“So, farewell Scottish Parliament and godspeed.”
Thus ended the parliamentary career of Jamie McGrigor, who has been one of the Scottish Parliament’s more colourful characters since its inception in May 1999. It was fitting that his final speech was on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, given his long-standing interest in and wealth of experience of rural and agricultural matters.
Adam Ingram is a former economist who fought the Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley constituency election in 1999. He lost to Cathy Jamieson of the Labour and Co-operative Party, but was elected on the list for the South of Scotland.
Well, we’ve been rather quiet on here recently. With all the virtual tumbleweed, you might be forgiven for thinking we just swan off on holiday for the whole dissolution. Although we all make sure we take a well-deserved break—there were some exceptionally long days of meetings towards the end of session 4—that couldn’t be further from the truth. Read on to find out what we’ve been doing and check back to see our mini-series reflecting on on the parliamentary speaking careers of some MSPs who have stood down and won’t be returning on 6 May.
We confess to getting a teeny bit carried away with the Succession (Scotland) Bill, what with its gruesome murder and all. I blogged about it last week and the bill is featured again in today’s post written by one of our Sub-Editors:
When the negative procedure should have been affirmative.
There’s been a lovely little knot of parliamentary process under discussion recently. It popped up again on Thursday at the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee’s meeting. Perhaps it’s more one for the boffins.
Sometimes a bill passes through Parliament which is quite technical. The Succession (Scotland) Bill, passed today, was one such bill. Designed to make the law on succession fairer, clearer and more consistent it was the first significant amendment to the law of succession in more than 50 years. I was interested to note its impact on legislation over four hundred years old, with a gruesome murder thrown in:
Last weekend, Richard Baker resigned as a member of the Scottish Parliament with immediate effect. The Parliament had approximately 24 hours to prepare for the arrival of Lesley Brennan, the new regional member for North East Scotland, so we barely had time to be startled. Almost every office in the Parliament is involved with the arrival of a new MSP and colleagues were kept pretty busy making arrangements. I expect that Mrs Brennan was even busier.
