Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Plenary, 27 Mar 2002

27 Mar 2002 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

MSP Numbers

Ferguson, Patricia Lab Glasgow Maryhill Watch on SPTV

I thank the member for that.

If the committee structure were to be jeopardised in such a way, there would be serious implications for the Executive's legislative programme and for the capacity of committees and back-bench members to introduce their own bills, as they have begun to do. The ability of committees to scrutinise proposals for legislation, to hold the Executive to account and to conduct independent inquiries would be severely curtailed. So too would the ability of individual MSPs to serve the needs of their constituents. In short, the ability of the Parliament to function effectively would be compromised, in my view quite significantly.

The consultative steering group established the principles on which the Parliament is founded: accessibility, transparency, the sharing of power and equal opportunities. Those principles would be seriously jeopardised if we were to reduce the size of the legislature.

We have only one chamber, so the work of our committees takes on a particular importance. Their role in scrutinising Executive legislation is vital. So too is their taking of evidence from civil Scotland and the dialogue that they have around Scotland. All that would be jeopardised by a reduction in the number of MSPs.

Our commitment to equal opportunities could also be threatened by a reduction in the number of members. We are rightly proud of the number of women in this Parliament: at 32.7 per cent, we have the third highest proportion of women representatives of any Parliament in the world. If the number of MSPs were reduced, our ability to observe family-friendly hours would be threatened. That would impact not just on members, but on our accessibility to our constituents. The work that we do is not just about being in the chamber; it is also about our ability to visit community groups, to speak to individual constituents, to hear their views and to work with them in our communities.

That, in a nutshell, is the argument for retaining the Parliament at its present size. The present arrangements represent a consensus that emerged after much debate over a period of years, starting with the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention.

The Parliament can, and does, hold the Executive to account, not only by scrutinising its proposals for legislation, but through parliamentary debates, questions and ad hoc inquiries. There is a proper democratic balance between the Executive and the Parliament.

What, then, are the countervailing arguments that led the UK Government and Parliament to reach the contrary view during the passage of the Scotland Bill? The key consideration was the risk of public confusion if there were two sets of parliamentary constituencies, one for Westminster and the other for Holyrood. There could also be practical difficulties for local authorities, returning officers and the political parties.

Those are legitimate concerns, but electors already have to contend with different boundaries for local, parliamentary and European elections, not to mention different voting systems. There is no evidence to suggest that that has caused any serious problems. The electorate are increasingly sophisticated and I see no reason why differences in parliamentary constituencies would cause any great difficulty in practice.

Search Hansard contributions

Plenary, 27 Mar 2002

In the same item of business