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Scotland Bill

The point is that when the electorate then see that person's behaviour in the list system, they are puzzled. I give the example of the Lothian Members, who are centred mainly in the city of Edinburgh. Where do the SNP list Members have their office? They have it in a little village called Whitburn in my constituency—well out of the city centre and the locale near the Parliament. That might have something to do with the fact that every time we have an election, the person who loses for the SNP stands against my MSP under first past the post, and that constituency happens to cover the village of Whitburn and areas in West Lothian. That clearly distorts not only the electoral system but the use of resources allocated to list Members, basically to try to back up the challenge under first past the post. New clause 1 would remove that problem by providing for two Members for each MP seat—it could be split in half or done some other way. That would give people the sort of representation that they like. I have no doubt that colleagues in all the political parties in Scotland believe that when people come to see them, they know that they are their representatives and that they are accountable to those people. In the Scottish parliamentary system, however, people do not really know because of the number of layers involved. They might go to the list Member, and if they get nothing there they will try the first-past-the-post Member and vice versa. The list Member might first back up the person and then take a different view. Then it might come to seeing the Member of Parliament to find out whether they will back them up.