Agenda item 2 is further consideration of the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill, for which we have witnesses from the Scottish Executive. Andrew Rushworth is head of the local government finance and constitution division, and Sarah Morrell is the local democracy team leader. I welcome them both to the committee.
We are very grateful to the committee for giving us the opportunity to explain the Executive's position on the financial implications of the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill, as set out in the financial memorandum, and we wish to be as helpful as we can be in this respect.
You referred to the SOLACE submission, which the committee asked SOLACE to provide. Like you, I believe that it is a useful piece of work. I would like to hear your comments on the conclusion of the submission, which is
The SOLACE estimate is based on a range of assumptions, which are set out in the paper; that is helpful. Although we have not managed to clarify this—like you, we received the paper only yesterday—we think that the figure of £6 million includes the £1.5 million for the voter awareness campaign, for which we have already made provision in the financial memorandum. The figures are a helpful first attempt at calculating what the costs might be but, inevitably, they are speculative and we would not like to comment further on the figure of £6 million. However, we would be pleased to work with SOLACE and COSLA—indeed, we very much welcome the suggestion—to work through the figures and try to establish a firmer estimate based not just on a sample of one council, but on a range of councils.
I appreciate your candour, Mr Rushworth, in explaining why you have not been able to produce an estimate of the cost of the bill. However, it is the duty of the Executive—that is, ministers—to do precisely that. There is an unacceptable contradiction in the Executive's introducing legislation when, as you have admitted today, it simply is not possible to estimate with any precision the actual cost of that legislation in practice, because of lack of detail. However, ministers, and not you, must answer that question, which perhaps is one of politics. It is a point of principle. If we get more bills like this one, and civil servants cannot say how much they will cost, where will it end? That is a casual and irresponsible attitude to public expenditure.
You are quite right to say that the £1.5 million that is mentioned in the financial memorandum is intended to cover training and voter awareness. The figure is based on expenditure that we and other bodies have incurred on training and voter awareness in the past.
Perhaps I did not make my question as clear as I should have done. You have said that the £1.5 million is a combination of estimates for an awareness campaign and for training. Can you split that figure for us? How much of that £1.5 million is the estimate for the major voter awareness campaign and how much is for the training of election administrators?
I cannot split that figure, because the detail of both activities has not yet been resolved. However, I can tell the committee that the costs of the voter awareness campaign are likely to be significantly more than the costs of training.
If you cannot split the figure into the two elements that you have said it comprises, how are we to make any sense of the provision? The £1.5 million is the sum of two factors. Why can you not tell us what those factors are?
The figure is a relatively broadbrush estimate based on figures that we already have for the cost of voter awareness and training campaigns in other elections. Sarah Morrell has mentioned some of those figures. However, until we have the detailed specification for the two components, we cannot break down an overall estimate.
I understand that, and I suspect that you are not responsible for this particular matter. However, the ordinary person watching these proceedings—if indeed they are watching—will be thinking, "Here we have one and a half million quid, which is more money than I am ever likely to see in my life. It is composed of two elements, but the Government does not know what they are". That demonstrates the extraordinarily casual approach that has crept into the compilation of financial memoranda. I am certainly not saying that that is the responsibility of the witnesses before us. It is plainly not; instead, it is the responsibility of Mr Kerr and Mr Scott to ensure that the committee has proper information if it is to safeguard the public purse. As the witnesses have been candid enough to admit, we do not have that information before us today. Even the information that we have received is plainly inadequate.
I think that that is a rhetorical point.
Did the witnesses say in response to Mr Ewing's question that the public information campaign for the additional member system cost £2.5 million in the run-up to the 1999 elections?
Yes.
In that case, why would an awareness campaign for STV cost less? After all, it is a more complicated voting system.
For two reasons. First, as I said, at least part of the £2.5 million for the campaign in advance of the first Scottish Parliament elections was aimed at explaining the functions of the Parliament to members of the public and therefore did not relate to the electoral system.
If any measures to help people express their voter preferences are funded, presumably additional funding will be available to help people who are disabled or visually impaired and have to use a postal vote or need specific assistance at the polling station.
We are considering what will be required for people who have disabilities. Returning officers and the STV implementation group established by ministers are considering the practical implications of the STV system. Some people have already commented that the device that is designed to allow people who are visually impaired to vote in the polling station might not be suitable for an STV ballot paper and we will have to examine that.
In your initial statement, you indicated that there were three main areas where it is difficult to estimate the costs of implementing the bill. Why, therefore, does paragraph 61 of the explanatory notes state that
The Executive's position is that, all other things being equal, the introduction of STV arrangements is likely to increase costs. The difficulty is in assessing what those additional costs will be. The Executive does not think that those additional costs will be significant, but it accepts that there will be additional costs.
I contend that the statement is therefore somewhat misleading, given the lack of knowledge about those three particular areas. As STV elections are run in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, it might be possible to compare the cost of running STV elections for similar electorates with the cost of running elections in this country at present.
We have some information about the cost of running STV elections in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. We know what the size of the electorate is. I can give that information to the committee if that would be helpful. We understand from Irish officials that they do not keep precise data on the cost of running an STV election. However, they estimate that an STV national election, whether that be a local government or national Government election, costs around £5 million to £6 million. The Irish electorate is 3 million, which is a little smaller than the Scottish electorate. We have established from the Northern Ireland Office that its estimate of the cost of the recent Northern Ireland Assembly elections was about £3.5 million. The Northern Irish electorate is also smaller than that of Scotland; it is 1.1 million, which is less than a third of the size of the Scottish electorate.
So, estimates could be made from that information.
Perhaps I could answer the question first, after which Sarah Morrell might like to add to what I say. As I indicated in my opening remarks, we accept that additional travel costs could be involved, particularly in the more remote constituencies and wards. Much will depend on how councils decide to deploy councillors, for example by deciding to establish an arrangement whereby different councillors would handle different geographical parts of a ward. As you know, multimember wards are in existence in England. The evidence that we have from England along with anecdotal evidence about the Republic of Ireland shows that, although your point is valid in theory, it has not been an issue in practice.
Some years ago, I lived in a multimember ward in England. I understand that the system there is one under which first-past-the-post elections are held every year. There is therefore a strong likelihood that the councillors returned will be of the same political persuasion as those who have served in previous years. Although it is difficult to estimate, I am sure that it is unlikely that councillors in multimember constituencies under STV will collaborate and split up work.
That is not really a financial issue.
Has the apathy factor been taken into consideration? There was a 49 per cent turnout in the last election. Let us suppose that the present Government is totally successful and all of the people say, "Let's go out and vote." Would that make you double your estimates?
It would certainly increase the cost of the election. A longer time would have to be taken to count the votes. In that case, the question would be whether the extra costs were the result of the introduction of STV or of other methods that had been designed to increase voter turnout.
Yes, but what about the cost? Would an increased turnout have an astronomical effect on costs? Conversely, is it in the Government's interests for apathy to stay at its present level as that will keep overall costs as low as possible?
I think that—
Is the normal turnout in the local elections not something like 24 per cent?
I do not think that that is a question for officials. On a cross-party basis, I think that most people would agree that everybody would be happy if we had to pay additional costs for counting votes because more people had voted. I presume that the costs that we are discussing are really those at the margins.
The point that I wanted to make was that if the present turnout of 49 per cent doubled, I do not think that the cost of running the election would double. Obviously, in preparing for elections, returning officers do not know how many people will turn out. Ballot papers and so forth are not printed on the assumption that 49 per cent of the people will turn out. The count could take longer and the cost of it could increase, but the cost of the election would not double.
I would like to quiz you further on some of the figures that Dr Elaine Murray got from you. If I understood you correctly, you said that the cost of running elections was £6 million for 3 million people in the Republic of Ireland and £3.5 million for 1.25 million people in Northern Ireland—
It was 1.1 million people.
Sorry. Are those total costs for the running of those STV elections?
Yes, but they are estimates.
SOLACE suggests that an extra £6 million is needed to meet the cost of running STV elections in Scotland. Given the size of Scotland and the fact that we have a population of 5 million, do the Irish figures not suggest that we could be looking at something rather more significant than an extra £6 million? That tends to disagree with your view that there would be little significant additional cost. Is there not the potential for quite remarkable additional costs, given those Irish statistics?
The first thing to point out is that the electorate in Scotland is 3.9 million people. Although the population is greater, the number of people who are entitled to vote is lower and therefore closer to the figure for the Irish electorate. There is a geographical issue in Scotland, but I suspect that the Irish would argue that there are geographical issues in some parts of Ireland. However, those issues are more extreme here, particularly in the Highlands and islands.
Mr Rushworth said that it would not be appropriate to guess what the remuneration costs will be before the independent remuneration committee has had a chance to assess those matters. However, surely there could have been a stab at a figure. You must be aware of what remuneration costs are in Ireland and of what some of the costs were in Scotland last time, such as those associated with staff in polling booths. Surely it would have been more helpful to give us some indication of the costs rather than simply say to us, "Trust us. Sign us a blank cheque and it will all come out right on the day."
It would have been possible for the Executive to produce illustrative calculations on a range of assumptions. However, ministers take the view that, although that might appear to be more helpful in the short term, they do not want to do that because it might send a signal to the remuneration committee about the sorts of figures that it should be looking at. They wanted the remuneration committee to start off with a blank sheet and work out recommendations without any indication that might be taken as a steer from the Executive.
Would you not accept that it is extremely difficult for committees such as ours to make any kind of impartial judgment on the costings of the bill if we have no idea about such a major and significant costing as remuneration?
Under the circumstances, we would have to accept that. I return to my point that provision for the remuneration will be made in the secondary legislation. Parliament will have a full opportunity to look at the estimates of the detailed costings before it decides whether to approve the remuneration arrangements.
Under normal practice, that would go to the Subordinate Legislation Committee. Would that allow the appropriate level of scrutiny to take place?
I am not sure that it is for us to answer that question. If that is the procedure—
Perhaps we need to take that issue—the procedure against which the subordinate legislation will be scrutinised—into account as we look at the bill and see whether there are particular issues for us to consider in that context.
I return to the point about not being able to estimate properly the cost of the election. I presume that the Scottish Executive allocates to local authorities a certain amount of money to run elections?
The current position is that the Scotland Office is responsible for funding elections to the Scottish Parliament and local authorities are responsible for funding council elections. There is no allocation from the Executive and no return is made to the Executive of expenditure on local government elections.
Surely it would be possible to find out from local authorities how much it cost to run the 1995 election, which was the most recent election that was purely a local authority election, to come up with a guesstimate of the cost of running a local council election that used the first-past-the-post system.
The 1995 election was not a combined election, so we would not be comparing like with like. We have encountered difficulties in establishing the cost of running a local government election, because councils have quite some time in which to submit their returns to the Scotland Office for the cost of parliamentary elections. Until the Scotland Office has approved those accounts, the costs of the local government elections cannot be finalised, because some costs are shared, whereas others are attributed to one set of elections or the other.
I am disappointed that representatives from SOLACE are not here, as I am rather confused about how the figure of £6 million was reached—I am sure that the problem is that I do not understand the evidence, rather than anything else.
I have not done the calculations that you have done.
To be fair, I think that that is a political issue.
The question is: What is a significant additional cost?
Do you regard 0.02 per cent of spend as a significant additional cost?
I do not think that that is a fair question—
I thought that the quick answer would be no, as I am using the words in the financial memorandum.
The answer depends on whether we consider the cost in relative or in absolute terms.
I am quoting from your document, so I am a wee bit surprised that you have not confirmed your own words.
I think that ministers would probably agree that, in relative terms, 0.02 per cent is not a significant additional cost.
Thank you.
You responded to Kate Maclean by suggesting that the amount that was to be set aside for the information campaign was less than the amount that was set aside for the information campaign in 1999. It can be argued that the changes that people were being asked to comprehend and respond to in 1999 were less significant than those that they will be required to respond to in the event that we move to a different electoral system. It was probably easier to explain to people in the 1999 election that the fact that the Scottish Parliament was coming into existence meant that they would have to vote three times than it will be to explain to people in a future election that they will have to vote in two separate ways, because of an entirely new system for local government—I am presuming that the Scottish Parliament and local government campaigns would be fused together, as has been the case in the past. Has that been factored into your estimate?
It has been. Spending on the Scottish Parliament voter awareness campaign in 2003 was part of an overall budget spent by the Electoral Commission, which tells us that for the Scottish Parliament elections, the elections for the National Assembly for Wales and the local government elections in England, it spent a total of £2.5 million.
What about postal voters?
We will be talking to the Electoral Commission, which does the publicity campaign for the Scottish Parliament elections, about how to tackle postal voters and we might have to talk to returning officers about what material is sent to postal voters.
It strikes me that we are talking about quite a substantial change. It is simple to trivialise the issue by saying that it amounts to putting a number instead of an X, but what is important for the people who vote is that they understand their options and the consequences of their action when they register their preference. That is a significant issue.
I certainly do not intend to trivialise the issue, because it is important that people understand how they are expressing their preferences when they mark numbers on the ballot paper. The evidence that we have suggests that the budget is generous enough and we have considered what has been done elsewhere. Ministers are clear that they will fund the national voter awareness campaign. If, over time, the recommendations of the STV working group and other material that ministers receive were to suggest that more needed to be done, ministers would act to ensure that voters understood what was happening on the day.
That work has not been quantified in the estimates for the bill. In a sense, you are dealing only with the mechanism of the election. Is it fair to say that you have not factored into the financial memorandum any continuing cost for local government?
There is nothing specific in the financial memorandum about that. So much depends on the way in which councillors and councils choose to conduct their business in future. It goes back to what I was saying about there being a step change or culture change. At the moment, a lot of people are finding it difficult to see how the system would work, yet the anecdotal evidence from England and the Republic of Ireland is that that is not an issue—the system works. Nobody is saying that multimember wards are particularly expensive to run. There is an element of co-operation that varies from ward to ward or area to area, depending on the people involved.
To be fair, I think that you need to maintain the distinction that Elaine Murray highlighted. You should not make assumptions based on multimember wards rather than multimember wards under an STV system. There is a fundamental difference based on the electoral system. Extrapolations based on multimember wards—
Obviously, the Irish system uses STV. In evidence to the Local Government Committee the chairman of the Local Government Association was keen to point out that although generally one councillor in a three-member ward is elected each year, there are occasions when there is an all-out election and people compete against one another. There are areas where the councillors are not all representatives of one party.
You are talking about £1.5 million for public awareness. Do you agree that we are talking about typical politicians patronising the electorate? We heard our convener ask whether the people out there who are marking crosses or numbers are qualified to do so. The people out there know better than do the politicians how they are going to get people elected, and they will mark their crosses accordingly.
Well—
I think that that is a political question, to be fair.
It is no more political than your own question, convener.
I think that Mr Swinburne is right that we should not underestimate the intelligence of the electorate, who already use the additional member system when they vote for the Scottish Parliament. However, the view of professional electoral administrators in particular and of groups who lobby on behalf of the public, especially those with disabilities, is that there will have to be a significant voter awareness campaign.
Do you agree that the low figures that you quoted for spoiled ballot papers and so forth are relatively encouraging, given the figures for numeracy and literacy that come from our education system? They are much higher than the figures for invalid votes. Even though some people cannot read or count, they can still put their votes in the right place.
That is outrageous.
I think that John Swinburne has a point about the extension of the nanny state—perhaps we should call it the Tony state—with all its public education campaigns. What evidence is there that the campaigns are efficacious? How effective are they?
Idiot's guide?
I am not thinking only of Liberal voters, Jeremy.
That question should be aimed at the minister rather than at the officials. They are here to give the Finance Committee evidence on the financial memorandum and on the accuracy of information rather than to explain why decisions have been made. The questioning is straying from what we should be doing as the Finance Committee. Members are indulging themselves in quite ridiculous lines of questioning now.
It is important that we focus attention on the facts that we have in front of us and on the submission. It is clear that officials cannot be expected to answer purely political questions. However, in factual terms, Fergus Ewing's question about the effectiveness of campaigns and supporting evidence for that is probably a legitimate one for the officials to respond to.
On a point of order, convener, I asked a question that, as you have just said, is a relevant one. The relevant kernel was whether expenditure on public education for voter awareness was efficacious and what evidence exists for that. I resent Kate Maclean repeatedly interrupting me—and your permitting her to do so, convener. That interruption prevented the witnesses from answering the question, which you admitted is a perfectly valid one. I hope that we will have no more of such impromptu, irrelevant interruptions.
To be fair to Kate Maclean, Fergus, I think that you did not ask the question in quite the way in which I asked it. What is important is that members refrain from placing officials in a position where, in a sense, they are being asked to respond to what are effectively political statements and political rhetoric. We are here to ask officials to respond to the detail of the submission that is before us. I can understand the temptation for politicians to try to make political points, but I do not think that it is reasonable to couch political points in questions to officials, to which they find it difficult to respond.
I did not interrupt Fergus Ewing. I waited until he had finished his diatribe. I reserve the right to comment on anything that he says at any point in meetings of the Finance Committee.
Can Sarah Morrell respond to Fergus Ewing's specific question?
I suspect that there is evidence elsewhere, but the most recent evaluation of which I am aware is the one that the Electoral Commission had academics carry out on its behalf of the voter awareness campaign for the Scottish Parliament elections in May 2003 and, at our request, the voter awareness campaign for the local government elections—the two were combined. I am afraid that I do not have the information here, but I can certainly arrange for it to be made available to the committee easily and quickly.
Perhaps I should add one further point for clarification. I think that I am right in saying that there is no presumption that the figure identified for voter awareness will necessarily be spent—all or in part—on a television election campaign. The STV working group was set up to advise on the sort of issues to which Mr Ewing and Mr Swinburne referred. I think that ministers would want to consider the working group's recommendations before deciding how the centrally funded voter awareness campaign should be mounted.
Okay. I do not see any other members indicating a wish to ask a question, so I thank, on the committee's behalf, our witnesses for coming along today.
Meeting continued in private until 13:10.