Meeting of the Parliament 24 February 2026 [Draft]
We all agree with the intent of this bill: that every other part of the United Kingdom has a system of recall, and so should we—that there should be accountability and control through the ballot box, not just to test popularity and measure support, but to hold members of this Parliament to account for any act of gross misconduct or of criminality, and so, in law, establish control not only by the police station, but by the polling station.
What has proved difficult, of course, is the conversion of theory into practice: the design of the legislation for achieving this. Even today, it is still beset with potential anomalies: a recall petition for constituency MSPs and a recall poll for regional list MSPs, and the potential debasement of the democratic right, established a century and a half ago, to a secret ballot. If the only reason to visit a polling place, to apply for a postal vote or to arrange a proxy vote is in order to vote one way and one way only—to vote for recall—that negates that secrecy. And, as far as I can tell, there has still been no equality impact assessment, when we know that women, for example, are more likely to be hounded on social media, and so more likely to be targeted in a recall petition, than men.
We have to understand this, too: that we are living through an era in which political leaders are less interested in a battle of ideas and much more concerned with personal smears; less interested in idealism, principle and power, and more concerned with individualism, privilege and positioning.
An awful lot—too much, in my opinion—of the making of this law, if the bill were to become an act, would reside in the hands of future ministers through regulations and in the hands of the next Parliament through secondary legislation, and may, therefore, not come into effect until after the 2031 election. That, in my view, is not just unsatisfactory; it is a monumental deficiency. After all, this legislation is supposed to be about the dispersal and the decentralisation of power, and the transfer of power and political control to the people. We should not be reversing this by, at the same time, switching power to the ministerial box from the ballot box.
The bill is in a much more reasoned and reasonable position now than it was when first presented. Some of the overcomplexities have been simplified. Some of the more contested elements have been dropped altogether, such as the automatic removal of MSPs sentenced for a custodial sentence of any length, which many of us could not support, and the removal of an MSP for not physically attending Parliament.
However, it is self-evident to me that, for all of its flaws, we have to pass this bill tonight, because to not pass it is unconscionable; to not pass it would disconnect us from the real world; and to not pass it would send out the message that we were completely out of touch. Because there is growing discontent, and there is a corrosion of trust in politics. We need democratic renewal.
As I step down from Parliament in the coming weeks, I leave it with the privilege of this experience—experience which is converted into determination—