Meeting of the Parliament 24 February 2026 [Draft]
It is customary to thank a number of people when we reach this stage in a member’s bill, so I will start with some thanks. First, I thank the non-Government bills unit for its support throughout what has been a very long process.
My various staff throughout the years of working on the bill deserve my thanks, and, in particular, I single out Abigail Fletcher, who will be mortified that I have mentioned her. She was super efficient and a great source of advice, and she will do well where she works now and wherever she works in the future.
I thank everyone who has engaged with me on the bill or who responded to the committee’s call for evidence, because being challenged on your ideas is a vital part of the process.
The former Minister for Parliamentary Business, Jamie Hepburn, has my on-going respect for the collaborative way in which he engaged with me on the bill, as does the current minister, Graeme Dey.
Finally, I thank Baroness Davidson for setting me on this course. I hope that it has not been a waste of time and that the Parliament does the right thing and legislates.
When I first started talking to Baroness Davidson about the bill, as I mentioned earlier, our idea centred on whether it was right that MSPs could get elected for five years and then, perfectly legitimately and without having to provide any excuse, never turn up again after being sworn in, or, now, in the age of hybrid working, without even logging into proceedings. That rather cushy arrangement would not be found in any other workplace, and to assume that people will not swing the lead is ludicrous, because they have done so and they will do so. Having been a councillor, I knew that councillors can lose their positions if they are absent for more than six months without good reason. The committee that looked at the bill was not entirely persuaded of the concept that I proposed—it was never about trying to catch MSPs who are off for a variety of very understandable reasons—so we lost that part of the bill at stage 2. The Parliament must return to that, because it is simply an unacceptable situation.
I also proposed that MSPs should lose their jobs if they were jailed for six months or more. Being jailed for six months is a very unlikely event in Scotland, but I wanted to avoid a repeat of the situation in the past whereby a member was jailed for 12 months but the law said that he would lose his job only if he was incarcerated for “more than” 12 months. That section of the bill was also sacrificed, so we are left with a recall bill.
The Parliament accepted that we should legislate. The question was: how? The fundamental challenge for me was to design a recall system that works for both constituency and regional members. It is impossible to have the same system, because we are elected differently. My initial effort was clunky and potentially very expensive. I accepted that and went back to the drawing board, because that is the process: we need to listen.
The difficult bit was the regional element. However—luckily—I had engaged with the Senedd Standards of Conduct Committee in Wales where the Welsh Government was legislating under the new entirely list system. It seemed to me that I could largely adopt the Welsh system for recalling regional members, which was to ask voters only once whether a member should stay or go, if they had met the threshold for being recalled—a poll, rather than a petition. That system is far easier to understand than my initial two-stage proposal and is, obviously, a lot cheaper.
That is what I proposed at stage 2. I had responded to the committee’s concerns. My officials worked with the Government on amendments. However, when we got to stage 2, the minister revealed that he was not entirely happy with one of the amendments. He wanted more detail, so I have provided that. The Parliament accepted my amendments today and the minister backed all of them, so I hope that that has been enough to secure his support. We will hear about that soon.
Today, I have heard concerns about the Agnew review and the parliamentary sanctions element of the bill. Nothing in the bill, as it is now, prevents our waiting for that review to complete. The bill can pass, and we can wait for the Agnew review.