What is the Scottish Parliament?
What is the Scottish Parliament?
In 1997, a referendum saw 74% of voters backed the creation of a Scottish Parliament. A year later, in 1998, the Scotland Act was passed by the Westminster Parliament, and the first elections for Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) in 1999.
The Scottish Parliament is located in Holyrood, Edinburgh, and is a devolved legislature – meaning it debates legislation and passes laws for Scotland. The Parliament, and the MSPs elected to it, handle ‘devolved powers’ – sets of policies that are controlled by the Scottish Parliament, while the UK Government in Westminster retains some powers, generally those policies that affect the whole of the United Kingdom.
Some of the powers retained by the UK Parliament in Westminster include; Benefits and social security, Immigration, Defence, Foreign policy, Employment, Broadcasting, Trade and industry, Nuclear energy, oil, coal, gas and electricity, Consumer rights, Data protection, and the Constitution.
Why engage in the Scottish Parliament elections?
- The Scottish Parliament has power over many of the services you use every day, by voting you can help to decide who will be making decisions about these important issues.
- You can vote for candidates who have a similar vision for the future of your community or region as you do.
- Voting enables you to help decide who represents your local area or region in the Scottish Parliament, it’s part of their job to raise local issues and support you as much as they can. You can go to them and ask for advice on certain issues or ask them to promote an issue in the parliament.
How are MSPs elected?
The Scottish Parliament uses the Additional Member System (AMS) to elect its Members of Scottish Parliament, this is seen as a ‘more proportional’ system than FPTP.
Under AMS, each voter typically gets two votes – one for a candidate and one for a party. Each constituency returns a single candidate, in the style of First Past the Post. The votes for the party list candidates are then allocated on top of these constituency seats to ‘top up’ the number of seats won by each party to represent their share of the votes proportionally. (Source: Electoral Reform Society)
What is AMS?
What are MSPs?
This excellent guide from the Scottish Parliament Education team has more information about how it all works:
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