Hansard

The issue that we are discussing should not be an issue. As even Mr McLetchie must recognise, there is a certain paradox in the fact that the leader of a party that did not want the Parliament, who does not sit on any of the Parliament's committees, is advising the Parliament on how it should reform its structures and committees.

I will give a personal view. I support the motion and the reasoning behind it, because it expresses the view of an overwhelming number of members of the Scottish Parliament, including Conservative members, and the view of civic Scotland. However, it is entirely unsuitable that the Parliament should be discussing an Executive motion on the issue. The issue is a parliamentary one. The Parliament must find ways of asserting its rights—which are separate and distinct from those of the Scottish Executive—to initiate resolutions on matters that go across party lines and express the will of Parliament as a whole.

I commend to the Parliament the support paper that the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body has produced. The paper is not political. It does not enter into discussion of the electoral system. Instead, it lays out—on behalf of the SPCB as members' parliamentary managers—the reasons why a Parliament of 129 members is necessary to do the job. The paper's arguments are firmly grounded in the Parliament's basic principles of accountability, accessibility, diversity and power sharing. A reduction would affect the Parliament's stability in its formative years. It would affect the work of its highly successful committees, the potential of many of the cross-party groups and the amount and quality of the business that would be done. It would also affect the extent of the Parliament's representation of diverse geographic, political and social interests across Scotland.

Unlike the Westminster Parliament, the Scottish Parliament is elected on a fair basis. The Liberal Democrats do not think that the system that is used is the best system; STV, which Dennis Canavan mentioned, would be a better system. However, the system was arrived at consensually and was subsequently supported in a referendum of the Scottish people. That means that the whole of Scotland—including the Highlands, the Borders, the cities, the towns and the different political parties—has a proper voice in the Parliament. That inclusiveness, which was built into the Parliament at the beginning, gives the Parliament great potential to develop innovative ways of connecting with the people and with civic Scotland. The people voted overwhelmingly in the referendum for that sort of Parliament.

Those of us who live in western liberal democracies sometimes take our good fortune for granted. A glance at recent events in Bosnia, Zimbabwe or Afghanistan, to name but a few examples, should persuade us to take our civil and political liberties more seriously.

We have a lot more to do to give ownership of the Parliament to the people, to reform the balance in Parliament between MSPs and the party machines and to develop even better arrangements for participation by the people. We who were elected to the first Scottish Parliament hold our positions in trust for the people of Scotland. However, we are here not as delegates who reflect every populist whim and turn of the national press, but as representatives who exercise our collective and individual judgment on political and public affairs. That role is most effectively exercised through the committees, where evidence is taken, issues are developed and decisions are arrived at—mostly more dispassionately than is the case in the chamber.

As members have said, one of the Parliament's most important functions is to scrutinise the Executive's activities. We cannot do that by being supine supporters of the Executive of the day or by being knee-jerk oppositionists. MSPs must be prepared to take an independent and critical stand. That will not happen if the Parliament is reduced to a rump in which everyone is on the payroll as an official Opposition spokesman, a bag carrier or a cheerleader for one side or the other.

I heard David McLetchie on television last night. He was acting in much the same fashion as he did today—he was glib and condemnatory. His message boiled down to a revised version of the old Tory script that the Parliament, which his party opposed and frustrated for so long, is a waste of space and an unnecessary cost to business and that everyone—except the Conservatives, presumably—is making a hash of everything. Although that sort of petty carping might have done well in Westminster, to where some of Mr McLetchie's colleagues seem desperate to depart, it will not do in the Scottish Parliament. This is a democratically elected Assembly, which, if it is the will of the people, is dismissible at the next election, when the electors can judge us individually and collectively.

Do not write off the Parliament. The Parliament belongs to the people and was brought into existence by their votes. Give us the tools to do the job by keeping the number of MSPs at 129.