Everything about The Scottish Parliament totally explained
The
Scottish Parliament (
Scottish Gaelic:
Pàrlamaid na h-Alba;
Scots:
Scottish Pairlament) is the national,
unicameral legislature of
Scotland, located in the
Holyrood area of the capital
Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "
Holyrood" (cf. "
Westminster"), is a
democratically elected body comprising 129 members who are known as
Members of the Scottish Parliament, or MSPs. Members are elected for four-year terms under the
mixed member proportional representation system. As a result, 73 MSPs represent individual geographical
constituencies elected by the
plurality ("first past the post") system, with a further 56 returned from eight
additional member regions, each electing seven MSPs. A
general election to the Parliament was held on
3 May 2007.
The original
Parliament of Scotland (or "
Estates of Scotland") was the national legislature of the independent
Kingdom of Scotland, and existed from the early 13th century until the Kingdom of Scotland merged with the
Kingdom of England under the
Acts of Union 1707 to form the
Kingdom of Great Britain. As a consequence, the Parliament of Scotland merged with the
Parliament of England to form the
Parliament of Great Britain, which sat at
Westminster in
London. The UK Parliament retains the ability to amend the terms of reference of the Scottish Parliament, and can extend or reduce the areas in which it can make laws. The first meeting of the new Parliament took place on
12 May 1999.
History
Before the
Act of Union 1707 that merged the
Kingdom of Scotland with
Kingdom of England (to form the
Kingdom of Great Britain), Scotland had an
independent parliament with a
legislature known as the
Three Estates. Initial Scottish proposals in the negotiation over the Union suggested a devolved Parliament be retained in Scotland, but this wasn't accepted by the
English negotiators.
For the next three hundred years, Scotland was directly governed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, at
Westminster, and the lack of a Scottish Parliament remained an important element in
Scottish national identity. Suggestions for a 'devolved' Parliament were made before 1914, but were shelved due to the outbreak of the
First World War.
During this time, the discovery of
oil in the
North Sea and the following "
It's Scotland's oil" campaign of the
Scottish National Party (SNP) resulted in rising support for Scottish independence, as well as the SNP. The party argued that the revenues from the oil were not benefiting Scotland as much as they should be.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, demands for a Scottish Parliament grew, in part because the government of the United Kingdom was controlled by the
Conservative Party, while Scotland itself elected very few
Tory MPs.
Devolution became part of the platform of the Labour Party which, in May 1997, took power under
Tony Blair. An election was held on
6 May 1999, and on
1 July of that year power was transferred from Westminster to the new Parliament.
Building
Since
September 2004 the official home of the Scottish Parliament has been a new
Scottish Parliament Building, in the Holyrood area of Edinburgh. Designed by
Catalan architect
Enric Miralles, some of the principal features of the complex include leaf-shaped buildings, a grass-roofed branch merging into adjacent parkland and
gabion walls formed from the stones of previous buildings. Throughout the building there are many repeated motifs, such as shapes based on
Raeburn's
Skating Minister.
Crow-stepped gables and the upturned boat skylights of the Garden Lobby, complete the unique architecture.
Queen Elizabeth II opened the new building on
9 October 2004.
Whilst the building was being constructed, the Parliament's temporary home was the
General Assembly Hall of the
Church of Scotland on the
Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Official photographs and TV interviews were held in the courtyard adjoining the Parliament, which is part of the
School of Divinity of the
University of Edinburgh. This building was vacated twice to allow for the meeting of the
Church's General Assembly. In May 2000, the Parliament was temporarily relocated to the former
Strathclyde Regional Council debating chamber in Glasgow, and to the
University of Aberdeen in May 2002.
In March 2006, one of the Holyrood building's roof beams slipped out of its support and was left dangling above the
Conservative back benches during a debate. The debating chamber was subsequently closed, and MSPs moved to
The Hub for one week, while inspections were carried out. During repairs, all chamber business was conducted in the Parliament's committee room two.
Officials
After each election to the Scottish Parliament, at the beginning of each parliamentary session, Parliament elects one MSP to serve as
Presiding Officer, the equivalent of the
speaker (currently
Alex Fergusson MSP), and two MSPs to serve as deputies (currently
Trish Godman MSP and
Alasdair Morgan MSP). The Presiding Officer and deputies are elected by a
secret ballot of the 129 MSPs, which is the only secret ballot conducted in the Scottish Parliament. Principally, the role of the Presiding Officer is to chair chamber proceedings and the
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. When chairing meetings of the Parliament, the Presiding Officer and his deputies must be politically impartial.
As a member of the
Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, the Presiding Officer is responsible for ensuring that the Parliament functions effectively and has the staff, property and resources it requires to operate. Convening the Parliamentary Bureau, which allocates time and sets the work agenda in the chamber, is another of the roles of the Presiding Officer. Under the Standing Orders of the Parliament the Bureau consists of the Presiding Officer and one representative from each political parties with five or more seats in the Parliament. Amongst the duties of the Bureau are to agree the timetable of business in the chamber, establish the number, remit and membership of parliamentary committees and regulate the passage of legislation (bills) through the Parliament. The Presiding Officer also represents the Scottish Parliament at home and abroad in an official capacity. Presented to the Scottish Parliament by the Queen upon its official opening in July 1999, the mace is displayed in a glass case suspended from the lid. At the beginning of each sitting in the chamber, the lid of the case is rotated so that the mace is above the glass, to symbolise that a full meeting of the Parliament is taking place. Full plenary meetings in the debating chamber usually take place on Wednesday afternoons from 2pm to 6pm and on Thursday from 9.15am to 6pm. and on the
BBC's parliamentary channel
BBC Parliament. Proceedings are also recorded, in text form, in print and online in the
Official Report, which is the substantially verbatim transcript of parliamentary debates.
"Time for Reflection" is normally the first item of business on Wednesdays. A speaker addresses the meeting for up to four minutes to share their perspectives on issues of
faith. This contrasts with the formal style of "Prayers", which is the first item of business in meetings of the
House of Commons. Speakers are drawn from
different faith groups across Scotland. Invitations to address Parliament in this manner are determined by the Presiding Officer on the advice of the parliamentary bureau. Different faith groups can make direct representations to the Presiding Officer in nominating speakers. The pattern of speakers represents the balance of religious beliefs in Scotland according to the
Scottish census. Members may call each other directly by name, rather than by constituency or cabinet position, unlike the House of Commons remarks are not directed to the Presiding Officer, and hand clapping is allowed in the chamber. Speeches to the chamber are normally delivered in
English, but members may use
Scots,
Gaelic, or any other language with the agreement of the Presiding Officer. The Scottish Parliament has conducted debates in the Gaelic language.
Each sitting day, normally at 5pm, MSPs decide on all the
motions and amendments that have been moved that day; this is known as "Decision Time", and is heralded by the sounding of the division bell, which is heard throughout the Parliamentary campus and alerts MSPs who are not in the chamber to return and vote. MSPs don't tend to vote against such instructions, since those who do so are unlikely to reach higher political ranks in their parties. Errant members can be deselected as official party candidates during future elections, and, in serious cases, may be expelled from their parties outright. Thus, as with many Parliaments, the independence of Members of the Scottish Parliament tends to be extremely low, and "backbench rebellions" by members discontent with their party's policies are rare. In some circumstances, however, parties announce "free votes", allowing Members to vote as they please. This is done on
moral issues.
Immediately after Decision Time a "Members Debate" is held, which lasts for 45 minutes. and partly to compensate for the fact that there's no revising chamber. The principal role of committees in the Scottish Parliament is to conduct inquiries, scrutinise legislation and hold the government to account. Committee meetings take place in the Parliament's committee rooms all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning when Parliament is sitting. Committees can also meet at other locations throughout Scotland.
Committees comprise a small number of MSPs, with membership reflecting the balance of parties across Parliament. Private Bill Committees have been set up to consider legislation on issues such as the development of the
Edinburgh Tram Network, the
Glasgow Airport Rail Link, the
Airdrie-Bathgate Rail Link and extensions to the
National Gallery of Scotland.
Legislative functions
Constitution and powers
The Scotland Act 1998, which was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom and given
Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II on
19 November 1998, governs the functions and role of the Scottish Parliament and delimits its legislative competence. For the purposes of
parliamentary sovereignty, the Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster continues to constitute the supreme legislature of Scotland, but under the terms of the Scotland Act, Westminster agreed to devolve some of its responsibilities over the domestic policy of Scotland to a new directly elected Scottish Parliament. The Scotland Act enabled the Scottish Parliament to pass
primary legislation on these issues. A degree of domestic authority, and all
foreign policy, remains at present with the UK Parliament in Westminster. Another of the roles of the Parliament is to hold the Scottish Government to account.
The specific devolved matters are all subjects which are not explicitly stated in Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act as
reserved matters. All matters that are not specifically reserved are automatically devolved to the Scottish Parliament. The Parliament is able to debate any issue (including those reserved to Westminster) but is unable to make laws on issues that are outside its legislative competence.
Bills
As the Scottish Parliament is able to make laws on the areas constitutionally devolved to it, the legislative process begins with
bills (draft laws) which are presented to Parliament.
Bills can be introduced to Parliament in a number of ways; the Scottish Government can introduce new laws or amendments to existing laws as a bill; a committee of the Parliament can present a bill in one of the areas under its remit; a member of the Scottish Parliament can introduce a bill as a private member; or a
private bill can be submitted to Parliament by an outside proposer.
Stage 1 is the first, or introductory stage of the bill, where the minister or member in charge of the bill will formally introduce it to Parliament together with its accompanying documents - Explanatory Notes, a Policy Memorandum setting out the policy underlying the bill, and a Financial Memorandum setting out the costs and savings associated with it.
Stage 3 is the final stage of the bill and is considered at a meeting of the whole Parliament. This stage comprises two parts - consideration of amendments to the bill as a general debate, and a final vote on the bill. Opposition members can table "wrecking amendments" to the bill, designed to thwart further progress and take up parliamentary time, in order to cause the bill to fall without a final vote being taken. After a general debate on the final form of the bill, members proceed to vote at Decision Time on whether they agree to the general principles of the final bill. Acts of the Scottish Parliament don't begin with a conventional
enacting formula. Instead they begin with a phrase that reads: "The Bill for this Act of the Scottish Parliament was passed by the Parliament on [Date] and received Royal Assent on [Date]".
Scrutiny of government
The party or parties that hold the majority of seats in the Parliament forms the Scottish Government. In contrast to many other parliamentary systems, Parliament elects a
First Minister from a number of candidates at the beginning of each parliamentary term (after a
general election). Any member can put their name forward to be First Minister, and a vote is taken by all members of Parliament. Normally the leader of the largest party is returned as First Minister, and head of the Scottish Government. Junior ministers, who don't attend cabinet, are also appointed to assist Scottish ministers in their departments. Most ministers and their juniors are drawn from amongst the elected MSPs, with the exception of Scotland's Chief Law Officers: the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General. The date of the poll may be varied by up to one month either way by the Queen on the proposal of the Presiding Officer. the Presiding Officer proposes a date for an extraordinary general election and the Parliament is dissolved by the Queen by
royal proclamation. Extraordinary general elections are in addition to ordinary general elections, unless held less than six months before the due date of an ordinary general election, in which case they supplant it. The following ordinary election reverts to the first Thursday in May, a multiple of four years after 1999 (for example, 5 May 2011, 7 May 2015, etc).
Several procedures enable the Scottish Parliament to scrutinise the government. The First Minister or members of his cabinet can deliver statements to Parliament upon which MSPs are invited to question them. For example, at the beginning of each parliamentary year, the First Minister delivers a statement to the chamber setting out the government's legislative programme for the forthcoming year. After the statement has been delivered, the leaders of the opposition parties and other MSPs question the First Minister on issues related to the substance of the statement.
Parliamentary time is also set aside for question periods in the debating chamber. A "General Question Time" takes place on a Thursday between 11.30am and 12pm where members can direct questions to any member of the Scottish Government. The system is a form of the
additional member method of
proportional representation (PR), and is better known as such in the United Kingdom. However, there are additional member systems, elsewhere in the world, which are not designed to produce proportional representation.
Of the 129 MSPs, 73 are elected to represent
first past the post constituencies and are known as "Constituency MSPs". Given the geographical distribution of
population in Scotland, this results in constituencies of a smaller area in the
Central Lowlands, where the bulk of Scotland's population live, and much larger constituency areas in the north and west of the country, which have a low population density. The island archipelagos of Orkney, Shetland and the
Western Isles comprise a much smaller number of electors, due to their disparate population and distance from the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Each region returns seven additional member MSPs. The eight regions are:
Highlands and Islands;
North East Scotland;
Mid Scotland and Fife;
West of Scotland;
Glasgow;
Central Scotland;
South of Scotland; and
Lothians. Each political party draws up a list of candidates standing in each electoral region. The total number of seats in the Parliament are allocated to parties proportionally to the number of votes the party received in the second vote of the ballot, calculated by dividing the number of "list" votes cast for a party by the a number calculated from the number of constituency seats won in that region, plus the number of already-allocated "list" seats won in that region, plus one (to prevent
division by zero), and the party with the largest number of votes remaining is allocated the first "list" seat. This is repeated
iteratively until all available "list" seats are allocated.
As in the House of Commons, a number of qualifications apply to being an MSP. Such qualifications were introduced under the
House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 and the
British Nationality Act 1981. Specifically, members must be over the age of 18 and must be a
citizen of the United Kingdom, the
Republic of Ireland, one of the countries in the
Commonwealth of Nations or a citizen of a
British overseas territory. Members of the police and the armed forces are disqualified from sitting in the Scottish Parliament as elected MSPs, and similarly, civil servants and members of foreign legislatures are disqualified. || 100 || +2.5 || 73 || || 2,042,089 || 100 || || 56 || || 129 || || 100.0
|}
Overall turnout - 51.8% The
Scottish Labour Party gained 46 seats, a reduction of 4 seats from 2003. The Independent MSPs,
Brian Monteith and
Dennis Canavan, both retired prior to the election.
The Conservatives were returned with 17 seats after the election, but the Conservative MSP
Alex Fergusson, member for the constituency of
Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, was voted in as
Presiding Officer on
May 14,
2007. Given the strict political impartiality required for the role, the Presiding Officer accepts voluntary suspension from his or her party for the duration of their period in office. This led to the Conservative representation in Parliament being reduced to 16 members.
As a result of the proportional representation system used to elect Members, no one party gained an overall majority of seats in the Parliament. The SNP emerged as the largest party in the Parliament, one seat ahead of Labour, but were unable to negotiate a
coalition deal with any other of the parties and consequently govern as a
minority administration, with support from the 2 members of the Scottish Green Party. The leader of the SNP,
Alex Salmond was elected
First Minister of Scotland, in a vote in the Scottish Parliament on
May 16 2007 by 49 votes to 46 (the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Margo MacDonald abstaining in that vote).
Criticism
The death, in office, of
Donald Dewar, Scotland's first First Minister, and the resignation, brought on by an
office expenses scandal, of his successor
Henry McLeish, generated controversy in the first years of the Parliament.
Arguments that it'll lead to Scottish independence
Popular arguments against the Parliament before the
UK general election of 1997, levelled by the Conservative Party, were that the Parliament would create a "slippery slope" to
Scottish independence, and provide the pro-independence Scottish National Party with a route to power.
John Major, the Tory prime minister before May 1997, famously claimed the Parliament would end "1000 years of
British history", although the
Acts of Union uniting the two countries were still less than 300 years old at the time. The equally
pro-Union Labour Party met these criticisms by claiming that devolution would fatally undermine the SNP, and remedy the long-felt desire of Scots for a measure of
self-government.
English concerns
A further procedural consequence created by the establishment of the Scottish Parliament is that Scottish MPs sitting in the
British House of Commons are still able to vote on domestic legislation that applies only to England, Wales and Northern Ireland - whilst English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Westminster MPs are unable to vote on the domestic legislation of the Scottish Parliament. This anomaly is known as the
West Lothian Question and has led to criticism.
Costs
The escalating costs of the construction of the new Parliament building led to widespread criticism. Miralles' building was in fact costed at £109 million, prior to major increases in space.
The cost overruns of the Scottish Parliament Building further dented confidence in public opinion in the ability of the
public sector to handle major infrastructure and building projects. As a result, the final £431m cost of the Holyrood building can be compared with other cost overruns in projects such as
Portcullis House — a new parliamentary office block in Westminster - built for use by 200 MPs, which cost £250 million, including £100 million spent on bronze cladding, £250m for the redevelopment of the German
Reichstag, This was portrayed as clearing Donald Dewar of any blame.
The cost of the building remains more controversial than any of the legislation so far passed by the Parliament.
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