Kenneth Gibson was elected on Tuesday as the new presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament after MSPs were sworn in for the first day of the chamber’s seventh term. He beat Claire Haughey, Stuart McMillan and Liam McArthur to take the post, capping a long opening day at Holyrood.

Gibson’s first job was to kick off the vote to elect his deputy. He then announced that parliament would reconvene at 16:45 to announce the nominations and return an hour later for the election of the Scottish Parliament’s new deputy presiding officer. The timetable gave the chamber a quick next step after the day’s formalities, with the presiding officer role now in place and the deputy contest set to follow.

Earlier in the day, MSPs took an oath or made an affirmation during a three-hour ceremony in the chamber. John Swinney was the first to be sworn in as leader of the largest party, and the rest of the members were called forward in alphabetical order. Some repeated their declarations in Scots, Doric and Gaelic, underlining the mix of languages that marked the opening of the new parliamentary term.

The election of a presiding officer is one of the first tasks after members are sworn in, and it matters because the job is to chair the parliament and guide proceedings through the session ahead. This time, it also opened the process of choosing a deputy presiding officer, making the role central to the first working hours of the new term.

After he was announced, Swinney congratulated Gibson, while outgoing presiding officer Alison Johnstone hugged him as he crossed the Holyrood floor to take his seat for the first time. Gibson thanked everyone who took part in the process and voted for him “through thick and thin” during what he described as a stressful afternoon, and said he was looking forward to working with every single person in the Holyrood chamber. He added: “There is so much more we can be as a parliament than we have been in the past,” a line that set the tone for the term ahead.

The vote leaves Gibson in charge at the start of a new parliamentary cycle, with the deputy election due to follow the same day. That makes the first full sitting less a ceremonial reset than the opening of business, and the pace from oath to leadership vote to deputy contest shows how quickly Holyrood is moving into its seventh term.