Democracy in Scotland

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Democracy in Scotland Cathkin High S4 Modern Studies National 3- 5 Democracy in Scotland 1 Contents 1. Overview and recap…………………………………………………………………………..…page 3 2. How to participate in Scottish democracy……………………………………………page 4 3. Party policies………………………………………………………………………………………..page 5 4. Campaigning…………………………………………………………………........................page 6 5. How are MSPs elected? The Additional Member System……………………..page 7 6. The Scottish Parliament and Government……….…………………………………..page 13 7. Roles within the Parliament--------------------------------------------------------page 14 8. How the Scottish Parliament make laws………………………………………………page 17 9. Work of an MSP……………………………………………………………………………………page 21 10. Influence of the media on Scottish politics……………………………………………page 27 2 1. Overview and recap In S2 you learned about the relationship between the UK and Scottish political systems, as well as the differences between them. Test your knowledge by writing a quick definition of the following terms: Devolution Reserved powers Devolved powers Sort the following into reserved or devolved powers: Transport Immigration Currency Health Education Drug laws Defence / National Security Foreign Policy Housing Welfare benefits Reserved powers Devolved powers Discuss the following questions as a class: 1. If we already had a UK Parliament, why did we need a Scottish Parliament? 2. How was it decided there would be a Scottish Parliament? 3. Now that there is a Scottish Parliament, is the UK Parliament irrelevant to Scottish people? Give a reason for your answer. 4. Do the Scottish Parliament’s laws affect people outside of Scotland in the rest of the UK? 5. If Scotland votes for independence in 2014, what would happen? 3 2. How to participate in Scottish democracy Democracy is about people being involved in decisions which affect their lives of their communities. List as many ways as you can of how people can do this. Leave some space when you are done as we will add to this when we have completed the unit. Democracy is government by the people for the people. Since it is difficult for all people to directly govern, instead we elect representatives to govern for us. In Scotland we elect MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) to make decisions on our behalf in the Scottish Parliament. This is one of the main ways of participating – voting. The purpose of voting is to elect people with similar opinions to us into the Scottish Parliament where they have power to influence decision making and speak up for our interests. People with similar interests have tended to group together into political parties in order to give their interests the greatest support and therefore the greatest chance of influencing decision making. The 5 main political parties in Scotland are: Scottish National Party (SNP) Scottish Labour Scottish Conservatives Scottish Liberal Democrats Scottish Greens 4 Party policies The following table shows the different parties’ main policies in 2011: 2016: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2016-scotland-36094681 Task 1. Which do you think is the single best policy? 2. Are there any policies you disagree with? If so which ones and why? 3. Overall which party would you be most likely to vote for and why? 5 Campaigning There is a general election to the Scottish Parliament every 4 years where parties will put forward candidates, who will campaign locally to win people’s support by knocking on doors and speaking to people, delivering leaflets with their policies and opinions, and by making speeches and answering questions at local centres. At the same time the various parties will campaign nationally by releasing manifestos (pledges and reasons to vote that party) and television adverts known as Party Election Broadcasts. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qqbns Your teacher will show you some party election broadcasts by different parties. Complete the following table, filling it in as you go. Party Do you find Why? Why not? Explain. this PEB influential or not? Today, candidates and parties are making more and more use of the internet and social media. All parties have websites and official Twitter accounts, and many individual candidates and MSPs use Twitter to communicate with people, especially the youth. People can then vote their preferred candidate or party so that their views are represented in Parliament. 6 3. How are MSPs elected? The Additional Member System In order to understand how MSPs are elected to the Scottish Parliament, it is helpful to first understand some of the problems associated with the electoral system used to elect MPs to the UK Parliament. MPs are elected to the House of Commons using a straightforward voting system known as First Past the Post (FPTP). This is easy for voters to understand as it simply means voters mark an X next to their favoured candidate and in each constituency (voting area) the candidate with the most votes wins and is elected the MP for that area. There are no prizes for coming second and everyone is elected by 1 MP. However, there are some problems with this system. Imagine there were just 3 constituencies in the UK, each with 1,000 people, and this is how they voted: ConstituencyConstituency 1: 1: Constituency 2 Constituency 3 Conservatives:Conservatives: 400 votes 400 votes Conservatives: 400 votes Conservatives: 100 votes Labour: 300 votes Labour:Liberal 300 votes Democrats: 300 vo Labour: 300 votes Labour: 800 votes Liberal Democrats: 300 votes Liberal Democrats: 300 votes Liberal Democrats: 100 votes Now copy and complete the following table: Total votes Total seats (constituencies won) Conservatives Labour Liberal Democrats Who would form the government if this were real? What problems do you notice with FPTP? Can you think how to improve this system? 7 The Additional Member System Hopefully you will have noticed that while FPTP is easy for voters to understand, it is not proportional, i.e. the percentage of votes parties get is not necessarily equal to the percentage of seats they get in Parliament. When the Scottish Parliament was being created it was thought that it was very important to have proportionality so that all people’s votes counted and so that smaller parties could get some representation. A different electoral system is therefore used for elections to the Scottish Parliament; it is called the Additional Member System (AMS). AMS actually uses FPTP for one part of its vote, but not all of it. It is proportional, but it is not easy to understand; a voting system cannot be both! The problem with FPTP is that when you only have 1 MP representing an area, that one MP represents 100% of the area, so it will always be disproportionate, as no other candidates are being represented, even although they will have won some of the share of the vote. AMS has a solution; instead of areas being represented by just 1 representative, make the areas larger, but have them represented by several representatives, according to their share of the vote in that area! As a result, everyone in Scotland is actually represented by 8 MSPs in total. How they are elected is quite confusing….. Voters in Scotland have 2 votes. For the first vote they are voting as part of their constituency and this vote uses FPTP, just like UK elections. There are 73 constituencies in Scotland and the first vote elects 73 constituency MSPs in total. For instance, the constituency MSP for the constituency of Rutherglen is Clare Haughey of the SNP. MSP Clare Haughey (SNP) 8 The second vote is where it gets confusing. For the second vote, you are no longer voting simply as part of your constituency, but as part of a much larger region. Regions are usually made up of between 8 and 10 smaller constituencies. For instance, for the second vote the constituency of Rutherglen joins up with other constituencies to form the Glasgow region. Glasgow region (elects a further 7 ‘additional mebers’ to represent the entire region) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_constituencies_and_regions_from_2011 How are the regional MSPs allocated? The regional 2nd vote is where the proportional aspect of AMS is achieved. Voters vote for a party and a mathematical formula is applied through 7 rounds of scoring. At the end of each round the party with the highest score gets 1 regional MSP elected to represent the region. There are 8 regions in Scotland. Each region elects 7 regional MSPs, so there are 56 regional MSPs. Added to the 73 constituency MSPs, there are 129 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament in total. The formula is: Number of regional vote NumberNumber of ofregional seats already votes gained (both constituency and regional) _________________________________________________ Number of seats already won (constituency and regional) + 1 9 Party Const MSPs Regional Regional Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Rd 4 Rd 5 Rd 6 Rd 7 MSPs votes Labour 59,151 59,151 / 1 0 = 59,151 SNP 111,101 111,101 / 6 IIII IIII (9) = 18517 Conservative 29,533 29,533 / 1 0 = 29,533 Liberal 5,850 5,850 / 1 Democrats 0 =5,850 Green 23,398 23,398 / 1 0 = 23,398 Round 1 has been done for you. As you can see, after round 1 Labour have the highest score. Labour had put Anas Sarwar top of their Glasgow party list so he is elected to represent Glasgow as a regional MSP. You will now need to update the ‘Regional MSPs’ box to show a tally mark, as this will change their formula for Round 2. Complete the rest of the table, each time noting which party had had an MSP elected. Remember the number of regional votes never changes. Number of regional votes _________________________________________________ Number of seats already won (constituency and regional) + 1 10 You should have found that Glasgow elected 4 Labour MSPs, 2 Conservative MSPs, and 1 Green MSP: Anas Sarwar (Labour) Johann Lamont (Labour) James Kelly (Labour) Pauline McNeill (Labour) Adam Tomkins (Cons) Annie Wells (Cons) Patrick Harvie (Green) 2016 results: 11 A helpful mnemonic when thinking about what makes voting systems good or bad is the following sentence: PCLEC: Purple Cats Like Eating Chocolate.
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