Lord Wallace was Scotland’s first deputy first minister after leading Scottish Liberal Democrats into a coalition with Labour at Holyrood in 1999.
Former Scottish deputy first minister Jim Wallace has said the number of MSPs at Holyrood “needs to be looked at again”.
The Liberal Democrat, who served as an MP before joining the Scottish Parliament when it was established, told how during his time at Westminster he had been involved in discussions about how the new parliament would operate.It had already been agreed proportional representation would be used, with Lord Wallace recalling discussions from the time about how many MSPs there should be.
However Lord Wallace said: “In retrospect it was probably the right thing to do. Because I think it gave the Parliament a political grounding which once done you can never roll back.” Lord Wallace was Scotland’s first deputy first minister, with then-Labour leader Donald Dewar the first first ministerHowever he recalled the talks hitting a “stumbling block” over issues such as tuition fees, after his party made a pledge to scrap these during the 1999 elections.
While he said the Liberal Democrats would have been a “responsible opposition” the parties managed to resolve their differences and established a coalition which would govern in Scotland until 2007.
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