Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
We race on to agenda item 4, which is an oral evidence-taking session on legislative consent memorandum LCM (S4) 10.1, which relates to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, which is currently under consideration by the United Kingdom Parliament. I welcome our witnesses, who are John Swinney MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, and Andrew Sinclair, policy officer with the Scottish Government’s elections team. We also have Jonathan Sewell, who is here for a later LCM, but it is better if he is in place now to save us having to shift chairs later, as we are tight for time.
Thank you for coming, cabinet secretary. Do you want to start with some opening remarks?
The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth (John Swinney)
Yes please, convener.
The Electoral Registration and Administration Bill was introduced to the House of Commons on 10 May 2012 and received its second reading on 23 May. Part 1 of the bill provides for the introduction of individual electoral registration across Great Britain. Part 2 introduces a number of changes relating to electoral administration and the conduct of elections. Electoral registration is a reserved matter, but the conduct of local government elections in Scotland, including arrangements for absent voting, is devolved to the Scottish Parliament. The legislative consent motion in my name seeks agreement from the Parliament that a small number of the bill’s provisions should apply to local government elections in Scotland and should be considered by the United Kingdom Parliament as part of its scrutiny of the bill.
The UK Government has consulted widely on its proposals to introduce individual electoral registration in place of the existing system of household registration. That has included regular contact between our civil servants. Scottish and UK ministers have corresponded and the Scottish ministers have given their views on the proposals at various stages.
There is widespread support for the introduction of IER and the principle that people should be able to take responsibility for their vote. The Electoral Commission has called the introduction of IER
“the biggest change to the voter registration process since the universal franchise was introduced.”
The commission asserts that the introduction
“requires careful planning and implementation and needs to be done in a way that puts the voter first.”
In addition to the contact between Governments, there has been regular contact between the United Kingdom Government and electoral registration officers in Scotland to ensure that the necessary practical preparations are made.
The bill sets out proposals for the introduction of IER, including arrangements for a transitional period. The first register that is based on individual registration is likely to be published in December 2014. The bill provides that any existing voters who have not registered under individual registration by that time will retain their entry in the electoral register for a further year. However, any voter who wishes to vote by post or proxy will have to be registered under the new system if they wish to vote other than in person at a polling station. Electoral registration officers and the Electoral Commission will undertake extensive publicity and public information campaigns ahead of the cut-off date to ensure that voters are aware of the need to register and of how to register so that they can vote by post or proxy, if that is their choice.
The Gould report was guided by the principles of putting the voter first and reducing the fragmentation of electoral arrangements. Seeking the Parliament’s approval for the legislative consent motion is consistent with those principles.
It will be better for the voter if the practical arrangements for IER apply to local elections in the same way as they apply to other elections. That will avoid the imposition of different requirements for postal and proxy voters in the transitional phase to IER.
The other provisions of the bill that we propose should apply to Scotland place a duty on electoral registration officers to inform voters after an election if their postal votes were rejected because the postal vote identifiers that were used at the time of voting did not match those that were stored on record for those voters. Voters who apply for an absent vote must provide a signature and a date of birth. If the signature or date of birth on a postal voting statement does not match to a returning officer’s satisfaction, the vote will be rejected.
Information from local authorities about postal votes that were cast in last month’s local government elections suggests that the rejection of postal votes because the personal identifiers did not match those that were submitted when the voter applied for a postal vote might have been an issue. The bill will allow returning officers to inform affected voters after an election that their votes were rejected, so that they might not make the same mistake at the next election.
The legislative consent memorandum outlines the reasons why the Government is seeking consent for the UK Parliament to deal with the issues rather than introducing legislation in the Scottish Parliament to mirror the Westminster provisions. In the interests of voters and for consistency and the effective use of parliamentary time, we have concluded that a legislative consent motion is the best way to extend the relevant provisions of the bill to cover local elections in Scotland.
We touched on the legislative consent memorandum at our round-table event last week, and Andrew Sinclair has been helpful in giving us a flavour of it. Members will have questions about the motion, but will you tell me first what the implications would be if the motion was not agreed to?
If that happened, we would lack consistency between local authority elections and other elections, unless we introduced distinct legislation in Scotland to regularise the position and make it consistent. Given the other issues that the Scottish Government is addressing in its legislative programme, I cannot envisage how such legislation could be introduced and be the subject of practical consideration by the Parliament. If the motion was not agreed to, we would lose out on the opportunity to make a couple of administratively and procedurally beneficial changes that could be made as a consequence of legislation that the United Kingdom Government is pursuing.
Good morning, cabinet secretary. Will you explain in more detail how the transitional arrangements for postal voting will work and say whether the Government foresees any potential problems?
I do not have much to add to what I said about the procedural arrangements. There will be a carryover period for a year in which individuals who are on the electoral register courtesy of household registration will remain there until individual registration kicks in.
Ms McTaggart asks about anxieties and worries about the process. My main concern is about voter awareness. We must ensure that the public information campaigns fulfil the purpose that is envisaged for them. If we follow the Electoral Commission’s assessment that this is
“the biggest change to the voter registration process since the universal franchise was introduced”,
we must judge it to be pretty significant.
The principal vulnerability arises out of the issue around voter awareness of the change. As our experience of changes to electoral systems shows us, despite the fact that extensive education campaigns are undertaken, members of the public are sometimes not able to follow all the detail. We will have to be particularly mindful of the significance of that task when addressing the point that Anne McTaggart has raised.
What is the current situation with rejected postal votes? What is the level of postal votes that are rejected?
I do not think that I have that data before me—oh, sorry, I do.
At the 2012 local government elections, approximately 4.4 per cent of postal votes were rejected because of missing or mismatched personal identifiers. That is down from 5.9 per cent at the elections to the Scottish Parliament 12 months previously. Obviously, in interpreting those figures, we must bear in mind that increasing numbers of the public are using postal votes. Obviously, 4.4 per cent of a larger number is a larger number of individuals. That is the rate of non-application or rejection because of a mismatch of signature or date of birth.
In essence, if a signature or date of birth on the postal voting statement does not match to the returning officer’s satisfaction, the returning officer will deem the postal voting statement not to have been duly completed, and the vote will be rejected. The issue hinges on the judgment of the returning officers. A multiplicity of factors may be involved. Individuals might simply make an elementary administrative error, as I am sure that we have all done—it is easily done with our date of birth, as we sometimes try to forget its reality.
On the issue of the signature, I am not sure that members of the public are aware of how important it is that the signature that they put on their application form remains consistent with the one on their postal vote return. Again, that comes down to voter awareness and education.
Earlier, you talked about returning officers getting in touch with people to let them know that they had filled in their postal vote wrongly. Would that be compulsory, or would it be done at the discretion of the officer?
Currently, the returning officer does not have an obligation to do so. In essence, the measure would provide for that to happen.
Does that mean that it would happen as a matter of course, or that it would depend on the returning officer’s decision?
It would be a matter of course.
The intensive canvass that will be going on is welcome. Will it give us an opportunity to get more 16 and 17-year-olds on the register?
It opens up that opportunity. Part of the electoral registration process already enables that to be part of the canvass, but the focus on individuals will overcome what we might call head-of-household lethargy.
09:15
I am sure you agree that this bill is significant with regard to the way in which people will register to vote. Does the Government think that the bill strikes an effective balance between the need to modernise the system and tackle electoral fraud and the need to ensure that everyone participates in the democratic process? Will the bill have an adverse effect on registration levels?
I sympathise with and support all your comments, with the exception of your final comment, because I hope that the bill will enhance, rather than undermine, the voter registration process. Currently, there are obstacles to registration. If the head of household does not bother to register, someone else in the household who is keen to be registered might miss out on the opportunity, unless they pursue the matter by other means.
I mentioned the Gould report, which was all about maximising registration and participation. That is the whole purpose of the exercise, so I think that the system of registration will be enhanced and that there will be more opportunities to enhance the level of participation.
The bill will introduce a civil penalty. How will that work? Do you agree with the application of a civil penalty?
That takes us into the territory of questions about whether there is an obligation to register and whether the balance should change in that regard. As a society we do not provide for compulsory voting. In essence, we must enable members of the public to decide whether they want to register, so it would not be appropriate to introduce a civil penalty in relation to registering.
What we must consider is whether there are circumstances in which a civil penalty is appropriate in relation to an electoral registration officer’s attempts to obtain information that they are satisfied is correct, which is an important part of the process. Electoral registration officers need to be satisfied that they have been given bona fide information, so that they can guarantee to the wider public that the register is accurate. That is an important foundation of the system.
The Electoral Reform Society suggested that the reform of electoral registration presents an opportunity to take advantage of innovative approaches. For example, the Government could consider providing for forms to be available at post offices and Government offices. The society also suggested that electors could be reminded to register to vote when they undertake official transactions such as applications for a passport, driving licence or social security or registration for council tax. You mentioned an awareness-raising campaign. Will you look favourably on the Electoral Reform Society’s suggestions?
They are all helpful suggestions. However hard we try with public information campaigns, getting messages across is a challenge, so we should use every available opportunity. Some of the suggestions are straightforward; the idea that forms should routinely be available in convenient locations is an essential one.
Individuals increasingly undertake transactions online, and of course the electoral registration form can be accessed online, so there are ways of enhancing the links between registration and other transactions. The Government has dialogue with electoral registration officers and will continue to do so, to take forward such suggestions.
Thank you.