Meeting of the Parliament 24 February 2026 [Draft]
All the amendments in this group have been lodged by me and concern changes to the recall process for regional members. One of the key challenges of the bill is establishing a regional recall process that is fair, simple and cost effective. At stage 2, improvements were made to remove the two-step process for regional members, which was criticised in the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee’s stage 1 report. However, I still believe that the process as laid out does not represent value for the taxpayer.
The financial memorandum to the bill found that a regional poll could cost the taxpayer £1.3 million, compared to £0.3 million for a constituency petition and the subsequent by-election. In the United Kingdom Parliament, six recall petitions were triggered between 2018 and 2024. If, in the next session, we had a similar number of recall petitions and polls, we could be talking about millions of pounds being spent at a time when fiscal resources remain tight. I know that there is hope across the chamber that we will never have to use the legislation, but we must ground ourselves in the reality that we might have to use it. That is why I propose to abolish the recall process for regional MSPs and instead move to a system of automatic removal when the parliamentary sanction ground or criminal offence ground is triggered.
Amendment 42 is the substantive amendment in the group. It would establish a new process by which regional members would automatically be removed if they were sanctioned by Parliament for 10 sitting days or more, or if they were convicted of a criminal offence. Amendments 42A, 42B and 42C would change the wording of amendment 42 to remove reference to the criminal offence ground.