Local Government and Regeneration Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Official Report 393KB pdf

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Local Government Elections 2012

Agenda item 7 is an update from our committee reporters on the work that they are doing on Scottish local elections.

I have an update from Anne McTaggart and myself, who are the committee reporters carrying out the brief inquiry. I remind members that the committee set the inquiry’s remit. We are to look at Scottish local authority elections and investigate eight key issues: voter turnout and how it can be increased; voter registration and how it can be increased; proxy voting, including postal voting and signature verification; the terminology used in and around elections; reasons why people do not vote; Robson rotation and the ordering of the ballot paper; diversity among voters and elected representatives, including any matters associated with the eligibility to stand, donations and the nomination process; and the timing of future elections, with a view to minimising clashes.

We have to report by Easter 2013 to the committee about any areas on which we consider that further action will be needed; the committee will hear later about action that we need the committee to take in relation to that date.

Initially, we asked the bodies that gave the committee formal evidence last year to come and update us. A call for evidence was issued on 25 January and we wrote to all local authorities, all political parties and all who gave evidence to the committee. The call for evidence was put on the website. The closing date for the receipt of evidence was 1 March. To date, we have received 15 submissions. The Scottish Government wrote to the convener on 5 March to say that it would not make a submission in response to the call for evidence but that it is interested in our findings and will respond to any points that are raised in our report.

We heard evidence from Scottish Government officials on 6 March and are due to take evidence from the Electoral Commission tomorrow—Thursday 14 March—and from Dr Clark on 28 March. Unfortunately, a meeting with the Electoral Management Board for Scotland had to be cancelled, but it has been rearranged for 2 May. Having reviewed the written evidence, we are also keen to hear from Dr Gilmour and we hope to do so on 18 April.

It has become clear that we will be unable to fulfil our remit in the original time allowed, so we ask the committee for an extension to complete our work and write our report. We suggest that the end of May would be a more appropriate date and would allow us adequate time to hear evidence and consider our report.

Thank you, John. Anne, do you have anything to add to that report?

We have kick-started the work and it all looks good. We are looking at various models and taking lots of different evidence, so it is all very interesting. It would be advantageous if the committee extended our time to allow us to bring back a full report.

Do committee members have any questions for the reporters?

When we wrote to the local authorities, did we ask any specific questions about local authorities in which independent councillors were elected? You said that you wrote to each political party, which was certainly the right thing to do, but is there any way of getting feedback from councillors who are not politically aligned?

We have received feedback from a number of local authorities, which tend to refer us to the EMB report that was presented after last year’s elections. We have received individual submissions, and I believe that one or two of them are from independent councillors, but they are leaders of authorities who are responding to the issues.

Until last week, we had received no feedback from political parties, but we have asked the clerks to write to them for responses to help us with our deliberations on the issues around local government elections.

Do you mean all political parties that are represented or all that stood in last year’s elections?

The call for evidence went out to local authorities. I understand Mr McMillan’s concern because, when a committee writes to a local authority, the correspondence tends to go to the chief executive or the leader of the administration, without any reference to individual elected members. We will write to David Parker as a representative of the independents in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

Does the committee agree to amend the inquiry timetable and allow until the end of May for the work, which will allow the reporters to report to the committee on the local government election issues that they are examining?

Members indicated agreement.