Background
4.Before it was amended by this Act, the Scotland Act 1998 provided for the constituencies of the Scottish Parliament to be the same as those for the United Kingdom Parliament, except that Orkney and Shetland were separate constituencies. There are currently 73 constituency Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) and 56 regional list MSPs. The Scotland Act also provided that the Boundary Commission for Scotland when reviewing the Westminster constituencies should use the same (larger) electoral quota as used in England. This is likely to reduce the number of Scottish constituencies from 72 to 59. That in turn would have resulted in a reduction in the number of Scottish Parliament constituencies and, because of the requirement in the Scotland Act for proportionality between constituency and regional seats, a pro rata reduction in the number of regional members.
5.As a consequence of this linkage in the Scotland Act there would therefore have been an automatic reduction in the size of the Scottish Parliament when the number of MPs at Westminster representing Scottish constituencies reduces following the review currently being carried out by the Boundary Commission for Scotland.
6.The Scotland Act also required that, following their review of Parliamentary constituencies in Scotland, the Boundary Commission had to consider the boundaries of the regions which return additional members to the Scottish Parliament when making recommendations which affect constituency boundaries.
7.In December 2001 the then Secretary of State for Scotland launched a public consultation seeking views on the case for retaining or ending the linking of Westminster and Holyrood constituency boundaries as provided in the Scotland Act, in the light of the experience gained from the operation of the Scottish Parliament. The majority of respondents supported retaining the present size of the Parliament.
8.Following this consultation, the Secretary of State announced in a statement in the House of Commons on 18 December 2002 (Hansard, Columns 859-60) that legislation would be brought forward to retain the existing number of MSPs.