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Mr. Donohoe: Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the biggest problem in Scottish politics today is the list system? The list mainly consists of members of his party.
Pete Wishart: The list system may be the biggest problem in Scottish politics for the hon. Gentleman, but it certainly is not for me. There are much more important issues to address, and I wish that he would sometimes recognise that.
List Members have two key functions. One is to provide the proportionality required by the Scotland Act 1998. The second function, however, at which they seem to be effective, is to wind up Labour Members. They perform that task spectacularly, and Labour Members fall for it every time. I have a list Conservative Member in my constituency, who has set up an office in my constituency and sniffs around for any scrap of attention, but we deal with him effectively. He has stood previously against me and my SNP colleague, John Swinney, and we have beaten him in successive elections. That is no problem, but I can understand why it is a problem for Labour Members, because most of them have run their constituencies like personal fiefdoms. When an energetic, enthusiastic list Member appears and tries to do things, it is a real challenge to them. If we cannot rise above the challenge of energetic and enthusiastic list Members, perhaps we do not deserve a place in this House at all.
Mr. Hood: Does the hon. Gentleman think it right that a Conservative Member, or a member of any political party who has not been elected in his constituency by the will of the people, is allowed to spend taxpayers' money on funding offices to work against an elected person?
Pete Wishart: That is the very system for which the hon. Gentleman voted in the Scotland Act. It is a consequence of the decision that you took, and you must accept it. He may not have voted for it
personally—[Interruption.] I am told from a sedentary position that he did. You voted for it, and you must accept the consequences.
Mr. Hood: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. First, let me make it clear that I never voted for anything. Secondly, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is giving way a second time.
Pete Wishart: I have looked at the amendments suggested by the Scottish Affairs Committee, which effectively propose the death knell of proportionality for the Scottish Parliament. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I hear hon. Members say, "Hear, hear." I know that that is their intention and their agenda. What I do not understand about the Scottish Affairs Committee report, which I have examined carefully, is that the great and the good came down to give evidence—all the political parties, all the local authorities, the whole of civil society in Scotland—but it is as if the Committee made up a conclusion different from the evidence that it took. Most of its conclusions fly in the face of the evidence that it was given. I suggest respectfully to members of the Scottish Affairs Committee that instead of getting the great and the good down from Scotland to give them evidence for an agenda on which they had already made up their mind, they should have just had the right hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) as the sole witness. Their conclusions would then probably have been much more credible.
I have studied the evidence given to the Committee, and nowhere does any witness come forward and say, "I think that the solution to Scotland's electoral problems is to have two-Member constituencies." None of them said that, and some of them would probably laugh in the face of anyone who suggested it to them. I am intrigued as to whether any of the later contributors to this debate will explain how it will work. We have heard Labour Members' hostility to PR. They loathe it and think that it is an absurd system—that is their point of view. I presume that in two-Member constituencies the winner and the runner-up will be elected to the Scottish Parliament. What a ridiculous way to elect a Parliament—regardless of the fact that my party would do quite well under such a system.
Mr. Hood: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that it would be better if the winner and the candidate who came last were elected, as is the case under the list system at present?
Pete Wishart: I find the arrangement suggested by the Scottish Affairs Committee bizarre. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and explain how it works. It is like turning up to play the Scottish cup final, picking up the ball and deciding not to have a competition—both teams share the cup. It is a bizarre sort of first-past-the-post-plus.
Most of the witnesses to the Scottish Affairs Committee have little to say about coterminosity. Yes, most of them would like to see it happen, but it did not seem to be the defining issue for most of them, although the Scottish Affairs Committee concluded that it was the defining issue in Scottish politics. The public do not care
a whit about coterminosity. It is not on their agenda at all. When I am out and about in Blairgowrie, members of the public do not come up to me to tell me how concerned they are about coterminosity. I have had a series of surgeries in the past few weeks throughout my North Tayside constituency, and I have not had anxious constituents coming to my surgery saying that they cannot sleep at night because the constituency boundaries of their MP and their MSP may be different.
David Cairns (Greenock and Inverclyde) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Pete Wishart: I am sorry, but I have no more time. I have a big speech to make.
Yes, this is an issue for political parities, and it will present challenges for them. There are solutions, however. The Scottish National party has already framed solutions, and I am sure that with its resources and organisational ability, the Scottish Labour party can arrive at a solution, too, and I suspect that it will do so. People just do not care about this issue, however. For example, people in Pitlochry know that I am their MP—some of them might think that I am quite effective. People in Brechin, which is 50 miles away, also know that I am their Member of Parliament. It comes as a great surprise and shock to people in Brechin, however, to discover that I am the MP for Pitlochry, and people in Pitlochry are equally surprised to find that I am the MP for distant and remote Brechin. They could not care less, however, as long as they know who their MP is, know that their MP is effective, and know how he can be contacted. That is what concerns them most.
I was impressed by the Secretary of State's evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee, because he concluded that that was also true in city centres. People in city centres do not know where one boundary ends and the other begins—those were his words, and he is right. He gave a very good example: somebody could move through his Edinburgh, Central constituency and arrive at George square believing that they were in his constituency, but they would be in the constituency of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz). Nobody knows where constituency boundaries are. They are boundaries that exist in the heads of politicians. The public could not care less.
Mr. Andrew Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Pete Wishart: No, I am sorry. I have only a few minutes.
What the Scottish Affairs Committee should have been doing was looking at the powers of the Scottish Parliament. As I said earlier, the Scottish Parliament is facing many severe challenges. It should be considering the sluggish economic growth in Scotland and the massive issues with which we must wrestle. What does it spend time doing? It has looked at the issue of co-terminosity, taken all the evidence, rejected the evidence that it received, and come to its own conclusions. I suggest respectfully that it should have been doing something more important. We look forward to the Secretary of State's commission, but let us hope that it will not just be a political fix to settle the difficulties in the Labour party between Westminster Members and Edinburgh Members.
7.27 pm
Mr. Brian H. Donohoe (Cunninghame, South) (Lab): I intend to be brief to allow more of my colleagues to speak in the debate.
My first regret is that in the euphoria of the election campaign and afterwards in 1997, when the Bill that became the Scotland Act 1998 came to the House, I and some of my colleagues did not pay more attention to some of its content. If we had understood that we were going to sleepwalk into a situation in which we would be crawled all over by list Members, we would have looked at the Bill in a very different way. Tonight, we have the first stage of the opportunity to try to address that. On the basis of what the Secretary of State said in his statement, that process will be allowed to start.
I commend to the House the Select Committee's report, as I believe, and have done for some considerable time, that the main problem in Scotland—
Mr. Salmond: The hon. Gentleman may recall that I am very much in favour of proportional representation, and I have never thought that a regional list was a particularly good system. In relation to his solution, however, if he is concerned about list Members crawling all over this constituency, how much more would the person who came second want to crawl all over his constituency?
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