liberal Democrats broadly welcomed the plans but called on ministers to follow through on their promises.

“Patients have heard these kinds of promises before only to be led up the garden path,” said Lib Dem health spokesperson Helen Morgan MP.

“The misery in our A&Es will only be prolonged if they continue to move at a snail’s pace on social care,” she added.

The family of an 80-year-old man say they have “no sympathy” for the children who killed their loved one, as a 15-year-old boy was jailed for seven years and a 13-year-old girl escaped a custodial sentence.

Bhim Kohli was found lying on the ground in Franklin Park in Braunstone Town, near Leicester, on 1 September last year and died the next evening of a spinal cord injury.

He had been following a familiar routine, walking his beloved dog Rocky to the local park, just yards away from his home. But when he arrived at the park, he was approached by teens who attacked him.

The jury at Leicester Crown Court heard a girl, aged 12 at the time, had pointed Mr Kohli out to a boy, who was 14 at the time, and who then subjected Mr Kohli to a brutally violent attack.

The 80-year-old grandfather was slapped about the face with a slider shoe and racially abused, before being punched and kicked while on the floor.

Mr Kohli suffered a broken neck and fractured ribs as a result of the attack.

His daughter, Susan Kohli, who found her father lying on the ground following the attack, says it’s hard to find forgiveness for her father’s killers, regardless of their ages.

“Why should they be given grace for what they have done?” asks Ms Kohli. “They chose to attack a defenceless pensioner and for that I cannot give them any of my sympathy.”

Initially, the boy, now 15, told the jury he walked over to Mr Kohli, wearing a balaclava because the girl, now 13, had said Mr Kohli “carries a knife”.

But this was disputed in court, and the attack on Mr Kohli was described by the prosecution as “gratuitous violence against a man who was defenceless”.

While the girl involved never physically touched Mr Kohli, the court heard she had taken a photograph of him in Franklin Park just a week before he was killed.

“If it wasn’t for her, things might have been very different,” said Kelly Matthews, a senior district crown prosecutor, who explained why the girl was also convicted of manslaughter.

“She was the one [who] pointed him out to the boy. Whilst the boy was attacking Mr Kohli, she filmed it. She encouraged him. She laughed, when violence was taking place,” said Ms Matthews.

Ms Kohli says she still cannot understand why anyone, but especially “children of that age”, would want to attack an “old age pensioner”.

“You can see from his physique that he’s a very gentle, frail man. What was going through their heads?” she asks.

“That’s what I cannot get my head around.”

However, she believes the glorification of violence on social media played an element, and says “parents also have a part to play in it” to ensure their children’s social activity is being monitored.

The 15-year-old boy was ordered to serve seven years’ detention, and the 13-year-old girl was handed a three-year youth rehabilitation order by a High Court judge at Leicester Crown Court.

Mr Justice Turner called it a “cowardly and violent attack” on an elderly man who did “nothing to deserve” what happened to him.

He told the boy: “What you did was not one single attack which you immediately regretted, but two separate violent outbursts.”

He added: “I’m sure you regret he died because of what you did to Mr Kohli, but you still say it wasn’t your fault.

“It was your fault and the sooner you realise this, the better.”

He accepted, while the girl had encouraged the boy’s behaviour, she did not know he would use “anything like the level of violence he did”.

Speaking outside Leicester Crown Court after the sentencing, Ms Kohli said she is “angry and disappointed” the teenagers’ sentence does not reflect the severity of the crime.

“The death of my dad has left a hole in our family, a hole that can never be filled because of the actions of two teenagers on that Sunday evening last September,” she said.

“I believe on that day the two teenagers made a choice. The teenage boy chose to attack my dad and the girl chose to film him being attacked. They knew what they were doing.”

She added: “When they are released, they still have their full lives ahead of them. They can rebuild their lives. We can’t.”