Public and Commercial Services Union

MSPs tend to be more accessible than MPs. All MSPs are contactable by email as well as in writing. It is worth remembering to include your home postal address if you are a constituent or your workplace postal address if it is in the MSP’s constituency, as this will carry more weight.
 

MSPs’ email addresses follow the formula firstname.surname.msp@scottish.parliament.uk.
 

Full contact details for each MSP can be obtained by logging on the member’s pages and videos page on the Parliament’s website and clicking on the individual member in whom you are interested.

As well as biographies you will also find short video clips, register of interests, details of parliamentary interests, constituency office contact details, surgeries and links to the MSPs’ own websites, where they exist.

All MSPs can be contacted at:

The Scottish Parliament
Holyrood
Edinburgh EH99 1SP

If you want to find out who your MSP is, you can also log on to the Scottish Parliament website and insert your post code. Or you can call the Parliament’s public information office on 0131-348 5000.

Constituency and Regional MSPs

The Scottish Parliament is elected under the Additional Member System (AMS) which is aimed at ensuring that the number of seats held by each party roughly corresponds to their proportion of the vote.

The Boundary Commission’s changes to Westminster constituency seats at the 2005 General Election now means that the Scottish Parliament and Westminster constituencies do not mirror each other.

The Scottish Parliament continues to have 73 constituency MSPs, whereas there are now only 59 Scottish MPs at Westminster.

In addition to the 73 constituency MSPs, there are also an additional 56 Regional List MSPs. When lobbying the Scottish Parliament, you should always make sure that you make contact with your Regional List MSPs as well as Constituency Members.

Devolved and reserved responsibilities

In approaching your MSP, it is important to bear in mind the division of functions between the Scottish and the Westminster Parliaments. The Scottish Parliament has devolved legislative powers over:

• Health
• Education and training
• Local government
• Social work
• Housing
• Planning
• Tourism, economic development and financial assistance to industry
• Some aspects of transport, including the Scottish road network, bus policy and ports and harbours
• Law and home affairs, including most aspects of criminal and civil law, the prosecution system and the courts
• The Police and Fire services
• The environment
• Natural and built heritage
• Agriculture, forestry and fishing
• Sport and the arts
• Statistics, public registers and records

Meeting your elected representative

• introduce yourself and say where you live and work
• thank him or her for seeing you
• establish how much time you have
• clearly and simply explain the background to our campaigns as they may be unaware of some of the issues involved
• make sure you give local examples of how you or your members have been affected by delegated and low pay, job cuts, privatisation or the increased use of consultants. For example if you are addressing concerns regarding job cuts you may want to talk about our concerns as well as specific service delivery problems in your area
• Remember, while the politician may not be sympathetic to our national concerns over civil service pay, job cuts, privatisation and the increased use of consultants, they are likely to be concerned about proposals that directly affect their constituency/ward
• Most importantly, ask the politician if they support our campaign and what they are specifically prepared to do, such as lobby MPs/Ministers on our behalf. Ask them to keep in regular contact with you and to give you copies of any responses they receive. You may also want to ask them if they are prepared to publicly support our campaign and if they would like to attend workplace meetings or visit picket lines. This is an excellent way of getting wider publicity for our campaign

After meeting politicians