Research: What do the Scottish Parliament's new players bring to Team Scotland?
The David Hume Institute measures diversity of Scotland's top leaders, including the Scottish Parliament. The challenges the pandemic has brought mean we need to ensure diversity across decision makers to help recovery because diversity of thought improves organisation performance.
As the representative of people in Scotland, MSPs have a key role to play in helping the public see that leaders can come from all walks of life.
The speed of progress towards education diversity in Parliament is increasing. Now 1 in 5 or 20% of MSPs attended a fee paying school, compared to 1 in 4 (24%) in the last session. By comparison fee-paying pupils make up just 6% of the general population.
Unless the rate of change increases it will be the 2056 election before Parliament reflects the education background of the wider population.
The 2021 Scottish Parliament elections have rightly been praised for giving Scotland the most diverse Parliament in its history. With greater representation of people of colour, disability, LGBT+ community, young MSPs and female representation, intentional moves by political parties to increase diversity of candidates is leading to a Parliament that more accurately represents its population.
The research also analysed work experience and careers before politics. The 2021 intake of MSPs had a wide range of employment experience before entering the Scottish Parliament. This adds to the range of life experience and skills to draw on when representing people: for constituency case work, contributing to the committees and the chamber. 19% also have previous experience representing people through being local councillors.
Read the full analysis to find out more about the 2021 changes in the Scottish Parliament. The election feels like a milestone in progress towards Scotland becoming a more equal society but there is still a long way to go for the parliament to be representative of the Scottish population and to realise the benefits of greater diversity.
