sp

name	sp
description	Query the Scottish Parliament Open Data API at data.parliament.scot/api — Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs, current and historical), constituencies, regions, parties, committees, and committee membership. JSON endpoints with PascalCase resource names; the API REQUIRES an Accept: application/json header (default content negotiation returns 405). First-party to the Scottish Parliament; tier-3 from a Westminster perspective. Use when the question is about an MSP, a Holyrood committee, or Scottish electoral geography (constituencies / regions for the Additional Member System).
license	Open Government Licence v3.0 (Crown copyright, Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body)
metadata	{"facility":"sp","cli-alias":"sp","base-url":"https://data.parliament.scot/api","provenance":{"tier":3,"operator":"The Scottish Parliament","service":"data.parliament.scot/api","upstream-data":"Scottish Parliament's own administrative database — Members, Parties, Committees, Constituencies, Regions","citation-short":"via data.parliament.scot","citation-formal":"Scottish Parliament Open Data API, retrieved {date}, OGL v3.0","confidence":"authoritative","confidence-notes":"Authoritative for the Scottish Parliament's own data. Tier 3 here because forgetmenot's centre of gravity is Westminster — from Holyrood's perspective this would be tier 1."}}

Scottish Parliament Open Data

Base URL: https://data.parliament.scot/api

The Scottish Parliament's open-data service. Resource names are PascalCase (Members, Committees, MemberParties) and the service requires an Accept: application/json header — the default text/html content negotiation returns 405. The library sets the header automatically.

Devolved parliaments are first-party to their own legislature and third-party to Westminster; per docs/provenance.md we use the sp- producer slug. The folder is named sp for short.

Endpoints wrapped

Resource	Wrap	What
Members	members	MSPs (current + historical)
MemberParties	memberParties	MSP party-membership records (with dates)
MemberElectionConstituencyStatuses	memberElectionConstituencyStatuses	Per-election constituency results
MemberElectionRegionStatuses	memberElectionRegionStatuses	Per-election regional list results
Constituencies	constituencies	Holyrood constituencies
Regions	regions	Holyrood electoral regions (AMS top-up)
Parties	parties	Parties represented in Holyrood
Committees	committees	Committees (current + historical)
CommitteeMembers	committeeMembers	Committee membership records
(helper)	probeResources	Probe a list of resource names for 200 / 404

CLI

parl sp members                          # all MSPs
parl sp parties                          # all parties
parl sp committees                       # all committees
parl sp committee-members                # membership records
parl sp constituencies                   # Scottish constituencies
parl sp regions                          # Scottish electoral regions (AMS top-up)
parl sp member-parties                   # MSP party-membership records
parl sp probe Foo,Bar,Baz                # probe undocumented resources

Holyrood electoral system primer

The Scottish Parliament uses the Additional Member System:

• 73 constituency seats (Constituencies resource) elected by first-past-the-post — comparable to Westminster constituencies but on Scottish-only boundaries.
• 56 regional list seats (Regions resource) — 8 regions, each electing 7 members from party lists using a d'Hondt top-up to deliver proportional party totals.
• Each MSP has either a constituency status OR a regional status per election (some have both across multiple elections); the MemberElectionConstituencyStatuses and MemberElectionRegionStatuses resources record those.

Joins to Parliament (Westminster)

• Cross-membership: a handful of people have held both Westminster and Holyrood seats (notably Alex Salmond). Match by name; there is no cross-system ID. Use wikidata for a stable cross-ID via a Wikidata QID where one exists.
• Constituency boundaries: Scottish Westminster constituencies are not the same as Scottish Holyrood constituencies — different boundaries, different review cycles. For Westminster boundaries use ons-geo WMC; for Holyrood, sp constituencies or mysoc-mapit SPC / SPE area types.
• Reserved vs devolved matter: when a topic is reserved to Westminster, scrutiny lives in hansard / committees; when devolved, the Holyrood committees own it. Many topics straddle both — expect duplication and check Sewel-convention status.

Caveats

• Accept header is mandatory. Without Accept: application/json, the server returns 405 Method Not Allowed. The library sets the header automatically; if you hit the URL by hand, include it.
• No pagination metadata in some resources. Several resources return the full collection in one response; large ones (e.g. Members across all sessions) can be hundreds of KB.
• Documentation drifts. Scottish Parliament documentation at data.parliament.scot/Documentation lists more resources than always work; probe-resources lets you sanity-check.
• No Hansard / business data here. This API covers membership / committee / parties / geography metadata, not the Official Report (Holyrood's equivalent of Hansard) or Bill stages — those live on other Scottish Parliament surfaces not yet wrapped.

Provenance to cite

Tier 3 — third-party (The Scottish Parliament). Authoritative to its own legislature; third-party from a Westminster perspective.

• Inline cite: "(via data.parliament.scot)" — once per paragraph.
• When mixing with Westminster data, attribute each fact to its source: "per Members API: X; per data.parliament.scot: Y". Don't merge.
• Match MSPs to MPs by name only with caution — no shared identifier; use Wikidata QID as the cross-ID bridge where one exists.
• See ../../docs/provenance.md.