Thank you, convener. I am pleased to be here to present the draft Representation of the People (Annual Canvass) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Regulations 2020. Members will recall, I am sure, that I was here seven weeks ago to give evidence to the committee on two draft Scottish statutory instruments: first, a set of regulations that allow for electoral registration officers in Scotland to take part in testing a new data-matching process—that testing is taking place this week—and secondly, an order that paved the way for the regulations that the committee is considering today.
Members will also recall that the purpose of the regulations is to reform the annual canvass process; currently, it is heavily paper based, complex to administer and inefficient. The reforms will give EROs greater discretion to target their resources at properties where additions or deletions to the register are more likely to be required. The reforms will make the annual canvass process simpler and clearer for citizens and should make maintaining the completeness and accuracy of our electoral register a simpler process.
The regulations will do that by permanently introducing a data-match step at the outset of the canvass process, which will involve electoral administrators matching their data on electors against data that is held by the Department for Work and Pensions, which taps into Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs data and, where relevant, locally held data sources such as council-tax records. The EROs will then follow one of two prescribed routes. Route 1 will be used for properties for which the data indicates no changes in household composition and route 2 will be used where the data indicates that there has been a change. That will allow the canvass process to be streamlined for households that are unlikely to have changed in composition since the previous year, and it will enable the EROs to target their resources at properties in which changes are much more likely to have occurred.
A third route is available for certain defined properties, such as student halls and care homes, where an ERO believes that they can more effectively and efficiently source the information by making contact with a responsible person at the property, such as a manager.
For all three routes, the regulations allow for more efficient and modern communication methods—such as emails, text messages or phone calls—where the means to do those things have been provided by the individual concerned. Those are in addition to the more traditional paper communications and household visits that are currently legislated for.
The reforms to the annual canvass have been consulted on and have received strong support from stakeholders, including the Scottish Assessors Association and the Electoral Commission. They are already in force for the register for United Kingdom Parliament elections and the registers of local government electors in England and Wales. I ask members to support the regulations so that we can continue to modernise our electoral processes and strengthen our democracy.