‘IN the aftermath of the Referendum and all the discussion about reforming the UK constitution, a suggestion has been made that there should be a 50:50 ratio of male to female MSPs. I fundamentally disagree with this proposal and I do so for three principal reasons.

Firstly, I believe any elected member - of whatever level of Government - should be there on merit and not because of his or her gender, or indeed any other criteria such as race or social background.

We are in an age when a sizeable proportion of the electorate has become ‘anti-politics’ and so the last thing I believe we need are artificial targets to determine who should be our elected members.

Politicians have become unpopular people in recent times. Part of the anti-politics movement is because there is insufficient trust in the body politic and I think we risk making that situation worse if we gerrymander the selection of MSPs. Forcing a 50:50 ratio would, by definition, exclude some talented individuals from getting selected by their parties (and ultimately elected) simply because they were a man or a women. I don’t believe many colleagues want to win a seat selection because they happen to be of a particular gender. They want to be selected because they will be good at their job.

Secondly, I am by no means convinced there is a real problem. Given that it is almost certain that Nicola Sturgeon will become leader of the SNP in November, she will join Johann Lamont and Ruth Davidson and become the third female leader of a Parliamentary party. That is a significant achievement for Scottish politics especially when you consider that Nicola Sturgeon will also become Scotland’s first female First Minister.

Neither - when you drill down further - is there a specific issue about female representation amongst MSPs generally. In 1999, at the birth of the Scottish Parliament, almost 50% of Labour MSPs were women and the SNP were not far behind. The two parties which did not show up particularly well at that time were the Conservatives (17%) and the Liberals (11%) but they too are now making progress. 40% of the Conservatives’ current Parliamentary party is female. Yes, it’s true, there was a small decline in SNP and Labour female MSP representation between the 2007 and 2011 Holyrood elections, but I do not detect any major concern amongst MSPs themselves or, perhaps more importantly, any real public clamour for change. If the public have criticisms of their MSPs, it is not because of their gender but because of how they do their job - exactly as it should be.

Times have moved on. Gone are the days which politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Betty Boothroyd had to endure when there was a deep-seated bias against women candidate selection and an in-built male dominated society where the barriers proved impenetrable.

On the contrary, Holyrood has a very good record when it comes to female representation and, when you also add into the mix the fact that the Presiding Officer is female, I fail to see why anyone could possibly accuse Scottish politics of being biased against women and preventing them from getting into the top jobs.

The third reason why I oppose this move is that I cannot see how it can work without forcing the same selection regime on all political parties - something which, even in the very unlikely event that all the political parties agreed, would not be very democratic. Political parties have their own principles and policies and candidate selection should reflect that.

The details of the proposals for the Women 50:50 campaign are not at all clear, but, from what I can see, some of the proponents seem to be arguing that it could only work if there was an accompanying move to shift the whole Parliament to an STV system of elections. This would then allow some complex process of voters being presented with an equal number of men and women at election time. It all sounds very complicated. Voters already find the political process in Scotland difficult enough given that they are faced with four different voting systems for council, Holyrood, Westminster and European elections, so adding to this complexity seems very unwise.

Radical change comes about in politics when the majority is persuaded that the benefits of the change substantially outweigh those of the status quo. I cannot see how the public will be persuaded in this instance. Indeed, there is a key question for the proponents of the campaign: exactly what evidence is there that the Holyrood Parliament is failing to do its job properly in terms of representing the voters because we do not have 50:50 representation of men and women? If there was a satisfactory answer to this then maybe a case could be made for change, but I don’t believe that evidence exists. Women do very well at Holyrood - indeed, the way things are going it will be the male MSPs who need to get worried!’