Unlike in the Parliament at Westminster where there is an Official Opposition to the government of the day, all parties in the Scottish Parliament that are not in government are all technically on the same footing as 'opposition parties'. With the Scottish National Party (SNP) currently in government, the Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Labour each have a Shadow Cabinet composed of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) and prospective parliamentary candidates.
Shadow Cabinet ministers have a responsibility to shadow an individual government minister or a specific area of government. Other parties have frontbench teams with spokespersons covering multiple areas of government or which are composed of spokespersons from both within and outwith the Scottish Parliament.