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John Thurso: The hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Donohoe) is a serious man and he has proposed a serious amendment, which merits sound argument. It is certainly worthy of debate. I should congratulate him in passing because the last time that I saw him outside this place he was awarded the "Keeper of the Quaich" medal for his outstanding service to the whisky industry—a well merited award, if ever there was one.

The effects of the amendment are principally twofold. The primary effect would be to create coterminous boundaries, which is a good thing. No one can argue against them; they clearly make for a much easier life. However, we should not become over-concerned about what they do. The hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) made much of the fact that this is a problem of the Government's own making. The original Bill had the problem in it from day one, because it was structured with regard to the differing boundary commission reviews of the Scottish Parliament and Westminster. That meant that, approximately every eight years and for a period of at
 
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least two years between the decision of the two boundary commissions, there would be non-coterminous boundaries. That was always in the Bill, so the problem of non-coterminosity is nothing new.

John Robertson: The hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong, but were not the building blocks of the Bill based around coterminous constituencies? What does he say about the fact that we are dismantling those building blocks and going off at a tangent somewhere else?

John Thurso: I do not believe that we are dismantling the building blocks. Rather, the Bill addresses a provisional position to get from where we are to where we want to be. My point is that if the current Bill were left untouched and the status quo accepted exactly as envisaged under the 1998 Act, because of the different boundary reviews between the two Parliaments, there would be repeated periods of non-coterminosity from time to time.

I want to leave aside the question of coterminosity and move on to the second effect of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South, which is far more important and deserves to be considered seriously. That is the suggestion that each of the current Westminster seats in Scotland should be divided into two, with the remaining requirement for 11 Members being made up from two regions. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that that drives a coach and horses through proportionality. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."]

I want to make it clear that I have the greatest respect for Labour Members who want a first-past-the-post system and face considerable difficulties in introducing it through this short Bill. Returning to first past the post is obviously what they seek. As I said, I respect that; they have been quite open about it. My objective—I shall expand on it when we debate the commission—is a fair proportional system. My hon. Friends and I have always believed that the single transferable vote system provides the answer.

Mr. Foulkes: The hon. Gentleman and certainly Lord Steel and other Liberals agree with us that the current system for electing the Scottish Parliament is crazy. Was not one of the principal architects of that system Canon Kenyan Wright? Is it not interesting that he has now come out in his true political colours as a liberal, so are the Liberals not to blame for this mess and dog's breakfast?

John Thurso: Much as I respect the right hon. Gentleman, he is quite wrong. The convention produced a number of principles and a practical way of delivering them. Key among those principles was that of proportionality. The House and the Government—of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a member at the time—quite properly enacted those principles and the result was the Scotland Act 1998.

Mrs. Irene Adams (Paisley, North) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman is right that proportionality was one of the
 
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key principles of the convention, but one of its other key principles was to have a gender-balanced Parliament. Why did the Liberals not keep their word on that?

John Thurso: I believe that proportionality in the Scottish Parliament is considerably better than it is here, so we are advancing in the right direction.

Mr. Salmond: Can we clear up the point about who devised the detail of the electoral system? Was it Canon Kenyan Wright or someone else? Was it the Labour party or another party? Who was it in the convention who came up with the magnificent idea of having two votes, even in a list system?

John Thurso: I am afraid that I am unable to answer the hon. Gentleman's question. We all accepted what the convention put forward when we debated the issues in 1998. The Bill was before the two Houses, but I must confess that I was in the other place at the time and I am not sure what happened at this end of the Corridor. What was accepted then, however, was broadly what the convention had proposed. That was right and proper. A critical element of what was proposed was that proportionality should be a key part of any electoral system. As I have said, my hon. Friends and I happily argue for STV, but at that time we accepted the system that had been recommended by the convention.

Much has been made of the fact that there are four electoral systems in Scotland. In fact, there are three. These are: the first-past-the-post system for this place; the closed list system for European elections; and the current system for the Scottish Parliament. There may be a fourth system for Scottish local government, and it may be—I hope that it will—STV. However, that is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. We have devolved that power and it is up to that Parliament to take the decision. We have debated devolution many times, but the House must get used to the fact that we have devolved power to the Scottish Parliament. It not for us to argue about STV for local government elections, because the power has been devolved.

Mr. Russell Brown (Dumfries) (Lab): I am listening to what the hon. Gentleman is saying about STV for local government elections. Will he be honest with the Committee and say whether he genuinely believes that STV will also be used for Scottish Parliament elections in future? That would reduce the number of different ways of electing people in Scotland.

7 pm

John Thurso: I would hope that the input that I and my hon. Friends make to the commission—and the input from MSPs and all other interested parties in Scotland—might result in a decision to recommend to this House that STV is the best system. If this House brought forward legislation based on such a recommendation, we would support it. We must deal with the potential consequence of a possible future decision by the Scottish Parliament.

In an earlier debate, the Minister said that there are two pillars to the argument about maintaining 129 MSPs. As the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Mrs. Liddell) said, many people want 129 MSPs to be
 
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retained in the Scottish Parliament. A variety of reasons can be adduced for that, and self-interest might be one. I believe that the committee system has been one of the successes of the Scottish Parliament, as it has helped to deliver better government for Scotland, and to encourage people to participate in government.

The maths is as follows: if one subtracts the number of Ministers from the total of 129 MSPs—and it can be argued that there are too many Ministers—and divides the remainder into the number of committees, one discovers that each MSP is already involved in 2.9 committees. Therefore, reducing the number of MSPs will clearly create a fairly impossible work load. There is considerable support—if not overwhelming support—for maintaining 129 MSPs.

Mr. Peter Duncan: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Lazarowicz: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Thurso: In a moment. The other pillar to the argument is that it clearly must be right to reduce the number of hon. Members in this House who represent Scottish constituencies. Given that we now have a Scottish Parliament, we do not need a level of representation that predates devolution.

Those are the two principles involved. If we want to enact them reasonably quickly, a holding Bill such as this one is the only way forward. It is obvious that the right way to proceed is to have a commission to deal with the likely consequences of having four voting systems, to replicate the work of the convention, to achieve a consensus and then to make a recommendation to this House in respect both of a future electoral system for the Scottish Parliament and of coterminous constituency boundaries.

The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Michael Lord): I call Mark Lazarowicz.

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