Today, we have been lucky enough to have Muriel Miller, from the Scottish Parliament, visiting us. It has been such an interesting and engaging afternoon.
Muriel shared with us some key information about the Scottish Parliament….and we learned all about devolved powers in Scotland.
After this, we got a chance to experience a mini election. We were separated into small groups, in which we had to choose a leader. Each group represented a ‘political party’ and we had some time to create our manifesto. After this, our group leaders presented our manifestos and encouraged us to vote for them. We then had an anonymous vote, using ballot papers. It ended up with a coalition!
    
    
    
Then, we had a parliamentary debate. We debated whether or not smoking should be banned in Scotland. Kanchana was nominated as our Presiding Officer and she did an incredible job at chairing the debate. We all learned about the ceremony and language involved in a parliamentary debate and we were able to use this when we debated. After that, we voted on the issue and our scores were correlated. This information was given to the Presiding Officer, who created the ‘Bill’. Our ‘Bill’ then got signed by the Queen, thus making it law! It was brilliant, and very interesting.
    
    
    
We would like to say a massive thank you to Muriel for making the trip to see us…we want to know more about Scottish politics now!
