Lord Wallace, who served as Holyrood’s first-ever deputy first minister, was undergoing what has been described as a scheduled but major procedure at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh on Thursday. His wife, Rosie Wallace, said: “The family are very shocked by Jim’s death. He took the party into coalition with Labour, which won the first Scottish Parliament elections – with that move seeing him become the country’s first deputy first minister. He served three times as acting first minister, when the then first minister Donald Dewar underwent heart surgery in 2000 and later again that same year after Mr Dewar’s death. He also served as the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from 2021 to 2022.