STAGE ONE: Begins in the Scottish Parliament STAGE TWO: Moved to the committee STAGE THREE: Back in parliament

Politics Function 2: Representation in the Scottish Parliament.

Scottish Parliament An MSP is a member of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament was re-opened in Certain parts of the Government, like health, education, transport and local governments are DEVOLVED. This means the Scottish Parliament is directly in charge of them. Reserved issues such as defence, immigration and social security are issues still controlled by Westminster.

Electing an MSP –The Scottish Parliament elects 129 MSPs by the Additional Member System (AMS). –This is a proportional representation (PR) system, which means there is a clear link between the number of votes and the seats awarded. –E.g if a party get 40% of the votes they will receive roughly 40% of the seats.

Additional Member System (AMS) AMS combines FPTP with the party list system. Each voter gets TWO votes.

First Vote In the first vote for a constituency MSP. This is decided by FPTP. First Past the Post is a simple majority. This means the person with the most votes wins. e.g. Labour get 500 votes, Lib Dem get 410 votes and the Conservatives get 501 votes. The Conservatives win the constituency. The rest get nothing.

Second Vote In the second vote the party list system is used. To elect regional MSPs. The party list system is the simplest form of PR. A list of candidates is drawn up by the parties and people vote for a party, not the candidate. The total votes of each party is converted to a percentage and this is used to decide how many of the candidates on the party list are elected. For example if a party gets 40% of the votes they will receive approximately 40% of the regional seats.

1 ST Ballot Paper 2 nd Ballot Paper W. Brown (LABOUR) X A. Jones (LIB DEMS) K. MacDonald (SNP) R. Thomas (CONSERVATIVES) Conservatives X Labour SNP Lib Dems Green Party In the first vote the candidate Chooses their constituency MSP. This is decided by FPTP. So the Candidate with the most votes Wins. The second vote, is the party list vote. Voters choose a Party. This vote is decided by PR. The number of votes won will reflect The percentage of seats awarded.

Strengths and Weaknesses of AMS As with all electoral systems AMS has its strengths and weaknesses…

Additional Member System Can be confusion over who your MSP is. Parties are fairly represented in the Parliament Coalitions mean small parties sometimes become ‘kingmakers’. Give smaller parties a better chance Coalitions are seen as weaker governments. Decisions have to be a compromise Women and ethnic minorities are more likely to be elected Can be difficult to understandNo wasted votes WeaknessesStrengths

So how representative is the Scottish Parliament? Put simply, Scottish people are well- represented. Each person is represented by; –ONE constituency MSP –SEVEN regional (list) MSPs. The representatives generally come from a variety of political parties.

Continued… This means that in the parliament the views of the Scottish people should be well represented by a wide variety of MSPs. This in turn should lead to good debates and laws passed that the majority of the population agree with.

Under-representation in the Scottish Parliament. In some ways MSPs tend not to represent the population. One example would be ethnic minorities. There are only 2 MSPs from an ethnic minority background (Hanzala Malik and Hamza Yousaf). Roughly 5% of Scots are from an ethnic minority background, yet less than 2% of MSPs are ethnic minorities Another example of under representation is Women who represent 51% of the population however…

The Numbers… How many MSPs are there in total in the Scottish Parliament? 129

How Many are Female? In 2012 there are…. In case you haven’t worked it out that’s only 34.8% 45

Coalition government is good government! The Scottish people are more broadly represented because of the coalition government. Coalition government generally means consensus government. This means that if the parties in the government want voted in at the next election they must ensure that the laws they pass have the approval of the majority of the population.