Motherwell and Wishaw is a constituency of the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood) covering part of the council area of North Lanarkshire.

It is also one of nine constituencies in the Central Scotland electoral region, which elects seven additional members, in addition to nine constituency MSPs, to produce a form of proportional representation for the region as a whole.

The other eight constituencies of the Central Scotland region are: Airdrie and Shotts, Coatbridge and Chryston, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, East Kilbride, Falkirk East, Falkirk West, Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse and Uddingston and Bellshill.

[2] The Holyrood constituency is one of four covering the North Lanarkshire council area, the others being Airdrie and Shotts, Coatbridge and Chryston and Cumbernauld and Kilsyth; Uddingston and Bellshill spans parts of both North and South Lanarkshire.

The MSP John Pentland won the seat on McConnell's retirement in 2011, but the national SNP landslide of that year turned it for the first time from safe Labour into a Labour-SNP marginal with just two percentage points separating Pentland and his nearest opponent, the SNP's Clare Adamson.