SNP veteran Fergus Ewing has called for Highland constituencies to be redrawn amid concerns the regions's voters are going unheard.

The backbencher has long argued that rural communities are being overlooked at a Scottish parliament dominated by the densely populated central belt.

Highland politicians say they struggle to deliver a good service to their voters because of the distances they have to cover.

Writing in The Times, Mr Ewing suggests increasing the number of seats in the Highland council area from three to four in the current round of boundary changes.

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He said: "Were just seat to be reduced from cities a fourth can be created in The Highlands."

The Herald:

He said the constituency of his colleague Kate Forbes, MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, was more than 500 times the size of the average Glasgow seat.

His call has been backed by other MPs who are concerned about the size of Westminster electoral districts in the Scottish Highlands. These will get bigger under separate boundary changes.

Ian Blackford, MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, said: "My current constituency is 12,000 sq km, which, for context, is about the same size as Northern Ireland.

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"A big part of the job is being able to meet with people and from a practical point of view, that is extremely difficult.

"I have had to do surgeries in 32 different places.

"It is important that people are represented properly and I just do not feel with the size of these constituencies that it is possible to do that.

"I think people are disadvantaged," he added.

Mr Blackford says the area should be treated the same as Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland. The electorate of the Western Isles is less than a third of the size as Mr Ewing's Inverness and Nairn.

Jamie Stone, Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross agreed.

He said: "With the best will in the world, you can't really cover an area as big as mine or Ian's.

"This has to be revisited because it's becoming frankly ludicrous."

A third of the seats at Holyrood are to be redrawn and renamed under boundary changes that would see Eastwood near Glasgow disappear from the electoral map.

While Humza Yousaf’s Glasgow constituency looks more winnable for the SNP under the plans, Nicola Sturgeon’s neighbouring seat would be radically redrawn and straddle the River Clyde.

In the first such review in 15 years, Boundaries Scotland proposes changing the shape and name of 25 of the 73 first-past-the-post seats at Holyrood for the 2026 election.

Of the rest, 21 are wholly unchanged, including the three island constituencies, and 26 retain their name while undergoing “relatively little change” in shape.

One seat, North East Fife, keeps its boundaries but changes its name to Fife North East to distinguish it from the equivalent seat at Westminster.

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Eastwood, which is roughly equivalent to East Renfrewshire Council, is broken up, with its northern suburbs - Clarkston, Busby, Giffnock and Thornliebank - added to parts of Glasgow Cathcart and Glasgow Pollok to become Glasgow Priesthill & Giffnock.

While in the south, Newton Mearns and Eaglesham are put into Renfrewshire South alongside Barrhead, Neilston, Kilbarchan and Lochwinnoch.

North of the Clyde, Strathkelvin & Bearsden disappears, with Bearsden becoming part of a new Bearsden, Milngavie & Clydebank North seat, and most of the rest going into a new Kirkintilloch & Kilsyth seat.

The largest seat would still be Caithness, Sutherland and Ross at 12,792 square kilometres, while Edinburgh Northern & Leith, at 13 sq km, would be the smallest.

The proposals now go out to an initial month-long consultation, followed by subsequent discussions, including local inquiries where at least 100 local electors object.