Scottish Parliament
From Freepedia
The Scottish Parliament (Pàrlamaid na h-Alba in Gaelic, Scots Pairlament in Scots) is the national unicameral legislature of Scotland. The original Parliament of Scotland (or 'Estates of Scotland') was adjourned in 1707 following the Act of Union and merged with the Parliament of England to form the Parliament of Great Britain. The current Parliament was established by the Scotland Act 1998. The first meeting of the new Parliament as a devolved legislature was on 12 May 1999.
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Today's Parliament
Constitution and powers
Parliament was reconstituted as a body that deals with matters that have been devolved to it by the UK Parliament. The Scottish Parliament has the power to pass laws and has limited tax-varying capability. Another of its jobs is to hold the Scottish Executive to account. The "devolved matters" over which it has responsibility include education, health, agriculture, and justice. A degree of domestic authority, and all foreign policy, remains with the UK Parliament in Westminster.
The public take part in Parliament in two ways that are not the case at Westminster: a public petitioning system, and Cross Party Groups on policy topics which the interested public join and attend meetings of alongside MSPs.
Current members
There are currently 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). The current state of the parties is: (1999 seat totals are in italics):
| Scottish Labour Party: 50 - was 56 | |
| Scottish National Party: 26 - was 35 | |
| Scottish Conservative and Unionist: 18 - was 18 | |
| Scottish Liberal Democrats: 17 - was 17 | |
| Scottish Green Party: 7 - was 1 | |
| Scottish Socialist Party: 6 - was 1 | |
| Independents: 4 - was 1 | |
| Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party: 1 - was 0 | |
| Vacancies: - |
The Independent MSPs are Dennis Canavan (Falkirk West), Margo MacDonald (Lothians), Dr. Jean Turner (Strathkelvin and Bearsden), and Campbell Martin (West of Scotland). These Independent MSPs, plus the sole representative of the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party, form a party group in the Parliament and so are entitled to propose items of debate for their few debating slots and to sit on the Parliamentary Bureau, which selects business and is made up of the party whips plus the Presiding Officer.
Voting system
The elections for the Scottish Parliament were the first in the UK to use the Additional Member System (AMS), which is a method of proportional representation (although various forms of PR had already been used in EU Parliamentary elections, and in Northern Ireland for local councils and the Assembly).
Of the 129 MSPs, 73 are elected to represent First Past the Post constituencies, whilst the remaining 56 are elected by AMS. These 56 are elected in eight different electoral regions which correspond to the former European Parliament constituencies in Scotland, with each returning 7 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.
One MSP is elected by the other MSPs to be Presiding Officer, a position similar to that of the Speaker of the House in the UK Parliament. The current Presiding Officer is George Reid.
The Parliament also elects a First Minister, who heads the Scottish Executive. In theory the Parliament also elects the members of the Executive, but in practice it is the First Minister who chooses them. The current First Minister is Jack McConnell.
Building
Since September 2004 the official home of the Scottish Parliament has been a new Scottish Parliament Building at Holyrood designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles with a distinctive roof in the shape of an upturned boat. The Queen 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 in Edinburgh. Official photographs and TV interviews were often held in the courtyard adjoining the Parliament, which is part of the School of Divinity at Edinburgh University. At Holyrood, such interviews take place in the Garden Lobby, which seems to have become the place where the real political business takes place.
History
Image:Scottish Parliament.jpg Prior to the 1707 Act of Union, Scotland was an independent nation which had the Parliament of Scotland as its legislative body. Initial Scottish proposals in the negotiation over the Union suggested a devolved Parliament be retained in Scotland but this was not accepted by the English negotiators.
For the next three hundred years the Scottish Parliament remained an important element in Scottish national identity, and suggestions for a 'devolved' parliament were made before 1911. The triggering event that caused an increase in Scottish nationalism was the discovery of oil in the North Sea in the late 1960s. Scottish nationalists began to argue that the funds from this oil were not benefiting Scotland as much as they should.
The 1979 Scotland referendum to establish a devolved Scottish Parliament failed. Although a slim majority of voters voted for the Parliament, the referendum failed to reach the 40% of the total electorate threshold deemed necessary to pass the referendum. 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 members of Parliament. Devolution became part of the platform of the Labour Party and in May 1997, the Labour Party under Tony Blair took power.
In September 1997 a referendum of the Scottish electorate secured a large majority in favour of the establishment of a new devolved Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. An election was held in May 1999, and power was transferred from Westminster on 1 July 1999 to the new Parliament in its temporary home in the General Assembly Hall on the Royal Mile.
Debate over historical connection
At the first meeting of the Parliament in July 1999, the "mother of Parliament" Winnie Ewing, sitting by virtue of being the oldest MSP at the time, declared that the Scottish Parliament, which had been adjourned in 1707, was now reconvened, thus explicitly proclaiming a connection with the previous body. In a strictly legal sense this was incorrect, as the Parliament of 1999 was a new creation through an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament, but the Scottish Parliament has tried to adapt several of the traditions of the Parliament of Scotland including the 'Riding of Parliament' ceremony.
Criticism
The Parliament has been criticised for various reasons, both pragmatic and ideological. Since 1999, the death in office of Donald Dewar, Scotland's first First Minister, and the resignation brought on by a business conflict of interest of his successor Henry McLeish, have meant that the first years of the parliament have not been easy. The escalating costs of the construction of the new parliament building have led to widespread criticism. Popular arguments against the parliament before the UK general election of 1997, levelled mainly 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 political entity of Great Britain was still less than 300 years old at the time. The equally pro-Union Scottish 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.
Perhaps the main criticism of the parliament as it enters its second term is that it has not changed Scotland enough. For many the entire point of devolution was that things could be done differently. Expectations that Scottish government would dramatically change as a new, non-confrontational, politics took hold in Holyrood have been disappointed, but were arguably based on naïve perceptions of the nature of politics. Adversarial politics is still commonplace after devolution, and frequently overshadow events at Holyrood. Moreover, the electorate has twice chosen a moderate centre-left (some would claim centre-right) executive, in voting predominantly for the Labour Party. The acid test in judging the success or failure of the parliament may not be to measure whether it is well loved by Scots, but whether, given the opportunity, they would vote to abolish it. Polling continues to show that they would overwhelmingly vote to keep it. Regardless, the Scottish Parliament has proved able to act quickly to deal with longstanding issues that repeatedly escaped action at Westminster. Hunting with dogs was banned (2002) with hardly any of the controversy seen in England and Wales, 'feudal' land tenure was abolished (2000) and a far more generous subsidy for old age care was implemented (2002) than that seen south of the border.
Miralles' new Scottish Parliament building opened for business on the 7 September 2004, three years late. The estimated final cost was £431 million. The White Paper in 1997 estimated that a new building would have a net construction cost of £40 million, although this based on the presumption that the old Royal High School would be used, as had long been assumed. After the devolution referendum it was quickly announced that the high school, which is smaller than many British city council chambers, was entirely inadequate for the parliament, and negotiations began for a new building on a new site. This led critical media and politicians to claim the final building was "ten times over budget". Miralles' building was in fact costed at £109 million, prior to major increases in space. £431 million for a national parliament might still be argued to be within reason when compared to Portcullis House - a new parliamentary office block in Westminster - built for use by 200 MPs, which cost £250 million however much of the cost of this came from the alterations needed to Westminster undeground station and over £100 million was spent on bronze bomb cladding of the building. Lord Fraser's Inquiry reported on the 15 September 2004 and identified the choice of the construction management procurement route as the main factor in the fourfold increase in estimated costs establishing that a £270 million value building ended up costing £431, an identifiable waste of £181 million. 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.
See also
- Parliament of Scotland
- Lord High Commissioner to the Parliament of Scotland
- Politics of Scotland
- Members of the Scottish Parliament
- Scotland referendum, 1997
- Scottish Parliamentary Election 1999
- Scottish Parliamentary Election 2003
- Secretary of State for Scotland
- Sewel motion
- UK topics
External links
- Home page of the Scottish Parliament
- The Scottish Parliament ( Gàidhlig version )
- The Scottish Parliament (Scots version)
- Scotland Act 1998
- The Scottish Parliament Project
- Holyrood Inquiry Homepage
Categories: Politics in Edinburgh | Government of Scotland | Politics of Scotland | Legislatures of subnational entities
