---

John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD): I listened with great interest to the introduction to
 
4 May 2004 : Column 1238
 
this short debate given by the hon. Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood). He made a full and eloquent speech, and I waited for him to explain his amendment. I waited quite a long time, and I am not entirely certain—it must be due to my powers of comprehension rather than his eloquence—that I fully understand what he seeks to achieve. As I understand it, the amendment would simply delay the Bill's provisions until 2006.

Mr. Hood: The hon. Gentleman has been unkind to himself; he has understood exactly what the amendment would do.

John Thurso: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for confirming that I have read the papers correctly. I shall not disappoint Labour Members, because I have to say that I disagree fundamentally with his proposition. Like the right hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), I believe that this is an important matter that goes to the heart of how the people of Scotland are represented. As he rightly says, it is our constituents who will benefit—or suffer—from whatever we choose to do this afternoon.

5.15 pm

However, I differ from the right hon. Gentleman in that I believe that this modest Bill is highly desirable. It will retain the status quo and will not make any great changes to the voting system. It contains nothing that was not foreseen during the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. All that will happen is that the status quo of 129 MSPs will be preserved, which was the will of all those who spoke in the Scottish Parliament when the issue was debated.

Mr. Wilson: On balance, would the hon. Gentleman prefer the status quo or a variant of the status quo based on contiguous boundaries?

John Thurso: I would have liked to have had time to deal with the matter properly in this Parliament before the next general election. Given that the Government did not consider the matter early enough in this Parliament, we are left with a choice between contiguous boundaries at some point in the future—which would not happen under the present legislation—or the chance to preserve the status quo. The best option is to preserve the status quo and to seek to have an input into the commission that the Secretary of State has set up. We will have to see what conclusions the commission reaches after input from all interested parties on the issues of coterminosity and the best voting system for the Scottish Parliament.

Pete Wishart: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the amendments would significantly change the membership of the Scottish Parliament and the way in which it is constructed? They would do away with most of the additional Members and mean that two Members would be elected from most constituencies. We do not know what we will have by the end of the debate, because these amendments could change the face of the Scottish Parliament fundamentally.

John Thurso: If the amendments were successful, my party's position on Third Reading might well change.
 
4 May 2004 : Column 1239
 
However, at this point and given the likelihood that the Bill will emerge little changed, my party will support the Bill.

The Bill—including clause 1—would not have any impact on the voting system. I hope that it is not uncharitable to point out that one effect of new clause 1 would be to delay the implementation of the changes that the Boundary Commission recommended for elections to this House. That might be one aim of certain Labour Members.My party sees no reason for delay and we wish the Government's proposals to be enacted. We want the status quo at Holyrood to be preserved, which is the settled will of Scotland, and we want the commission to do its work as soon as possible. We will provide our input into that process and await the results.

Mr. Davidson: The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) mentioned the commission and how it will be conducted, as well as the issue of timing. The amendment is all about timing. When the result of the first consultation became known—other hon. Members have given their opinions on its validity—part of the fix was a commission at some vague and unspecified time in the future. That was then moved forward and promises were made that the commission would be set up quickly, that it would report quickly and that its recommendations would be implemented quickly.

However, if the commission is to be set up almost immediately and if it works hard and produces a report that may be implemented—as we have been told—before 2007, why are we making changes to the system now? We might have to change it again before 2007. Either the suggestion that the commission will report and that its recommendations will be enacted by that time has been put forward when there is no guarantee of success, or we are duplicating work that will be done later on in any case. In such circumstances, clarity from the Government about their intentions is essential.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mrs. Anne McGuire): I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. By way of introduction, I will restate the two commitments that underpin the Bill from the Government's point of view. We are committed to reducing the number of Westminster MPs to 59, as a result of the boundary commission proposals. We are also committed to maintaining 129 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. Those are the twin pillars that support the Bill.

I hope that colleagues will accept that we did not approach those issues in some Machiavellian way but that we actually consulted the Scottish people through the organisations that represent them. I put that on record so that we do not read in Hansard that somehow real people out there were not consulted. In total, there were 237 responses to the consultation; of those, 21 were from councils, including COSLA—the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. There were responses from the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Executive, Scottish Parliament groups, 27 individual MSPs and so on.
 
4 May 2004 : Column 1240
 

Colleagues who have studied the history of the consultation know that there were responses both from civic and political Scotland before the Government made up their mind to maintain 129 MSPs.

Mr. Hood: My hon. Friend entertained us at Second Reading with the impressive list to which she has just been referring, but can she tell us who responded to the first consultation—the process that she had to extend for six months?

Mrs. McGuire: I am glad that my hon. Friend raises the alleged extension of the consultation process. I assure the Committee that the consultation process was not extended; it ran from December 2001 to the end of March 2002—exactly as planned and announced. It is regrettable that we seem to be talking about the claim that the process was extended because in fact it never was.

Mr. Lazarowicz: Can my hon. Friend inform the Committee whether there was a great upsurge of opinion in the consultation to support the position set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood)?

Mrs. McGuire: It is fair to say that some people supported the position taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale. I should like to put on record the fact that my hon. Friend has been entirely consistent. His response to the consultation stated that he thought there should be a reduction in the number of MSPs and that the Scotland Act 1998 should be enacted in its entirety regardless of any other factor. He has been wholly consistent in his approach and for that I congratulate him.

Mrs. Helen Liddell (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab): I may have missed this point when my hon. Friend was going through her list of people who had replied to the consultation, so can she tell us how many Members of this House replied and how many were opposed to the maintenance of 129 MSPs?

Mrs. McGuire: My right hon. Friend is right to suggest that some Members who responded to the consultation asked for the Scotland Act to be enacted in its entirety, but the overwhelming majority of those MPs who responded wanted the Scottish Parliament to maintain the position at 129 MSPs.

Anne Picking (East Lothian) (Lab): Does my hon. Friend agree that, as I have said many times, there are consultations and there are meaningful consultations? Some of us said vociferously that the consultation should consider the whole voting system, that the voting system and the Act should not be considered in isolation and that we should deal with the bigger picture. We now see the folly of our ways, as we seek to justify what we are trying to ramrod through today, even though it is not based on a meaningful consultation.

Mrs. McGuire: I fully appreciate that some colleagues are struggling with this, but we cannot avoid the fact that a consultation exercise was held on preserving the number of MSPs. I accept that some of my hon. Friends
 
4 May 2004 : Column 1241
 
think that the consultation should have been wider, but it took place within the remit and context laid down by my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Mrs. Liddell) at the time, and we have the results of that consultation process.

---