David Millar (civil servant)

Review of the parliamentary procedures has continued, with substantial changes to the committees, and broadly in the 2016 Commission on Parliamentary Reform.

After retiring to Scotland in 1990, David Millar shared his experience in parliaments at the University of Edinburgh, teaching at the Europa Institute, and publishing on political theory and practice. He was soon planning for a possible Scottish Parliament, while the political momentum for devolution grew in the Scottish Constitutional Convention. An initial paper for the Labour-backed thinktank, the John Wheatley Centre in 1991 was followed by a fresh commission to draft Standing Orders for a Scottish Parliament in 1995, and by appointment to the Government's Expert Panel on Procedures and Standing Orders in the Scottish Parliament in 1998, advising the Consultative Steering Group.

OBE for his work at the European Parliament, in the 1989 Birthday Honours.

The transition to direct elections was among his early work for the European Parliament in 1974-76, a project that was led by the Dutch socialist Schelto Patijn. Members elected to national parliaments had previously been appointed to the European level. From 1979, Europeans elected their MEPs directly, marking "a historic step" beyond the commercial focus of the Common Market and towards a political European Union.

David Millar's professional life centred on the operation of parliaments, helping MPs to navigate the legislative procedures as a clerk in the House of Commons in London until 1973 and, after the UK joined the European Economic Community, rising to become the Director of Research in the equivalent part of the European Parliament, based in Luxembourg.

David Millar OBE (1929 – 2016) was a Scottish civil servant who contributed to the work of three parliaments. His experience of the UK House of Commons (1953-1973) and of the European Parliament (1973-1989) led to his drafting the Standing Orders for the future Scottish Parliament. The draft document co-authored with Sir Bernard Crick proposed working methods that diverged from the Westminster model, and several of these were adopted by the newly-formed Scottish Parliament in 1999.

The ambition of the Crick-Millar proposals, born in part from the contrast between the Westminster and European Parliaments, was noted as a system in which the executive “need not and should not have such total domination over the legislative process as has evolved at Westminster”. The standing orders were intended to play an important role in taking "a unique opportunity for Scotland to devise procedures more suited to its own civic tradition and the 21st century".