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Scotland Bill

The SNP won because the election was fought on a fair set of rules—I hope that the hon. Gentleman will give the Liberal Democrats credit for participating in the Constitutional Convention and arguing and negotiating with the Labour party to get a proportional system. If his party had not gone off in a huff and had instead taken part in the Constitutional Convention, we might have got an even better system. He should be thanking the Liberal Democrats for the efforts we made. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire was arguing that one of the flaws with the current system relates to the number of MSPs who can turn up at health board meetings in Ayrshire and Arran—he cited a figure of 24. We have had arithmetical disputes before, but I calculate that 26 MSPs could attend. I have good news for him because the Boundary Commission has drawn up the new boundaries for the next elections and only 19 MSPs will be able to turn up to those meetings. However, he does have a point, and if he looks at the Arbuthnott report, he will find where a solution lies. Sir John Arbuthnott's report was set up by the previous Government to examine the problems of non-coterminosity. He proposed that we should make the regional list boundaries natural boundaries, rather than have the current unnatural boundaries. So, for example, the whole of Ayrshire would be covered by one regional list. There was a lot to be said for Sir John's report. I did not agree with every part of the detail, but it was a pity that the previous Government did not take it more seriously. Importantly, the Arbuthnott commission said that when the overall result is proportional, it is less important that individual constituencies and individual regional lists all have the same number of electors than it is in a first-past-the-post system. As the final result will be proportional, it is less important for each constituency and list to be the same size. It would, thus, be better if the regional list boundaries for Scottish Parliament elections were drawn up first and constituencies were then fitted within the regional lists. That would allow us to get regional lists that are much closer to natural boundaries than the current system does.