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Scottish Parliament (Constituencies and Regions) Order 2025 [Draft]
We resume our meeting to consider evidence on the draft Scottish Parliament (Constituencies and Regions) Order 2025. The committee is joined by Professor Ailsa Henderson, who is the chair of Boundaries Scotland, and Kirsty Mavor, who is its secretary. I welcome you both to the committee. I invite Professor Henderson to make some brief opening remarks, after which we will move to questions from the committee.
Thank you very much for the invitation to be here and thank you for allowing us to reschedule this meeting—5 June was our commission meeting. We know that we have inflicted an inconvenience on you, so thank you very much for that adjustment.
First, I will give a bit of background as to why we conducted the review. As referred to in the public paper before you, schedule 1 to the Scotland Act 1998 requires Boundaries Scotland to conduct reviews of the boundaries of Scottish Parliament constituencies and regions at intervals of every eight to 12 years. The second review was required to be submitted by 1 May 2025.
13:15The existing constituencies and regions for the Scottish Parliament were defined following the first review of Scottish Parliament boundaries, which was completed in 2010. Those boundaries were used in the 2011, 2016 and 2021 Scottish Parliament elections.
The review rules require us to use electorate, not population, figures. Since the first review, the electorate of each constituency and region has changed, with people moving into and out of areas, as well within an area. As a result of those changes, some MSPs now represent considerably more or fewer electors than others. For example, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth has 51,210 electors while Linlithgow has 76,337.
Those variations in levels of representation are one reason why the commission is required to carry out regular reviews of Scottish Parliament boundaries, that is, in order to ensure electoral fairness so that a vote in one part of the country is worth the same as a vote in another part of Scotland. We strive to do that by following the rules that are set out in the legislation and respecting the communities that matter to people. Those rules, as set out in the Scotland Act 1998, are provided in full in paragraphs 7 and 8 of the public paper that is before you.
We are required to review the boundaries of 70 of the 73 constituencies; three protected constituencies—Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands and Na h-Eileanan an Iar—are reserved outside the scope of our review. The remaining 70 must meet a set of requirements that must, so far as is practicable, be consistent throughout the whole of Scotland.
In short, the four rules that govern our review of boundaries are as follows. Rule 1 requires us to have regard to the boundaries of local government areas. Rule 2 requires us to set boundaries so that the electorate of each constituency is as near the electoral quota as is practicable. Rule 3 allows us to take account of special geographic circumstances. Rule 4 requires us to take account of “inconveniences” and local ties. Sometimes, the four constituency rules that govern our review can be seen as conflicting. They are either caveated with
“So far as”
or
“as near ... as is practicable”
or state that we are allowed to depart from them in certain circumstances. The commission must therefore exercise its discretion in deciding the appropriate weight of each rule, and we must make recommendations that work for the whole of Scotland.
Two rules govern our review of regions. Rule 1 is:
“A constituency must fall wholly within a region.”
Rule 2 is:
“The regional electorate of a region must be as near the regional electorate of each of the other regions as is practicable, having regard ... to special geographical circumstances.”
As well as making recommendations about boundaries for the 70 constituencies and eight regions, we are also required to recommend the name by which each constituency and region should be known, and the designation—whether county or borough—for constituencies.
We started the review in September 2022, using the electorate data that was recorded at the time. We calculated the electoral quota as 59,902 by dividing the total electorate of the 70 constituencies by the total number of constituencies under review, and we worked out the average electorate of the eight regions as 531,320.
Our review is guided by the “Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters” of the Venice commission—that is, the European Commission for Democracy through Law—which recommends that electoral areas
“should seldom exceed 10% and never 15%, except in really exceptional circumstances”.
That is the guide that previous Holyrood and local reviews have followed.
At the start of the review report, we noted:
“Changes to the population and the electorate have varied across Scotland. Some constituencies have experienced significant increases in their electorate”—
examples include Almond Valley, Linlithgow, the Edinburgh constituencies and East Lothian—whereas
“others ... have a falling number of electors.”
Examples of those are Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley and Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn.
Appendix C of our report sets out the existing constituencies and regions as at 1 September 2022, together with the divergence from the electoral quota.
To assist with meeting rule 1 for constituencies, we developed provisional proposals for constituencies in council area groupings. We calculated a theoretical entitlement for each local authority, then grouped local authorities—aggregating them up—to get as close as possible to a whole number. We did that because we must give consideration to local authority boundaries, and it makes it easier to design constituencies within smaller groupings than to consider the whole of Scotland. The groupings were a useful tool, but were not restrictive, and we changed the groupings during the review when we felt that we could arrive at better constituency designs.
We consulted on provisional proposals for constituencies between May and June 2023. More than 3,200 comments were submitted during the consultation phase, which was followed by six local inquiries between December 2023 and January 2024 in Musselburgh, Kilmarnock, Clydebank, Johnstone and Newton Mearns, Edinburgh and Peebles. The local inquiries were held either in places where councils had objected to the proposals—four of them—or where there had been a high number of responses and the commission felt that it would benefit from gathering more information; that was two of them.
Following the initial consultation, we consulted on our proposals for constituencies a further four times: from April to May 2024, September to October 2024, January to February 2025 and, right to the wire, March to April 2025. The submission responses in each of those rounds were, as I said, just over 3,200 in the first round, then dropping in each subsequent round to 1,120, 250, 27 and then two responses. The consultation responses and the information that we gathered during the local inquiries helped us to develop our boundaries throughout the review stages.
We first consulted on the regions in September to October 2024, and then a further two times in January to February 2025 and March 2025. Consultation responses for those went from 300 to 23 to five respondents.
We held further local inquiries in Falkirk, Whitburn and Paisley in response to objections by local authorities to our proposals. Some of the local inquiries were well attended by members of the public, as well as elected officials, which helped to strengthen our understanding of local communities and ties. Overall, we held nine local inquiries and considered the assistant commissioner’s reports at the relevant stage and before making our final recommendations.
On 30 April 2025, we submitted our final report, which sets out the process that we followed, the number of consultations and local inquiries, and how the rules were applied when making the final recommendations for constituency and region designs. The report provides detail of our approach to recommending names and designations.
On our final recommendations for constituencies, if we are thinking of the different rules that we have to follow, I note that they include 59 of 73 constituencies that are contained within a single council area, whereas, at the start of the review, 61 of 73 were within a single council area. Looking at rule 2, I note that we include recommended constituencies where the number of electors now ranges between 49,535 and 68,871, which is an improvement from the start of the review, when the range was from 49,000 to 76,000.
We have improved the electoral quota simply by increasing the number of constituencies that are within 5 to 10 per cent of the quota and minimising the number that vary from the quota by more than 10 per cent. Thirty-four recommended constituencies have a variation from the electoral quota of less than 5 per cent, whereas, at the start of the review, it was 26 constituencies. Twenty-eight recommended constituencies now vary from the quota by between 5 and 10 per cent, whereas, at the start of the review, it was 30 constituencies. Eight recommended constituencies have a variation from the electoral quota of more than 10 per cent, whereas, at the start of the review, that figure was 14 constituencies. We applied special geographic considerations in the constituency of Argyll and Bute and that of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, because we agreed that it was important to keep local communities together in those constituencies.
Our final recommendations for regions include one region that is unchanged: Mid Scotland and Fife. There are two regions with minimal changes to their boundaries and no change to their name: Highlands and Islands and North East Scotland. Three recommended regions have larger changes to their boundaries and retain their existing names: Glasgow, South Scotland and West Scotland. Two regions have changes to their boundaries and are renamed: Central Scotland and Lothians West, and Edinburgh and Lothians East. That recommendation was made largely to recognise that the four Lothian local authorities are too large to fit in a single region. Finally, one recommended region has had special geographical considerations applied. Highlands and Islands regional electorate is 32.4 per cent below the average electorate for regions. All others vary between 500,000 and 594,000 electors.
I know that my statement is long; I am almost done. Of the 32 council areas in Scotland, 26 are contained within a single region. Argyll and Bute, East Ayrshire, Glasgow, Midlothian and Moray are divided between two regions and South Lanarkshire is divided among three regions.
Appendix F of our final report provides a summary of the approach that was taken for each individual constituency, and appendix G summarises the overall approach to regions. Links to the maps of each recommended constituency and region are also in the public paper that is before you.
On next steps, our next review is required to take place within the next 8 to 12 years and we are required to submit our report no less than 18 months before the election that follows it. Commissioners are in the process of reviewing a lessons learned paper and are prioritising actions that should be in place before the next review. As is also referred to in the public paper, there is an independent review of the process for determining electoral boundaries, which is currently being consulted on. That is an entirely separate process to the second review, and Boundaries Scotland has already met with the chair of the independent review. A formal response to that consultation will be submitted before its end date on 7 August.
Thank you very much. I am happy to start with the questions, but I am also happy to open up to the committee if anyone has any urgent ones.
I have a small question.
Let us start with your small question and then we can come to Rona Mackay.
My question is on the naming of the regions. Why have you chosen to make it less clear for the public by including “Lothians West” and “Lothians East” in the names, rather than just calling the regions, for example, “Edinburgh and East Lothian” and, similarly, “Central Scotland and West Lothian”? That would make it quite clear.
That is an interesting point, but it is connected to our naming policy. We have a policy of not including the name of a council unless the entity and the council are entirely coterminous. So, we would not name a constituency “East Lothian” unless it included all of East Lothian Council’s area.
But it is Edinburgh and East Lothian.
We have not referred to Midlothian at all in that name. We have moved from a situation in which there was a Lothian region that included Edinburgh and some of the other Lothians but did not include East Lothian at all. East Lothian is a Lothian but it was not included in the Lothian region—
There was a little slither of things that fell into East Lothian.
Pardon?
There was a small—anyway, okay.
There was a bit that was captured in an Edinburgh constituency, but the bulk of East Lothian was in the South Scotland region and therefore did not have its name represented in its region. We feel that the new names will clarify the situation and remind people that the Lothians include Edinburgh, East Lothian, West Lothian and Midlothian, and that we should reflect the fact that they are not contained within a single region.
Okay.
Good afternoon. I have some general questions, because this is not something that I have focused on much over the years. It seems from our notes that there have been a large number of objections. Is that normal when you start the process of changing boundaries, and are those objections usually from local authorities? What is the proportion of individual residents who would normally object?
That is a great question. The answer to the first part is yes, this is an entirely normal number of responses. There were about 4,300 responses submitted during this review. In the first review in 2010, 5,500 responses were submitted. Many of those were submitted by post and I understand that they all received a handwritten note in response. We have had fewer responses to this review. One interpretation of that is that there are fewer objections, but not all submissions are objections to what we are doing; some of them say that we are doing the right thing.
There is an important point about who is responding to the consultations. There was a marked change in the engagement of members of the public across the different consultation rounds. In retrospect, we should have named them round 1, round 2, round 3 and round 4 rather than provisional, revised, further, additional and supplementary proposals—we had the thesaurus out at the end.
In the first round, 93 per cent of responses were from members of the public. That dropped to 83 per cent and then to 80 per cent by the end of the third round. When we moved to the fourth round, it dropped to only 27 respondents, of whom a third were members of the public. As we went on, it was increasingly elected representatives and local councils that were responding. Responses from members of the public were very much constrained to those first three rounds.
The local authorities that responded were presumably worried about council tax consequences and what they would bring in and win or lose because of boundary changes—
It is not the councils—
No?
It was not an administrative review of local authority boundaries, but a review of constituency and region boundaries for elections to the Scottish Parliament. Our boundaries do not change the boundaries of local authorities, so there are no council tax objections. However, you raise an interesting point, as we had a degree of misinformation around the review—far greater than with any previous review—because of misunderstandings about what we were changing.
13:30Sometimes, that was because extremely stretched newspapers did not accurately report what we were doing and their headlines suggested that we were changing local authority boundaries rather than electoral boundaries. That then led to Facebook campaigns, which then led to objections, which then led to local authorities getting involved. In some local authorities, the sheriff principal, acting as assistant commissioner, had to spend a considerable amount of time explaining that everyone was present to complain about a change that was not actually happening.
That is interesting. The chart that we have shows that quite a number of local authorities objected. I am wondering why, if the process does not affect them.
It varied. For example, we had two constituencies within a single local authority, which thought that we could improve where the boundary between the two constituencies lay so that communities that looked in one direction or another were included with other communities of interest.
Another example is that, if we proposed constituencies that included parts of more than one local authority, the local authorities might have felt that that did not really make sense and that they did not want to have their communities divided in that way. For example, Falkirk Council once objected because we had devised a proposal that had all of the Falkirk area split across three constituencies. There were already two, and the council objected to the creation of a third constituency covering the area. It was that kind of thing.
That is interesting—thank you.
I respect the many rules that you have to work within, but what is the balance when it comes to geographical considerations? I have played with the postcodes, and I know how hard it is to make Highland constituencies that make sense.
In one way, the rules are the rules and, whatever they are, we will work with them. We are grateful for the flexibility that they provide. I used to sit on the Boundary Commission for Scotland, so I know that, when you are doing reviews for Westminster, you are constrained to 5 per cent over or under the quota, which is an inflexible rule that does not work well in certain parts of Scotland.
We are grateful for the flexibility that the rules provide in certain circumstances, but there are challenges. Their numbering sets up in people’s minds that that is the order of importance but, actually, when you read the rules, you find that they are all heavily caveated or conditional on one another. The first one says,
“So far as is practicable”,
and the second one says,
“as near ... as is practicable”.
There is also a statement in rule 2 that says that we can depart entirely from rule 1—on attention to local authority boundaries—if we feel that a proposal will create neighbouring constituencies with very different levels of electoral representation and with different deviations from parity.
Rules 3 and 4 basically say that we can ignore—well, not ignore, but depart from—rules 1 and 2 to take into consideration other things, whether that is special geographic circumstances or inconveniences and local ties. All the rules are conditional, but the numbering sets up in people’s minds a priority that does not exist.
When we do local reviews or Westminster reviews, it is clear that parity is the most important rule and everything else softens that slightly when you look into it—that is the rule that drives the others. The Holyrood review rules are not like that. There are four things that we have to simultaneously look across. I think that that is one reason why we had a longer series of back and forths in the consultation around those things.
How often do you find that the back and forth involves things such as rurality and island communities? I am aware that Orkney and Shetland are protected, but it is a totally different situation when you are trying to play around with Argyll and Bute. Are there ever points where you think that serious consideration needs to be given to that?
That is a good point. Shetland, Orkney and Na h-Eileanan an Iar are protected. There was no change at all to the Argyll and Bute constituency, which had exactly the same number of electors at the start of the review as it does now. We conducted an island communities impact assessment, looking at the impact of constituencies on those communities. Three are protected and Argyll and Bute was unchanged. The Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency has stretched, which was not in our initial proposals but was done at the request of people responding to the consultation who did not want a ward to be divided and wanted community ties to be considered. The change did not happen at the island end of the constituency, but it makes that island constituency very large.
There was no change to Cunninghame South, was there?
Cunninghame North.
Yes, Cunninghame North, with Arran.
There was no change.
Also, Argyll and Bute still has the lowest number of electors in any constituency.
The new boundaries for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch mean less representation, in a way, for Skye because it is a smaller percentage of an overall constituency that has been made bigger.
It has been, partly also in an attempt to resolve the issue that Scotland’s population is moving largely from west to east and that the population in the Highlands and Islands is moving into Inverness. We had to move the boundaries around Inverness to solve that problem, but, as you solve one problem, another one pops up. There is a balancing act in trying to ensure that a solution that might work ideally in one setting does not inflict problems on neighbouring areas.
Your other option would have been to split Inverness in half, but I think that you would have got a few more objections to that.
We had different formulations of what to do up there and there would have been different responses.
I have a couple of questions, the first of which is about how close the numbers in the proposed constituencies and regions are to the previous ones. Did you take as your baseline the electorate number back in September, rather than using the numbers from when the current constituencies and regions were set? It seemed to me to make sense to look at the figures that were used in the previous review and to work within 5, 10 or up to 15 per cent of those, rather than taking the baseline of the electorate and saying that, we should have a certain number of people within the constituencies at the end of the process. The change is interesting because it reflects population and demographic movement, but there is also a question about whether you are getting closer to the Venice commission’s proposals for a code along with the four rules.
That question taps into what we have been trying to do, which is to address passive malapportionment in the design. We were not comparing our design to the purity of the first design; we were comparing it to what the first design now looks like, given that there has been population movement. We looked at the 1 September electoral register because that was the date on which we designed the review and it was the comparison and examination of those data that allowed us to understand how what may at first have been an ideal solution has become imperfect over time because of passive malapportionment. The movement of people means that what was equal is now no longer equal, so we have to solve the problem of unequal representation. We had a situation where a vote in one constituency was worth less than two thirds of a vote in another constituency, which is not right.
I am not questioning the rights and wrongs; I am questioning the comparator and the change. It is the difference between saying that this is where we are at following a proposal and saying that this is where we were at the beginning of the previous review and this is how we have changed.
You have hinted at the challenge that we have had with the process, which is that the public’s understanding is far removed from the reality. People are frequently confronted with questions that come to them as individuals living in a town or village or on an island and cause them to say, “Don’t be ridiculous.” Then there is a big learning curve to find out what the four rules are for constituencies.
I wonder whether you have looked at something else in the responses. It is almost impossible for an individual to create an inquiry. They have to belong to a group that fits under a title. A church that represents X hundreds of the registered electorate stands a far greater chance of triggering an inquiry. Local authorities can trigger inquiries and have done. However, when individuals send responses in and ask, “What do I do now?”, although you think that the effect of the proposals that are being made would probably be best seen in an inquiry, you say that the individual cannot ask for one, because it has to be a pool that is looked at.
I understand why that came about, because otherwise you would be holding inquiries all over the place, all the time. However, is the balance right on what triggers an inquiry, given that local authorities can demand an inquiry but other groups—if they can show you that they have grouped themselves appropriately—also have to be considered when deciding on an inquiry?
There were about three questions in there. You raised an important point, which is that we did not compare what the review looks like now with what the first review looked like at the point of completion on day 1. Considering the passive malapportionment that happened during the period of the first review would perhaps give us a guide as to what might happen to the current review’s results as we move forward. However, for that to be true, we would have to expect the same population movements, and it has been a very long time since the first review was conducted. We might see the same trends continue, we might see them reverse or we might see different trends emerge.
Therefore, the reason why we did not take that approach is in part because we were focusing on what the review looked like on the day that we began, which is when we identified the different issues.
Might you consider looking at that in the post-review analysis?
Yes, it is a good point. Later, I will come back to lessons learned, but we are still working on those.
The trigger for local inquiries is another point of departure between the Holyrood and Westminster reviews. The Westminster reviews allow one round of local inquiries at a very specific point in the procedure; they do not allow them to continue on and on, and they allow only five to be held. It used to be the case that they were held really early in the procedure and you had to guess where the hot spots would be, act accordingly and guess where you should put them. They are now placed at a slightly different point, so you have some feedback before you identify their location, but there are only five, and it is up to the Boundary Commission for Scotland to pick where they go.
The trigger for the Holyrood reviews is entirely different, and the inquiries can appear at any point in the cycle. The trigger language is particularly oppositional, which is sometimes not particularly helpful, and it encourages a way of looking at things that is bilateral rather than multilateral. Councils are objecting to things and suggesting that other councils should be offered up as sacrificial lambs for different solutions. The process does not encourage people to come together and think about solutions for the whole of Scotland; it encourages a myopic view in which one area is considered at a time, which can cause knock-on problems elsewhere. That is what we found when we dealt with Falkirk, West Lothian and Edinburgh. Every time we offered a different solution, it resulted in a local inquiry in which other people said, “No, I don’t want that. Move them over there.”
Something in that structure is not quite working right. If an individual writes in with a well-argued consultation response, it appears. We make changes to maps based on a single respondent saying, “I think you’ve got this wrong, here’s why I think you’ve got this wrong and here’s the fix that I think better fits your rules and solves this problem that I’ve identified.” We do not need a local inquiry to make such changes.
I was not suggesting that you do—my apologies if you took it that way. You obviously take account of all the responses that you get. The process is slightly dark, so the public do not see how an individual response can essentially lead to small changes, but it can do, as you said.
Moving forward, one challenge is that the public are the group of people who genuinely need to have confidence in the system—we can use the population or the electorate, and an interesting discussion is to be had about that. Rightly, we are the last Parliament in Europe that still involves itself only to an extent and we step away from the process, and so there must be public confidence that, first, the process is understandable; secondly, they can see what their influence is; and, thirdly, even if the result disagrees with what they want, they understand why it has been reached.
13:45You commented on the adversarial nature of inquiries and how everyone shoves the problem on to somebody else, and you are the people who are actually having to do that. Edinburgh is a classic example of just moving it around the wheel, with everyone complaining. The rules for the inquiry process are here, in essence, whereas the four rules and the regional rules sit within the Scotland Act 1998, so they are much harder to change from our point of view.
However, the trigger for an inquiry sits with Boundaries Scotland, does it not? Well, not quite with you, but a more co-operative and solution-focused public inquiry could be looked at, as you say.
The trigger is statutory, but you are absolutely right that we can do more than the legislation requires us to do. One of the things that we were talking about in our lessons learned was how we create space for a more open and multilateral discussion, possibly involving the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, for example. We often found that the point of contention was where multiple local authority boundaries converge and we had to identify constituencies over that area, so it would have been helpful to be able to bring together three or four local authorities at the same time to try to identify a mutually acceptable solution. Because it was not in the legislation, and because the inability to call a local authority at any point also means that the timing is not in our own control, it meant that we were focused on making sure that we met our deadline rather than looking at what we could layer on top of the process to improve things. We are going to look at a number of things to see whether we can identify improvements.
Another thing is that the legal advice that we got about local inquiries was that they have to be face to face, which is a massive inconvenience in this day and age, particularly if you are talking about large constituencies. It would be much more convenient for people to be able to join in online.
Again, on the timings of the inquiries, you tended to have them in two sessions, in the daytime and in the evening, which is sensible, but again, the day of the week that they were held was inconvenient for a number of people. It is easy to find reasons why something is not working, but from looking at the way in which the inquiries are conducted and the expectations on individuals who spoke at the inquiries that I was aware of, I know that they were not professional witnesses and they were not sure what to expect. The good thing was that, at the end of it, a lot of them were amazed at how nice the experience had been and how it was not adversarial.
However, there is a perception about the word “inquiry” across Scotland that is perhaps not the most positive, and people were extremely concerned about interacting with an inquiry. Again, I wonder whether the system that you described that you would like to move to would answer the challenges that came out of some inquiries and the subsequent inquiries that had to happen before they become challenges.
Possibly. In the Westminster system, they are referred to as public hearings rather than local inquiries; that is an important distinction.
Can I just pick up on a few points about the rules, because again, it boils down to the language and the understanding that comes out of that? As you say, all four rules should be looked at simultaneously, and you gently move between the four quadrants to try and come up with the best results. However, there are some challenges in that, because rule 1—I will just call it that—is prefixed with
“So far as is practicable”,
but it also says
“regard must be had to the boundaries of the local government areas”.
So, even before you are talking about electorate numbers, the public see that it is supposed to be the local authority area, and I think that that is probably how most people perceive all of the parliamentary stuff, even though it certainly is not true for Westminster, and it is far from true now here at Holyrood.
Then, rule 2 talks about the “strict application” of rule 1—so there is statutory evidence to say that rule 1 has to be strictly applied. However, rule 1 opens with
“So far as is practicable”.
Therefore, we now have a misunderstanding.
I have picked those two rules specifically because of the concerns that have been expressed about an individual MSP representing up to three local authorities and tension between those authorities forming a lot of concern in their work. For example, someone in a school placing situation can be in another constituency with another constituent MSP, but the high school is in the first MSP’s constituency. It makes the role very difficult
To look back as to why it began with the boundaries of local government, those were the specific reasons why that was put in. As a constituency MSP, you were representing your constituents, who fitted into a local authority area; you could advocate for them but you could also defend against others coming in. From a practical MSP’s point of view, the situation creates a tension that is really difficult to reconcile. Secondly, however, it is also a challenge for constituents.
I am not sure whether I expect a comment. Could it perhaps be meritorious for the appropriate committee to look at?
As we read them, rule 1 is caveated in its very first outing; then, paragraph 2 of rule 2 says that we can
“depart from the strict application of Rule 1”
in certain circumstances. Rule 3 begins by saying that we can
“depart from the strict application of Rules 1 and 2”;
and rule 4 is that we
“need not aim at giving full effect in all circumstances to Rules 1 to 3”.
To us, that does not suggest that rule 1, although stated first, is the most important.
We are absolutely not saying that we do not think that local authority boundaries are important in our design. That is why the beginning of our process is to create those council groupings, so that we are working within areas that allow us to pay attention to local authority boundaries.
We also pay attention to the internal boundaries of local authorities—ward boundaries. We try to minimise splits, and we have made improvements. There are far fewer split wards, for example, in this solution than there are in the status quo.
There is something in that, potentially—if, instead of
“boundaries of local government areas”,
it had said “ward boundaries”.
Yes, I know. That is why we do not record that when we show how we meet the rules.
My challenge to you, then, is that, in your explanation for decisions, when people raise questions about why you did something, you tend to point at one of those specific rules rather than saying, “Actually, it’s an amalgam of rules, and this is the consensus that we have come to.”
In the report, when we talk about why we have identified a particular constituency, we identify how it meets all the rules. We talk about the extent to which it meets rule 1 and the extent to which it meets rule 2. If we have applied special geographical circumstances—as we did in two constituencies—we clarify that. If we have deviated from parity, for example, we also refer to why we have done so—for example, because of inconvenience or local ties. We do not just pick one rule and explain the constituency on the basis of that one; we address how we have met each of the four.
I was not talking about the construction of the constituencies in the regions. I meant some of the explanations that have been given to constituents of why their proposal has not been taken up. The correspondence shows you pointing at one of the four rules, rather than the explanation that you have just given.
That could be because a correspondent mentioned one rule, so we showed them how that one could not be viewed in isolation. However, when we explain in the final document why we have done what we have done, we revert to talking about all of them.
Absolutely. That is the document that we are looking at. I absolutely accept that.
It is also in our meeting papers.
In opening the discussion, you talked about the Venice commission’s strong suggestions that any variation from the electoral quota should be up to 15 per cent of the quota. In essence, that speaks to the weight of value of an individual vote in any area. That is why it exists—so that my vote has the same value as another’s. However, much of the Scotland Act 1998 talks about moving away from that approach when the circumstances of an area speak to it. Do you have enough flexibility to reflect the intention of the Scotland Act 1998?
That speaks to what Emma Roddick said about the association of those islands outside of the protected islands, while you have spoken about the distances that exist in some constituencies, Professor Henderson. Is there sufficient flexibility for you to reflect what you have to achieve and—this is the difficult bit—reflect what the people of Scotland expect to be achieved by creating constituencies and then grouping them into regions?
Our view is that we are very grateful for the flexibility that we have compared with other rules that are in operation around the UK, such as the 5 per cent rule in Westminster and the new 10 per cent rule in Wales. The rules for people in Wales were very similar to ours, but with the new legislation they have—one might say—tied their own hands by putting a 10 per cent limit on variation. That means that there cannot really be flexibility around special geographic circumstances, for example.
You anticipated my next question. Do you welcome your level of flexibility or, as an explainer, is the 10 or 5 per cent rule much easier for people to understand, even though they may not agree with it?
It is undoubtedly easier for people to understand such a rule. It is easier to understand the letter of it and the principle of it, and it is also easier to put metrics on it. It is measurable, while it is much harder to measure whether other considerations are being met. The view of a local community or the boundaries of that local community can often be up for debate. We would have people from different parts of a proposed community suggesting that the boundary be moved in one direction or another. It would be much easier for people to understand, and much easier for us to measure our success, if we moved towards that kind of approach.
Is it much easier to attach automaticity of boundary changes to such a rule than to what we have in Scotland—and to justify changes?
All that I would say is that the Westminster move to automaticity followed the imposition of a 5 per cent rule, and the introduction of automaticity in Wales coincided with the move to a 10 per cent parity measure, so they appear to be connected in other legislation.
Would you welcome that? Would you like to consider that?
A consultation is going on, so, to be fair, perhaps that question is best left until after the consultation is finished.
We would be delighted to come back and talk to you about the independent review of the procedures on automaticity. We have seen a draft paper prepared by the secretariat, and we have had a first meeting with Andrew Kerr, who is leading the independent review. We will be preparing a formal commission response, so I would not want to put words in the mouths of my fellow commissioners.
That is fine—very sensible. I am coming to the end of my questions—I hope that you will be disappointed to learn that, but I fear that you will not.
The regional rules are much more explicit than the constituency rules. They are far easier to understand, because we have to group entire constituencies into the regions. Sue Webber prompted a discussion earlier about the challenge that then comes for local authorities, where part of a local authority area is in one region and the rest of it is in another region. That adds to my previous point about one MSP representing a constituency in three different local authority areas, because we could have up to 15 other MSPs interested in an issue. From a purely administrative, common-sense point of view, that is a very big round table to bring together to discuss problems—let me put it that way.
Do you have any comments on the consequences of the choices that are made by Boundaries Scotland? The effect on local authorities is not part of your tests—you need not take account of that if you follow the four rules—but are you conscious of that effect and do you have any concerns about it?
14:00
Yes, absolutely. One way to think of the situation is that the building blocks are local authorities, but within local authority areas there are wards, which Boundaries Scotland created in the 5th reviews of local government electoral arrangements and the island reviews, for example.
When we design wards for local government elections, we are required to consider “effective and convenient local government”. No one has defined that for us, but we have done independent research to try to understand what it means. Effective and convenient for whom—electors or the population? We also keep in mind representatives: how easy is it to represent the geographical extent of the ward? As wards are the building blocks for constituencies and regions, the consideration of the level of inconvenience is already baked in. We also consider the issue as part of rule 4 for constituencies, as inconvenience is listed under rule 4.
The issue also ties in with special geographical circumstances. We consider how easy it would be for a single representative to represent the area. Therefore, we responded to suggestions that, as it was very difficult to physically get from one part of a ward to another, we should change things and keep transport links in mind. That came up in the very beginning as a result of the local inquiry in Peebles, when we looked at how transport links might make an improvement in the boundaries that we identified.
Here is a strange question that I do not know the answer to. When you are considering that, do you think only of the constituency MSP, or does the availability of list MSPs—even though they have not been identified at the point—feed into the “inconveniences” category?
No, in part because we are required to create constituency boundaries first and then create regions. Having created the constituencies, we do not open them back up when it is time to identify the regions—although, whenever we identify a constituency, we say that that is subject to our not identifying problems elsewhere. To a certain extent, part of the issue is a function of the electoral system, which is not in our gift.
You are presented with a jigsaw without a reference picture; I fully appreciate that.
A 15-region solution would look very different to what we have.
Should inconvenience be considered for regions? As much as I love my region, it covers more than half of Scotland’s landmass. It is quite difficult, on a practical level, to represent that large an area. You mentioned transport links—to get to parts of my region from Inverness, I have to go to Glasgow.
That is a good question. If we were picking the rules to follow in a boundary review, we might have a whole host of suggestions for improvements. My one issue is that “inconveniences” are lumped in with
“local ties which may be broken”,
as well as
“inconvenience that may result from changes”.
We feel that the second rule for regions, which asks us to consider “special geographical” circumstances, allows us to consider examples such as the one that you cited. However, we are stuck with a situation in which we have the number of constituencies and the number of regions that we have. We are supposed to have regard to the average regional electorate, but we have much more variation from parity around the regions than we ever do around the constituencies. We try to be as flexible as we can.
Let us take what has happened in South Scotland as a regional example—which is a slight reflection of what has happened in the past—of satisfying the numbers and a geographical identity, which is the Lothians. If we go along the boundary of South Scotland, another area had to go down into the South Scotland region. That is all in the give and take of the process.
What was it that led you to conclude that your proposals were the right moves, given that it was a removal of an area compared with what has been the understanding for a long period of time? What was it that triggered that being the solution, rather than sticking to the status quo?
The constituencies in question are East Kilbride, and Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. In our provisional proposals, we immediately put them into the South Scotland region, but the consultation responses that we got—particularly from East Kilbride—said that that was not right and that they should be with a more urban neighbouring area. We therefore put them with Glasgow in the next solution, but we then found—and we often find this—that people were writing in to say that they could not possibly be put in the same region as Glasgow. South Lanarkshire Council wrote to us and said, “Well, this isn’t ideal—we would prefer them back in South Scotland, so long as they’re together.”
That was the point—the council did not want East Kilbride in one place and Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in another—so we put them together and then put them in South Scotland. We were responding to suggestions from local authorities. That was partly a knock-on consequence of taking East Lothian out of South Scotland and putting it in with Edinburgh, where there had been concern about the location of the constituency boundary. Such a concern is partly resolved by having the two constituencies in the same region, which in a way softens the constituency boundary.
So they were separate decisions rather than what people perceived, which was that, because the South Scotland numbers were low, you needed something to go in it to get the numbers up—or, indeed, the other way around.
They were completely separate decisions. It was partly so that a constituency boundary that had caused some concern did not also become a region boundary in the case of East Lothian and Edinburgh.
Yes—I see the sense in it now.
You could have had Edinburgh on its own, like you have Glasgow on its own.
That would have caused problems with parity, I think.
You have already said that there are some quite small areas elsewhere. What would be the difference between Edinburgh being on its own compared to Argyll and Bute, for example, which is small in terms of numbers?
But Argyll and Bute is not a region on its own; it is a constituency on its own. It is part of a larger region.
But you have got a Glasgow region, so I am saying that you could have had an Edinburgh region.
Edinburgh on its own is not big enough to be a region. It would have been too far from the average electorate numbers for a region.
How far away?
I do not know—we would have to calculate that.
You are thinking of an eight to 12-year plan, and Edinburgh is growing.
The problem is that Edinburgh on its own is too small, and we cannot have Edinburgh with Midlothian, East Lothian and West Lothian in a single region, because that would be utterly massive.
The Glasgow region also has part of South Lanarkshire in it—it is not just Glasgow constituencies.
I will ask my final questions. You are undertaking a lessons learned exercise, which will fill a huge amount of your time. In that exercise, will you consider how to preserve the institutional memory of the challenges that have happened? To put it politely, I think that the institutional memory from the earlier boundary changes was possibly lost. I am not saying that it was a whole new learning curve—absolutely not, because I know that huge amounts of work went into the process. However, the question is how you capture and preserve the lessons learned so that, next time, the process runs even more smoothly and successfully, with a better understanding from the electorate of what is happening.
That is an important issue because of the timing of our appointment periods, which are for four years and are renewable for four, and the timing of the reviews, which are every eight to 12 years.
In my case, I was a commissioner and then became a deputy chair, so the clock restarted. Then, when I became chair, the clock restarted again, so it is entirely possible that one of our current commissioners could stay on in a different role.
When we did the 5th reviews of local government boundaries, we had a smaller commission, but the chair, two other commissioners and I all joined at exactly the same time—at the very start of the review—and there was just one solitary deputy chair who had been there previously. It is a common situation and, because of that, we always draft a lessons learned document immediately. That is why we have started on it already.
If we are thinking about our lessons learned from this time round, one is about understanding how the rules can constrain what we are able to do, one is about challenges with different interpretations of the rules, and the third is around communicating our proposals. To a certain extent, the rules are not really in our gift, so we just deal with what we have. We are required to use public display notices to communicate our proposals, but the notices were only responsible for a very small part of the traffic that ended up on our consultation portal. We tried to move into social media advertising to get a response, and Facebook was remarkably responsible for most of the traffic that we got in our consultation portal.
Separately, we pay for a mapping facility on the portal, but only 141 people used that function in the first round of more than 3,000 responses, so we have questions about the extent to which the money that allows that mapping is well spent. Are there different ways that we can reach people, particularly offline communities, to ensure that they are aware of our work? We also have the enduring issue of misunderstanding and people not knowing that what we are doing is changing electoral boundaries rather than local authority boundaries.
You will know yourselves that the social media environment has moved on quite a bit, even during the course of this review. Platforms that we might have used previously to reach people, such as Twitter, became functionally useless as the review went on. Therefore, some of the lessons learned that would be applicable now might be different in eight years’ time because the media landscape might be entirely different then.
We are trying to give advice that identifies the principles—what the best thing to do is, what an effective use of our budget is and how we can reach people—so that people can then evaluate them in light of whatever political or media environment they are in in eight years’ time.
Will those lessons learned be a public document?
Yes, they always are.
Excellent. My next question is a mischievous one: is it the map or the description that is the final arbiter of the new constituencies and regions? Which is the governing part—your maps or the written descriptions in your paper that sit with the Government?
I think that it is the written descriptions as then applied to the digitised boundaries.
It is my understanding that the Government took pains to ensure that the written description connects to the maps.
So the map is driven by the written description. The map is illustrative of the consequences of the description on the ground.
Yes, that is our understanding.
Perfect.
And those descriptions are then working through the digitised boundaries—
The digitised boundaries that fit in—absolutely.
We have been making corrections on those digitised boundaries throughout to ensure that they are consistent.
Putting automaticity to one side, would you like to see anything change before the next go around this circle, particularly with regard to the Holyrood boundaries? Given that we have eight years—who knows—what would your wish list be?
I have a wish list, and I would welcome the opportunity to come back and share that with you so that I can check that my wish list is the same as that of my fellow commissioners.
There is an open invite to you for the right moment.
Wonderful, thank you.
I thank you very much for coming in and giving evidence; we will now move into private to consider it. Thank you for sharing so fully the journey of the current boundary reviews, which I hope that we are coming to the end of.
14:12 Meeting continued in private until 14:25.Previous
Dual Mandates