The 1707 Union gave Scotland 45 seats in the new 558-seat British House of Commons. Scotland, in common with other parts of the United Kingdom, shared in the growing democratisation of the political system of the following centuries, as reflected in the gradual extension of the right to vote to all adults, and the creation of constituencies which reflected their population size, in a series of Acts of Parliament since 1832. Scotland gained eight seats in the 1832 reforms, giving it 53 in a 658-seat House of Commons (which by then included 100 MPs from Ireland). This rose to 60 in the 1867-68 reforms and to 72 in 1884-85, by which time Scotland was over-represented in strict population terms. In the House of Lords, the 1963 Peerage Act allowed all Scottish peers to sit, rather than just 16 representative peers, as had been allowed by the 1707 legislation.

The treatment of distinct Scottish parliamentary business at Westminster developed to reflect Scotland’s separate legal, education and church systems, and to mirror the trend towards devolving the administrative government of Scotland. The need for legislation tailored to Scottish needs and for Scottish ministers and their policies to be held to account by Scotland’s elected representatives became hard to accommodate satisfactorily within the British parliamentary system at Westminster. Often Scottish legislation was included in bills for the rest of the UK, despite the different legal and administrative arrangements.

From the end of the nineteenth century, there were various changes to the ways in which specifically Scottish business was handled within a Westminster context, such as the establishment of special committees. More information about these changes can be found on the timeline.

The Path to Devolution