LYNDA Clark, the advocate general, today announces she is standing down from her Edinburgh Pentlands seat at the general election.

The decision by the chief Scottish law officer to the UK government will ease any anxieties Alistair Darling had over finding a seat after the planned reduction of Scottish MPs.

The Scottish secretary's Edinburgh Central is to disappear in boundary changes, but Dr Clark has paved the way for him to move into the new Pentlands seat, in which much of Mr Darling's current constituency will fall.

Dr Clark QC, 55, a former advocate and lecturer, won the seat from Sir Malcolm Rifkind in Labour's landslide victory of 1997. Four years later, she held on to it despite a strong challenge from the former Conservative foreign secretary, who cut her majority by more than 3000 to 1742.

When elected, she became Edinburgh's first woman MP and, in 1999, became Britain's first woman law officer when she was appointed advocate general, a post created as a result of devolution.

In a letter to her local party, she says ''the crucial question is whether I wish to offer myself again in a situation where I may be elected to serve until 2010 or beyond. Having given the matter serious thought, I regret I have decided not to seek re-selection.''

Dr Edward Trevillion, the constituency party chairman in the last election campaign, said: ''Dr Clark has been a first-class constituency MP who has been good at helping constituents as well as dealing with complex law at ministerial level.''