SEVEN regional list MSPs, six MEPs, one MP, one constituency MSP, and at least three councillors. That’s the array of choice for every person in Scotland if they want to raise an issue with an elected politician. Not enough, according to the consultative steering group set up to reflect on the first 20 years of the Scottish Parliament.

In its report published this week, the members led by former First Minister Henry McLeish said: “In the longer term and if pressures continue to mount, consideration may also have to be given to increasing the number of MSPs to meet… additional demands.”

At least the report had the good grace to acknowledge that "any call for more Members is one that is unlikely to be popular with the public".

When a small nation the size of Scotland already has 129 MSPs and 59 MPs, the suggestion that it would be "unlikely" to be popular is something of an understatement.

It ranks up there with the notion that the taxpayer-funded clothing allowance for Glasgow’s Lord Provost should be increased.

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It’s an impossible sell to Scottish voters, and the hard evidence isn’t there for this suggestion either.

Increasing the number of MSPs who can speak in lengthy chamber debates, or increasing the size of committees, is not going to automatically increase productivity. If anything, it could have the opposite effect with MSPs waiting hours on end to be called to deliver their party-approved soundbites.

If we are to accept that Holyrood’s ever-increasing powers have created extra pressure on Parliament, a far more sensible suggestion would be to increase the staffing allowance for MSPs – not the number of politicians.

MSPs’ staffers are the unsung heroes who pick up the phone to constituents and respond to the emails coming in – what’s called the casework.

It is staff members who know who to call to sort out a late bin collection, how to find someone temporary accommodation, or how to help a vulnerable person receive the benefits to which they are entitled.

They take on the casework and they complete it on the MSP’s behalf.

It’s the staff members who are the gatekeepers to MSPs, dealing with the lobbyists, charities and organisations who want to make their case.

They run the diary, they often write the speeches, they operate the office budget.

Yet the steering group report makes no reference to MSPs’ employees.

It may not be particularly popular with the public either, but if there is to be any additional taxpayers’ money spent on Holyrood, this is where extra capacity could actually help the voters of Scotland.

The group did, however, come to the right conclusion about the state of Holyrood’s committees.

“One of our biggest disappointments is that the Parliament’s committees have not emerged as a power in the land in the way that we had hoped,” they concluded.

It’s a disappointment shared by every political journalist who has endured a stale Holyrood committee meeting.

If staffers are the unsung heroes of the MSP offices, the journalists at the Press Association who file reports from several committees every week are their equivalent for the media lobby in Parliament.

With a few notable exceptions, Holyrood’s committees are generally tribal affairs where MSPs always put their parties first.

The worst examples are when ministers are called to give evidence, and SNP backbenchers come along not to hold them to account, but to stroke their egos.

Does the minister agree they are doing a wonderful job, we should all be very grateful to have such a wonderful minister, and anything that has gone wrong under the minister’s watch is all Westminster’s fault?

‘Journalese’ language dictates that these committees should be described as powerful, when a better description would be woeful.

So the steering group is right to challenge the current set-up, and to call for elected conveners to be considered.

This would, the members argue, "strengthen the independence of committees and give a clearer mandate for holding the government to account on behalf of the Parliament as a whole".

It’s baffling that this hasn’t already happened at Holyrood.

The only explanation can be that Westminster does it, so therefore it must be bad.

Unfortunately, while Holyrood works hard to do away with the many archaic and bewildering practices at Westminster, it simultaneously fails to recognise what it does right.

Elected committee chairmen and women were introduced in the House of Commons in 2010.

While you can still find cannon fodder on the committee seats, Select Committee chairs tend to be ex-ministers or less-partisan backbenchers, prepared to hold the Government to account and use increased media attention to their advantage.

They receive a larger salary, but this would surely be a better use of public funds that simply increasing the number of MSPs.

The Public Accounts Committee is a particularly powerful watchdog committee, always chaired by a leading opposition MP.

According to the Democratic Audit organisation, the reports from the independent National Audit Office it deals with come from the second most powerful supreme audit institution in the liberal democratic world, after the US.

So there is still a great deal that Holyrood could learn from the mother of Parliaments, 20 years after it was created to do things differently.

But so, too, of course, could Westminster learn from the Scottish Parliament.

It is increasingly hard to defend the lobby voting system in the Commons, and the amount of time it takes for MPs to cast a vote.

Supporters argue that it is valuable time for backbenchers to collar ministers or speak to one another when they are all crammed into one room.

But when sittings repeatedly drag on late into the night, it’s clear that the status quo cannot continue.

It’s not good for MPs’ physical or mental wellbeing; and it’s not good for democracy.

If inaccessibility of government ministers is a problem, that’s the reform that’s needed – not sustaining a centuries-old lobby system.

Queuing to have your name ticked off is ridiculous when compared with decision time at Holyrood, where there is electronic voting and no loss of transparency of accountability.

Yes, sometimes a distracted MSP might press the wrong button, but SNP MP Angus MacNeil once locked himself in the toilet after finding himself in the wrong voting lobby.

Both parliaments can – and should - learn from each other.

Both have systems and set-ups that work, and those that don’t work.

Party political tribalism in the Scottish Parliament is unlikely to disappear any time soon, but tribalism between Holyrood and Westminster cannot be allowed to stand in the way of making both parliaments deliver more for voters.