Just noticed you said you test environment is 2005

You have to split up the declare and assign of the @newlVal variable.

So

SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE;

BEGIN TRANSACTION;

DECLARE @NewVal BIGINT;

SELECT @NewVal = (SELECT MAX(member_id) FROM dbo.member WITH (TABLOCKX))+1;

INSERT INTO dbo.Member (member_id, column list)

VALUES (@NewVal, @params);

COMMIT;

Just a note you posted in a 2008 forum on here so GSquared gave you a 2008 answer.

Cheers,

Rodders...