Arbuthnott Commission Arbuthnott Commission The Arbuthnott Commission on Boundary Differences and Voting Systems was set up in July 2004 by Alistair Darling, then Secretary of State for Scotland, under the chairmanship of Sir John Arbuthnott, to examine various consequences of having four different electoral systems in Scotland, and different boundaries for constituencies of the House of Commons (Parliament of the United Kingdom, at Westminster) and the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood). In 2004, Scotland had three different electoral systems: plurality (first past the post) for Westminster and local government elections, and two different systems of proportional representation (PR) for European Parliament and Scottish Parliament
John Arbuthnott (microbiologist) John Arbuthnott (microbiologist) Sir John Peebles Arbuthnott, PPRSE, FRCPSG, FMedSci, FRCPath (born 8 April 1939) is a Scottish microbiologist, and was Principal of the University of Strathclyde. He succeeded Lord Wilson of Tillyorn as President of The Royal Society of Edinburgh in October 2011 and was succeeded by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell in October 2014. Arbuthnott was educated at Hyndland Senior Secondary School, Glasgow University (BSc, PhD), and Trinity College, Dublin (MA, ScD). In 1998 he was made a Knight Bachelor for services to education. Whilst Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Strathclyde University, Arbuthnott chaired the "National Review of Resource Allocation