The people have spoken, so what happens next? How is the devolved Scottish Parliament to be set up? The first hurdle facing Mr Blair's government will be to steer the formal legislation required for a Scottish Parliament through the House of Commons and then the House of Lords. Labour has pencilled in the debate on the Scotland Bill for the end of the year.

But, mindful of the Tory majority in the House of Lords, the Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, warned peers only last month that they should "think again" before voting down or delaying the Bill. But if they do, legislation may not be passed until early next year.

The Bill should receive royal assent by next summer or autumn and from then until May 1999, when elections to the parliament will take place, progress will halt. Its first session is not expected until January 2000.

Scottish Parliament elections will be similar to a conventional general election campaign, with the usual four to six weeks campaigning ahead of a formal election.

A new parliament must have new titles for its members and the 129 politicians who will take their seats in Edinburgh will be known as Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). They will be elected under a form of proportional representation whereby 73 will be elected under the present first-past-the-post system and the remaining 56 will be selected from party lists.

Competition for the seats will be fierce. The Tories, bruised by the devolution defeat, have said they will need to win as many seats as possible to "stop that Parliament degenerating into a vehicle for independence".

Labour will be keen to avoid packing the Scottish Parliament with politicians from the Central Belt, many of whom have recently caused it severe embarrassment. It should draw up a list of 200 candidates vetted by the party leadership in London.

It is believed the Scottish Secretary, Mr Donald Dewar, could become the parliament's First Minister, or prime minister.

The Liberal Democrats will allow their candidates to take advantage of the "dual mandates" plan outlined in the government's White Paper on Scotland.

It allows MPs to take seats in the first term of a Scottish parliament while retaining their Westminster seats, although they would not be allowed to draw two salaries. MPs would be allowed to continue to work under the dual mandate until the next general election when they would have to decide in which parliament they wished to serve.

The six Scottish Nationalist Party MPs will almost certainly stand for the new Parliament.