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Scotland Bill

Anyone who looks at the amendment paper will see that I am a signatory to new clauses 1 and 2. We have had the knockabout stuff about whether this Parliament has or has not the right to decide the structure of the Scottish parliamentary electoral system or indeed its membership, but people were perfectly happy for this Parliament to overturn the Scotland Act 1998 at the first time of calling, by increasing the number of Members to 129, when the Act originally said that we would drop to a reasonable number after the initial period. The argument was made that people in Scottish Parliament thought they needed 129 Members to take up all of the one and a half days in which they actually debated in their Chamber, and to ensure that enough people turned up at 5 o'clock every Wednesday to vote to make sure they got the tick in the box. It never made sense to me, but we allowed that change; Parliament was perfectly happy to change it. I believe that Members of all the parties with Members in Scotland were happy to go along with that process. If it was good enough then, it is certainly good enough now to consider whether the system in place for proportional representation—with its list Members—is the correct way to proceed. I am sure that some, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), would like to proceed to a totally proportional system. I believe that that has always been his bent; the single transferrable vote has always been his choice of political electoral system. As far as I am concerned, however, we need to consider whether the system we have works, or whether what has been proposed is a better system. Many people in my constituency, and those I have talked to in other constituencies—even those represented by Scottish National party Members—believe that there is a great deal of confusion in the system at the moment. The person who stands against the constituency Member they vote for often ends up elected under the regional system, having been defeated by the choice of the electorate under the first-past-the-post system. It is right that people should be able to choose. I think that the best system would provide for two MSPs in the constituencies of MPs in this place, and if Parliament wishes to remain with 129 Members—or whatever—it should put in place a top-up system chosen by the parties, because that is what it is about; we should let the parties choose people to be their central representation and then to top up. We discussed this matter here when we set up the system, and in the Scottish Constitutional Convention before the system was proposed. At that time, the argument was that there would be fewer Members who would deal with central policy matters and act as a group in Parliament, not shadow Members scurrying about trying to build credibility by snatching cases from MPs, councillors and the MSPs elected under the first-past-the-post system, in the hope that they can build enough credibility to challenge that Member at the next ballot, which is what is happening. It is not giving people good representation, and it is not giving them the benefits of a proportional system in the Chamber that can be seen in many of the European countries I have travelled to during my time on the European Scrutiny Committee. In those countries, parties act as central blocks in Parliament, working up policy, arguing in the Chamber, sitting on Committees and proposing policy innovations, not running around the country tripping over everyone's feet trying to win local votes.