Local Government Committee, 05 Oct 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 5, 1999

Official Report 199KB pdf

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Special Islands Needs Allowance

A letter has come to us from the Rural Affairs Committee about the special islands needs allowance. Argyll and Bute Council is proposing that it should receive special islands needs allowance.

The Executive has answered a question from Duncan Hamilton, which is reproduced at the foot of the first page of the letter. Again, I do not think that this is an emergency, but something must be done, and by this committee. There are two ways of progressing. First, we could write to Jack McConnell, the Minister for Finance, giving him some of the information that we have from Argyll and Bute and asking him what his position is on this matter. Secondly, we could ask him to the committee and question him. I have a wee question mark against that because we cannot, every time something comes up, say, "Hey, Jack; come on—we want to question you for 20 minutes." Perhaps, in the first instance, I should write a comprehensive letter on the committee's behalf and ask him to comment.

That is an excellent idea, convener. I have just been sent a document called "Islands on the edge: the case for an interim SINA payment for Argyll and Bute council". It has the support of all the elected members of that council, representing all four political parties and the independents. You may want to send it on to Jack and circulate it to the committee. Unfortunately, it arrived only this afternoon. Councillors in Argyll and Bute have approached me and asked if they can make their case directly to the committee. Might you consider that?

We could consider that once we have had Jack's reply. If he says, "Okay, fine, I will do it" there will be no point in calling the councils. If not, we might wish to pursue evidence.

Part of the establishment argument has been that if Argyll and Bute gets more, other island areas will get less. That seems an unsound argument. There is no reason why the island part of the budget could not be slightly increased, thereby allowing Argyll and Bute to get extra funding, and not at the expense of other island areas. This question has been discussed for many years by the distribution committee, but always on the basis that other areas will get less if Argyll and Bute gets more. The distribution committee always hedges its bets, and that forum does not work. There must be another group—such as ourselves—that exercises the judgment of Solomon and chops various bits of money in half.

When Jack came to the committee I remember him saying that he was interested in our becoming involved in the distribution side of things, so we can certainly pick this up.

The approach that is being suggested is appropriate. I do not want to comment either way because I do not have the knowledge on which to make a judgment at this stage, but I think that we should resist the temptation to rush into a sudden decision in favour of one particular argument. There are other arguments: Johann has put forward cases in Glasgow on the basis of poverty indicators. Others may put forward cases based on population growth in areas such as the one I represent. We must be careful not to jump to the conclusion that a particular type of authority is being treated unfairly.

There are obviously different problems in different parts of Scotland, but it seems strange that an authority area that includes 27 islands should be treated differently from other island communities. That is a very odd situation, and we must find out why Argyll has been discriminated against in such a way.

You are right. We need to ask why one group of islands gets the special islands needs allowance and another does not.

In a country that is as diverse as Scotland, people should not be made to feel left out. I have island relatives—not in Argyll, but in the Western Isles—who often feel that they are being treated as peripheral while most attention and money is paid to the central belt.

Would members be happy for me to write a comprehensive letter to Jack McConnell and pick the matter up again once we have received his reply?

Members indicated agreement.

I think that we have now covered all the matters that were before us.

I have a few more points to make. Eugene Windsor showed me the mapping exercise he has started, and it is quite good.

Well done, Eugene.

I only got to see his etchings. [Laughter.]

I hope that we can finish that off. I know that Eugene has other ideas that he wants to incorporate. Could that be sent out before the next meeting?

With the agreement of the convener, we can circulate it as an information item once we have all the factual details straightened out.

Good.

I already have a letter in draft to be sent out to all councils and chief executives. It will go out once we have done the mapping.

By coming in late, did I miss something to do with the presentation that we had this afternoon?

I do not think so.

In that case, could I raise a few points that arise from the presentation? Would it be advisable to get more information about the European systems, for example? I think it was Kenny Gibson who said that those systems would not be appropriate, but it would be good to know more about them. People have told me that countries such as Spain have a lot to offer in terms of devolved responsibility. It would be quite interesting to see the type of electoral systems that are used there.

I believe that Morag Brown of the information centre is already working on that, but the problem is that there has been little academic research covering the areas that members want to look at. We shall see what she comes up with in the next week or so.

Surely it is possible to get basic information from European countries about the systems that they operate?

I think that that will be possible, but it is difficult to do comprehensively in the required time scale and with current resources. SPICe is working on it.

There is concern on the conveners committee about the number of researchers working for committees. Morag looks after housing and social inclusion and part of another committee's remit, as well as working for this committee. Although the information is there, it may take us some time to get it.

I raised this point with the three wise men who spoke to us earlier on—I hope that I get due credit for exercising restraint and not asking them a question. They said that this is complicated. In many countries there is more than one system; in Germany, for example, the Länder can have different local government voting systems. Many local government units are much smaller than ours, so a different voting system may be appropriate. The voting system for local government units that are the size of Brechin or Forfar might not be appropriate in a bigger area. They said that remarkably little work had been done, but two academic books touched on this issue, and they offered to send copies to the committee.

I asked a question on this when the people from the Electoral Reform Society were here and I have been trying to find out information on it for the past couple of months. Even John Curtice does not have the information. The Electoral Reform Society said that the three systems that have been considered have been chosen because the tradition in Britain is that there should be a ward link, and that the problem with European systems is that there is no tradition of a ward link there.

It is my understanding that the 15 European Union countries have 15 systems, and that Norway has a completely different system, but it would muddy the water to examine them as none of them has the ward link that McIntosh recommends as essential. We might end up going round in circles and spending a lot of committee time for no real purpose.

We could certainly get information to you, which you could consider and decide whether to take further.

It might be a good idea to set aside 10 or 15 minutes in meetings to discuss what witnesses have said and how we want to take it forward. We have done that at the end of this meeting rather than immediately after the witnesses were here—I needed a comfort break.

The witnesses put forward the STV system. I appreciate what you said about the researchers being overloaded, but it would be worthwhile knowing how the system operates in the countries that use it, and whether there are any disadvantages.

We might get some of that information from Curtice when he comes. You may have a fair point. I spoke to the Electoral Reform Society witnesses and told them that we may contact them if there are things that we want to know.

I wonder whether, in putting together a system that squares the circle of the different problems of four main cities, a large conurbation in the middle and remoteness elsewhere, we could examine countries that are similar to Scotland—maybe Norway or Sweden, or even Greece, although in Greece wards are tiny.

We are all pushing to do a European trip.

Not really.

I think that the Australian system is particularly worthy of study.

We have to be careful that we do not end up simply duplicating the work that Kerley is doing—we can examine his work when he comes to the committee.

It seems to me that if you have one particular set of criteria for choosing a new voting system, the single transferable vote system comes out as the answer. If the issue of independents was not among the criteria that McIntosh identified, would STV still come out as the answer? I am not sure it would. We can explore those kinds of questions with Kerley and, perhaps, with someone such as John Curtice. To what extent does setting the criteria beg the question? Have other criteria been identified in places where changes to the electoral system have been considered? Why did New Zealand end up with the system that they have now? Were they looking for different things from their system when they were considering changes?

McIntosh went to Europe, to north America and to other countries to look at various systems, but still came back with those three recommendations.

That is something that we could explore with him, if he is coming back.

He will be.

Thank you all for your attendance, and I will see you next week.

Meeting closed at 16:10.