The Members of a Scottish Parliament (MSPs) will be elected by Additional Member System (AMS), so the make up of a parliament will be more representative of the way people vote.

The ballot paper willl give voters the opportunity to vote for one of a selection of candidates to be elected by the first past the post (FPTP), as MPs are now, and for a political party. An MSP will be elected for each constituency by on the FPTP votes. The votes for the party will be used to elect candidates from lists drawn up by each party. These 'additional members' will be used to make a parliament more proportional and are more likely to come from perties which have not won many seats by FPTP, but have received a significant proportion of the vote.

This system will favour the Conservatives and the SNP most. On 1997 general election voting figures these two parties would win 22 additional seats each. This is 22 more than the Tories won under FPTP at the general election.

The additional member system will probably give even better results for the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and SNP at actual elections for a Scottish parliament. The proportional voting system will encourage people to vote for their most preferred party, rather than voting tactically, as many people did at the last general election.

The projection based on voting in the general election is probably a 'best case scenario' for the Labour Party, given that th election was a lanslide victory and that the FPTP system favours Labour in Scotland. Even given this Labour would not have won an overall majority of 65 MSPs if this were a Scottish election. This means that Scotland is likely to be ruled by coalition government.

Peter Snow shows how the Parliament might look