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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My noble friend makes a fascinating point about the sparseness of population in the rural constituencies in Scotland. Is he aware that the Act of Union in 1707 gave Scotland 45 seats in the new 558-seat Parliament and 16 elected Peers in your Lordships’ House? Of those 45 seats in the House of Commons, 30 represented the 33 Scottish counties. Twenty-seven counties were given a single seat and three pairs of smaller counties alternated with one another in electing a Member. This reflected the situation that the counties had in the Scottish Parliament by 1707, although in 1690—not a particularly good year in many ways—a redistribution Act was passed that increased the number of commissioners returning to the Scottish Parliament. Even in those days, the system was selective and took into account all sorts of circumstances.