Official Report 474KB pdf
Good morning, colleagues, and welcome to the seventh meeting of the Referendum (Scotland) Bill Committee in 2013. Stewart Maxwell has sent his apologies and Bill Kidd is here in his place.
I will indeed be brief, convener. Thank you for the invitation to meet this morning.
Thank you very much for that brief introduction. James Kelly will start off with questions on voter registration.
Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you for attending. I am sure that you will give us the benefit of your expertise in this area.
To begin with a headline comment, I think that, as Mr Kelly has noted, encouraging people to register for an election or referendum is one of our key priorities in the lead-up to the event itself. We have been going through all our plans and the details of what we do in every campaign and, of course, we refresh them for every referendum because every referendum is different. This particular referendum, for example, is unique in that, for the first time, 16 and 17-year-olds will be allowed to vote.
It is fair to say that we are at the start of our thinking about how to address the problem of ensuring that all 15 to 17-year-olds are registered. It will form part of the wider public awareness activity that we assume we will be given in the main Scottish independence referendum bill once it is published. At the moment, we are developing our plans and, indeed, have costed some of them to inform the Scottish Government’s financial memorandum to the bill.
We also have a very well-established relationship with the communications network of specialists in each of the local authorities and, in partnership with the Electoral Management Board for Scotland and the communications network, we target specific events for the local population. In that respect, we are looking for advice on ways in which, locally, we can get in touch with 15, 16 and 17-year-olds and target them with information about registration and the date of the referendum. The approach is local and national as well as viral through the electronic media at our disposal.
Coming back to Mr O’Neill, I am obviously encouraged to hear that you have been talking to some of the relevant parties with regard to 16 and 17-year-olds and that you have read last week’s evidence, which I think provides some excellent pointers. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that, in developing publicity and ideas to get people registered—which, I have to say, I am not against—your main drive has been to concentrate on general registration and hope that 16 and 17-year-olds get pulled along. However, I did not get any sense of the specific publicity or initiatives that are going to be targeted at 16 and 17-year-olds.
I apologise if I have given you that impression, but we must ensure that everyone who can register is registered. We are trying to build on what we have normally done; we have never tried to engage with 15 and 16-year-olds, and it is still too early to say what works and what does not. At the moment, we are trying to map out which organisations and individuals we need to work with and the type of activity that works with younger people, a lot of which, we guess, will be internet based. However, we do not have any definite plans. Instead, we are trying to ensure that we do whatever is necessary.
But do you intend to devise plans that specifically target this new group of 15 to 17-year-old voters?
Yes.
We know from past experience of referendums and elections about the low turnout in the 18 to 25-year-old age group. There is an overlap in that respect, but one advantage that we have with 16 and 17-year-olds is that they can be targeted in a particular way. That said, there is an issue with young people in general.
Last week, another issue relating to the registration of student voters was raised. We expect that the date of the referendum will be autumn 2014—we will know later today—and many first-year students, who may be 16 or 17 years old, will be participating in their first vote. They may have registered their home address but have moved to a student location. That presents challenges for ensuring that they get to vote at their new location. Some of the evidence that we heard concerned rolling registration and being able to sign up students en masse. Have you given any consideration to those issues?
To supplement the answers that Andy O’Neill gave earlier, it is important to bear in mind that our activity will be phased over a long period. We will start household activity alongside the normal household canvass so that young people will be added on the form that is in the bill. There is also rolling registration, so registration will take place over a long time. It is not as though it is a snapshot in time or as though we have a narrow window to influence registration; it can be a long-build campaign.
I have a quick query about trying to encourage and enthuse young people. I take Mr McCormick’s point about low turnout among young voters up to the age of 25. Is there room for the Electoral Commission to second some people from other organisations that have a level of expertise in the matter?
We have a good track record of working in partnership with others. If there was an opportunity for someone to be seconded, we would certainly not be against that but, previously, we have worked on building a partnership and working with it. I notice that one of your previous witnesses talked about a coalition of interest. We would hope to be part of that coalition and work together with it.
What resource does the Electoral Commission have to deliver an effective social media campaign? Will that resource require to be brought in from elsewhere or is it strong enough in-house?
We have that resource at the moment. We have targeted quite successful campaigns at young people in previous elections. I used to be able to give you the number of hits that our different voting animations received. I could send you those figures afterwards, but I cannot recall them at this hour in the morning. We also noticed that some of your previous witnesses talked about having used DVDs and viral messaging. We can certainly learn from them, but we have a lot of experience and a highly experienced website team who have developed animations that have been tried and tested in elections and have worked. We would like to retest those animations, update them and customise them for the referendum. We have that within our existing resources.
Social media goes a bit deeper than that. It includes how we make the best use of Facebook and Twitter. There are companies that can multiply hugely the number of tweets that you get. Do you need to look deeper into that area of activity?
We are engaging a social media agency to advise us on all of that as part of the wider public awareness. Obviously, 15 to 17-year-olds will be a major part of that work.
I was just going to ask how many followers you had to prove it.
Not very many, sadly.
I have a more general question that I want to ask, but first I will come back to James Kelly’s question to Mr Scallan about student voters. A first-year student—or a student in any year, for that matter—could be registered at their home address but find themselves at university when it is time to vote.
The process will be about registering and then about the options that will be available to people. We are assuming that the timelines for the referendum will be very much as they are for every other electoral event. Everyone will know the deadline to get applications in by and they will have time to think about their position.
It is also about targeting messages to key small groups. In the interesting example of student voters, we could work with the universities or with the student associations to ensure that students who are coming from parts of Scotland where they have a vote to somewhere that is far away from home are aware of that issue so that they make arrangements beforehand. They could apply for a postal vote or a proxy vote 11 days beforehand. It is a matter of identifying the issue, coming up with a solution and actioning it.
That would be helpful, because if it is someone’s first time at university, they have a lot of other things on their mind, never mind the referendum—no matter how important it is.
At the moment, we have no concerns about the amount of time that we have. Putting together plans takes some time, but we have experience of commissioning work at short notice. We have more time for this event than we have had for some others.
We have already started talking to the agency that we employ and briefing it on the referendum in Scotland in general. We are probably more ahead of the game than we normally are with public awareness campaigns.
To come back to the household canvass versus rolling registration, the household canvass—with letters through the letterbox and people knocking on the door—has consistently proved to be the most effective way of getting information.
In Andy O’Neill’s comments earlier, I did not hear Skills Development Scotland mentioned in relation to working with younger people, particularly those who are doing apprenticeships. Has that been factored in?
It is on the list—my apologies for failing to mention it in my remarks.
That is not a problem. Thank you. I have another question, if that is okay, convener?
Is it related to what we have just been discussing?
Yes, it is. On the issue of first-year students and people who travel away from their home, we used terminology last week about registering people en bloc. These young people ought to be given the option—they should have the information that would allow them to choose whether to register at their hall of residence or maintain their registration at home. What would your preference be?
I do not think that we have a preference. It depends on the nature of the student population and on the institution at which the students are based. It is individuals who are eligible to register. Any block registration would need to be based on the accurate information that is needed to ensure that people are entitled to be on the register. I do not think that we have a preference. It would depend on the nature, scale and size of the accommodation.
We are aware that, in Scotland, fewer students than in the UK as a whole are in halls of residence that can have block registration. Therefore we catch only a certain amount of young people through that method. We are looking at a variety of options to get people to register.
Good morning. Mr McCormick, what is your budget specifically for advertising and disseminating information? Does it include TV advertising?
Yes, it does. Mr O’Neill probably has the figure to hand. We are satisfied from our discussions with officers of the Government that we will have sufficient resources. We have put in an application for the funding that would be required for a multimedia campaign. We estimate the budget to be in excess of the figure that we had for the Scottish Parliament campaign, which was regarded as successful. Andy O’Neill has given me the figure of £1.8 million. We are satisfied that the resources that have been allocated will be adequate. We have given a clear and detailed budget of what we think we require, and it includes multimedia—radio and television as well as material such as booklets.
I may have missed something that has been mentioned already, but could you tell me about work you may be doing with local authorities with young people in care or similar situations? In your work to raise awareness, are they a group that has been picked up to ensure that they get their opportunity to vote?
We have not done so in Scotland to date, but it is something that we are looking at. When that issue came up in the evidence last week, it made me think about work that we have done with the care commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission to help people working in care homes to understand how to help people fill in postal votes. We could do further such work if we could provide guidance for young people in care that was fed out via councils and various establishments. That is another example of identifying a problem, coming up with a solution and putting that into action. We may have to work with various partners that we have never worked with before, but we could do that.
We are also aware that not every potential 16 and 17-year-old voter can be targeted via an apprentice scheme through Skills Development Scotland or through education. We are just beginning to think clearly how we might get to people in that age range who are difficult to access and will try to come up with solutions and proposals.
Before I move on to Tavish Scott and wider participation issues, I have a specific question about the register of young voters and the form in schedule 2 to the bill. What is your view about that form—is it satisfactory in its present state? Have you had a chance to look at it, and is it suitable for the annual canvass and the rolling registration process?
The form is still subject to user testing. We are awaiting the outcome of that before the form is finalised, but we have no reason to think that the user testing will not be thorough. The form follows the lines that other forms have used and basic information is being asked for. We will comment on the final version when we see it but, at the moment, a good process is being followed to test its usability.
Stuart McMillan has a supplementary question, which I will allow before coming to Tavish Scott.
Thank you once again, convener.
Certainly, that could be considered. It might help in the messaging that we want to put out.
We are not involved in the testing, but I guess that in the testing the forms will be given to the interviewees in the manner in which they would receive them in practice. Presumably, they will receive an envelope with two forms. The testing could try the same colour and different colours to find out what happens.
When I spoke to that individual, I was thinking about the different-coloured ballot papers that have been used in previous elections to the Scottish Parliament. That gave people a clear message when they went to vote. He thought that the idea was worth considering.
That is why we are so supportive of the testing. We are delighted that that has been included in the bill, so that we can all contribute to that.
I must say how envious I am of those who have £1.8 million to spend on an election campaign, but there we are. Mr McCormick, the figure that you gave is useful, but are you able to separate out that budget into what will be spent on encouraging young people to register—I take all the points that you made about that—and what will be spent on encouraging participation and involvement, which is the why-you-should-vote bit of it? Has a clear judgment been made on how the money should be spent on those two aspects of your work?
We will have to write to you to give our understanding of the way in which the budget was built up in detail. I do not have the figures on the build-up, but we could write to the convener on that.
That will be difficult to achieve because, to use an analogy, we would need to apportion how much of the leaflet is for registration messages, how much is for how-to-vote messages and how much is for proxy-vote messages. That would be quite difficult to achieve, but we could try to provide some sort of broad figure.
That would be fine. Am I right in saying that there are two stages? The first stage is about asking young people to register, helping them through that process and ensuring that they are all registered. The second stage is about encouraging them to go on to vote.
Yes. As usual—sorry, I may not have made this clear—there will be a registration phase and then, as the leaflet is produced and information on all the other activities such as the date comes on stream, we will move towards that. Obviously, if people are not registered, they cannot vote, so we need to emphasise the registration message first.
In your earlier answer to James Kelly, you described all the mechanisms that the Electoral Commission plans to use to encourage people to register to vote. What will happen after that? Do you plan to use all those mechanisms again for the second stage of the process?
Obviously, we have not planned everything out in detail, as we assume that we are still 18 months away from the event. Generally, when we are a long way out from the event, we emphasise registration. As we get nearer to the event, we emphasise postal vote deadlines and registration deadlines. In the past, such as in 2011-12, we have then emphasised the date of the vote and how to fill in the ballot paper. You may expect something similar.
Mr McCormick talked earlier about the challenge of getting young people between the ages of 18 and 25 to vote in referenda. In the Electoral Commission’s experience, what worked and what did not work in the referenda—not the election campaigns—that we have had? I appreciate that we have not had too many referenda, but have any lessons been learned from the few referenda that we have had?
We were particularly gratified by the numbers who used or accessed our Facebook site, our YouTube viral messaging and our website animations. We will look at that again in relation to 16 to 25-year-olds. Broadly, I know that the number who accessed those was much greater than the target that we had set ourselves.
Following previous referenda, was analysis done about the percentage of 18 to 25-year-olds who voted? Do we have any breakdown on that?
We cannot check through the registers, so we get those sorts of figures from public opinion research, which we can happily make available to the committee. However, that is reported voting. Obviously, we cannot check the registers in any way.
I appreciate that you cannot check the registers but, regarding the analysis that you did after those referenda, did you find some way to correlate the work that you had done that was targeted on that age group and how successful it had been?
Yes. The questions are: after the event in question, did people vote or did they not, and how did they know about the event—how did they get the message? That is a fairly standard approach regarding access. I cannot remember the details, but we will have that information and we are happy to supply it to the committee.
If you could share that with us, that would be great.
In general, and as we said at the outset, that falls under the category of working with our partners who are specialists in the area. The Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and School Leaders Scotland have already made statements about what they would expect, with headteachers and local authorities working together to ensure that the situation in schools is managed appropriately, that the information coming in is in the control of the educationists and that the educationists approve the access that is granted to the school.
I will come back to Annabel Goldie later if she wants to return to canvassing issues, but we will go through some of the issues on participation and turnout first.
I want to follow up on the two points that Tavish Scott has just been discussing. First, I have a point about evidence and how we know which of the activities that are intended to increase turnout actually work—not just those for increasing awareness but those that are intended to have an effect on whether or not people vote.
I am not sure whether my colleagues are aware of the international evidence, but I am reminded of the health warning around all advertising and communications activity: only 50 per cent of it works, and we do not know which 50 per cent that is.
There is international evidence, but it is rare that one experience is simply transferable to another jurisdiction. We work very closely with the electoral commissions of Canada, New Zealand and Australia to examine best practice. Their activity will influence how we design our process, but there is no silver bullet for the issue of turnout. We will do everything that we can to ensure that people understand the options that are available to them to participate, which involves ensuring that they are on the register and that they understand the channels that they have to vote.
Have you thought about engaging, or even recruiting on a voluntary basis, young people themselves to advise you—15, 16 and 17-year-olds who could give you direct advice about what they think will work?
As I said earlier, we are open to working with everybody who can help us. I have been reading the evidence that the committee has gathered—I note in particular Young Scot’s access to young people. We are open to working directly with young people, but we will also benefit from the experience and knowledge of those young people who are already working through other agencies. We are looking forward to building on those relationships over the next few months.
Tavish Scott raised the issue of schools, and you talked about ensuring that the activities in schools are appropriately managed—I think that that was the phrase that was used. Have you yet reached a view about what that means in practice?
No. It might be inappropriate for us to do so. We will work with educationists; the local authorities, which are responsible for delivering the education service in the schools; the headteachers, who are responsible to the local authorities; and the education advisers that they have around them from Education Scotland, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and the unions and specialist associations. Those are the people who should make those judgments; we will be happy to advise them on issues relating to the referendum, where we think that we have expertise to give them.
I want to ask about the issue of the languages that you use to spread your message. You have spoken about the bespoke nature of the referendum. Will that change the languages that you use in your literature?
The short answer is yes. For all of our awareness-raising campaigns, we employ a public relations agency. In this case, we will also have a social media PR agency advising us. If young people come up with ideas and give them to us, we will take them on board and think about them. Obviously, we are prepared to work with anyone who has a good idea. We test all of our ideas on the whole of Scottish society and, in this case, we will test the things that we want to do with 15 to 17-year-olds with that age group. I guess that the language will change and will be suited to that age group.
I assume that Scotland’s other official language, Gaelic, will be included in your materials, as well as other minority ethnic languages.
Yes. We have used all those languages in the past, and I imagine that we will use them in the future.
Section 7(2)(c) of the bill specifically provides for non-disclosure of a young person’s address, but the canvass form in schedule 2 makes no reaffirmation of the facility of non-disclosure of the address. Will the commission specifically consider that issue in its testing of the form?
The commission is not testing the form—the Scottish Government is doing that. However, when we see the form again, we will have regard to that issue.
This week, the Westminster Scottish Affairs Committee discussed the reservation entitlement of service personnel. My understanding is that, dating back to the Representation of the People Act 1983, service personnel have certain options about where they register to vote and can register either as an ordinary voter—an overseas voter, potentially—or as a service voter.
The range of options for service personnel is comprehensive but it depends precisely on where a person is at a certain time. That range of options is not available to all service personnel all of the time. You are right that service personnel have the choice of being registered as an ordinary voter. There is also potential for a member of the services to be an overseas voter, although when the MOD gave evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee it said that less than 1 per cent of service personnel are registered as overseas voters.
I am not sure that your answer contradicts what I have quoted from the MOD and the Advocate General. From my previous life as a lawyer it seems quite clear that there are many options available if a member of the services seeks to register to vote in the independence referendum. The definition is fairly wide, and they would have the facility to register should they wish to.
The definition can be wide, but it will depend on the circumstances of each individual registration application and it will be for the electoral registration officer to make a determination based on the information provided by the service personnel.
We work with the MOD on those matters and we co-operate to provide information relating to the registration options, the date of the referendum and so on, as you would expect.
There is a campaign under way in the forces, and the MOD has unit registration officers whom we will work with over the coming period to ensure that people properly understand the nature of their registrations. Many people think that the service declaration, which lasts for five years, is a fixed declaration. That declaration can be altered and a new declaration made. If a person wants to make an assessment about their circumstances, they can change the nature of their service declaration with no issue whatsoever, as long as they are able to demonstrate that link to residence.
I want to raise some general issues. You submitted considered opinion in relation to the Government’s initial consultation document, and we now have the bill in its current state. Are you satisfied that the Government considered enough of the concerns that the Electoral Commission raised, or are there remaining concerns that you want to draw to our attention?
Our headline issue was to ensure that the bill was drafted in such a way as to include all 16 and 17-year-olds. That was one of our key aims and, as I said at the outset of the session, we are satisfied that the bill has achieved that. There are one or two other issues that we have raised with the Government and a number of technical issues that we hope to progress as the bill passes through the parliamentary process.
But the discussions that you are having with the Government are generally positive.
Yes. We made a number of technical comments in January this year on the franchise bill as it was then drafted. It has now been split, and some of the sections in relation to registration and access, supply and use of the register are now in the main referendum bill, which we do not yet have. We assume that our comments on those sections have been taken up but, until that bill is published, we will not know.
That is more to do with the next bill that is coming up.
Yes. We take the position from the policy memorandum, but the provisions will be in the next bill.
Are there any outstanding technical issues with the franchise bill that we need to consider?
No.
Does anyone else have questions? Thank you, gentlemen, for coming along this morning and giving evidence—[Interruption.] I apologise to Annabel Goldie—I forgot that I was going to come back to her. The witnesses are not off the hook yet.
I have a simple question. The bill is repealed on 1 January 2015. Do you expect the young voters register to be destroyed thereafter?
Data protection rules require organisations not to have information that they no longer need. The purpose would clearly have expired, so the information would not be held.
The raison d’être for the information will be gone on 1 January 2015.
Yes, but my point is that there will be information on the young persons register that would help EROs in compiling future registers. If all that information disappears, the work will be generated again.
That is a matter of the 17-year-olds who would be attainers on the register for the election that follows the referendum.
They would be picked up in the routine process.
They should be picked up in the routine process, but the evidence on the register is hard evidence of someone’s date of birth. The hope is that everyone will be picked up in the routine process, but there is a risk that that will not happen.
That is not the crisp, succinct and precise answer that I was looking for.
As I said, the information should be destroyed because it will no longer be required for the purposes of the referendum, but it will include good information that would help EROs to compile their registers in the future.
Your appendix is in or out.
Just for clarification, who makes that decision?
We would expect that to be covered in the other bill.
Right—I must have missed what you said.
We would expect the register to be destroyed.
But you will not know until the referendum bill is published.
We would expect that to be covered in the other bill and we expect the register to be destroyed. There is a caveat that electoral registration officers might raise with you about having access to hard information for the general register.
But you expect it to be destroyed?
Yes.
This might be a question for the electoral registration officers, so forgive me if it is. Will there be sufficient time while the young persons register is extant for an assessment to be done of how many young people who are registered actually vote?
It is not a question of timing, as there will be no marked register that shows the way in which 16 and 17-year-olds vote. For obvious reasons, they will not be specified, so there will be no way of knowing that.
So there is no way of knowing. That was my thought.
There was provision in the earlier consultation draft of the bill to give marks that would allow someone to total up the figures to see how many ballot papers had been issued to 16 and 17-year-olds, but our understanding is that that is not in the current bill.
I think that, this time, I am correct in assuming that no one else wishes to ask a question, so I thank our witnesses for their evidence.
We move on to our second panel on the Scottish Independence Referendum (Franchise) Bill. I welcome Mary Pitcaithly, convener of the Electoral Management Board for Scotland; Chris Highcock, the board secretary; Brian Byrne, chair of the Scottish Assessors Association’s electoral registration committee; Kate Crawford, chair of the Scotland and Northern Ireland branch of the Association of Electoral Administrators; and Bruce Robertson OBE, education policy adviser with the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland. We really must get shorter titles in Scotland. I extend a warm welcome to you—we are grateful to you for coming to give evidence.
Members might appreciate a brief reminder of the status of the Electoral Management Board. As I am sure that you are all aware, the EMB was created by the Local Electoral Administration (Scotland) Act 2011, which gave the board the general function of co-ordinating the administration of local government elections in Scotland.
If none of the other witnesses wants to make an opening statement, we will move to questions.
I want to cover an issue that did not come up with our previous panel, but on which we have taken advice and opinion from all our other panels. I would appreciate all our witnesses’ views on how the issue of child protection in relation to 16 and 17-year-olds has been approached and whether they are confident that relevant issues have been taken into account.
I might defer to Brian Byrne on that question, but I will start by saying that it is a matter for Government to be clear on issues relating to data protection and child protection. We are entering new territory, and I am sure that a lot of advice is available to ministers and parliamentarians on those issues. Most returning officers are also local government chief executives, so we obviously have those matters very close to our hearts.
A few things in the bill are aimed at child protection, such as the provision on not publishing the young persons register until very late in the process and the right for young people to disguise their address. There are some issues with that provision, but they could be worked out. The ideas are good: we should not be able to give out information on a young person either for credit reference or to anybody buying the register. The register will be used only for the referendum and will be available only very close to it. Everyone on the published register will be 16 within a few weeks of publication, so that reduces the likelihood of any issues arising.
As EROs, we are used to handling sensitive or possibly sensitive material. We do that just now with, for example, personal identifiers for postal vote applications, so we are used to handling material that needs to be dealt with carefully. Anonymous registration falls within our remit as well. We have safeguards in place.
The issue of child protection is paramount across education and children’s services. We want absolute clarity on the use of the data once it is sourced and we want to ensure that that data is used for the purpose for which it is required. Certainly, we want to ensure the child protection dimension and that abuse of the data just does not happen.
We have heard from Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People and others in the field that they felt that their views had been taken on board and reflected. It would seem that people in the field are generally satisfied with what has been achieved. However, as Bruce Robertson says, we should always be vigilant.
That is probably an inevitable conclusion. I will bring in Annabel Goldie on that point.
With the repeal of the bill—or the act, as it will become—on 1 January 2015, do you agree that the register of young voters should be destroyed?
I will try to follow on from what Andrew Scallan said. The register is good information. Generally, such information should certainly be destroyed if there is no other use for it. However, everyone on the register will be over 16 by then and it would be good information to use for individual registration, to avoid having to send all the people on it an application form to join the full register. Entries could be individually checked against information from the Department for Work and Pensions.
Would you need some further legislative protection to let you retain the register?
Yes, we would need legislation to allow us to do that. The point is that, having got the young people to join in the process, we would be asking them to do so again, rather than automatically continuing their registration.
Given Bruce Robertson’s particular role, as opposed to that of the EROs, I ask him for his view.
I would like to think that the most important legacy of this is that young people in Scotland will become politically literate and will understand the issues, and that they will take that forward as active citizens in Scotland.
I have a question on that point for Mr Byrne or Ms Pitcaithly. Will there be a difference in age—or in relation to any other relevant factors—between a 16-year-old who has been on the referendum register and a 16-year-old who is identified as an attainer on a normal register?
The referendum will be held in the autumn of 2014, so after the autumn we would begin to think about the next canvass. We would be trying to capture the same people about whom we already had details. It seems bureaucratic to ask them for the same information that they have already given us.
We will just have to work within whatever the legislation says in that respect. I recognise the potential benefits, but there are potential issues as well.
We seem to have exhausted that area, so we will move on to issues of voter registration in general, which James Kelly will ask about.
Good morning. You will be aware that an issue that has come up in previous evidence sessions is the UK legislation to introduce individual, as opposed to household, registration. Do you have a view on whether it would be better to delay the introduction of individual registration and to use household registration for the referendum?
That depends on the date of the referendum. If a fairly early date is set, we would suggest to the Cabinet Office that we should delay the introduction of individual registration until after the referendum. If a fairly late date is set, we would want to go early with individual registration—immediately after the European elections. If the date is somewhere in the middle—in October 2014, say—that would cause slight problems, because it is arguable that there would not be a full amount of time in relation to the referendum, so some things might have to cross over or electors would get information on two different processes at the same time. However, we would try to keep that to a minimum.
We will know the date in a few hours’ time, but let us assume that the date is in October 2014. What would be your preferred approach as regards registration?
I would prefer us to start the individual registration process on 1 November.
So, if the date of the referendum is October 2014, you would prefer it if individual registration were delayed until after that.
Yes.
To get 16 and 17-year-olds registered, you will use the annual canvass. Will you use any other techniques to identify 16 and 17-year-old potential voters?
We should be able to get information from education departments. We do that at the moment for attainers, and we hope that we would be able to extend that. The bill mentions that the same rules would apply. That would mean that we would be able to pre-populate the canvass forms, which the bill seems to encourage. We would have the information on where the 16-year-olds lived and who they were; we would just need them—or someone in the household—to confirm that that was still the case. That would get them on the young persons register. If we did not get confirmation, we would follow up if we thought that a young person was living there. Ultimately, if a person did not engage, we would remove their name from our database and they would not be registered.
Would that cover 15-year-olds who would be 16 at the time of the referendum?
Yes.
Is it the case that there are no legal obstacles to that?
I do not see a legal obstacle. There does not seem to be a legal difference between 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds, but I understand that trying to capture 14-year-olds would extend the child protection issues. That would need to happen only if the canvass were more than a year before the referendum date. Therefore, it is quite important to know the referendum date to be able to work that out. We imagine that we would be looking for 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds for the register.
When it comes to the organisation of the poll, as well as getting as many 16 and 17-year-olds as possible registered, we want to get them to vote and to enjoy the voter experience. What do you think needs to be done to ensure that polling place arrangements are smooth for 16 and 17-year-olds who are voting for the first time? In addition, many members of the general population will probably vote for the first time in the referendum.
It is important that all voters are able to vote if they wish to do so. We would want all voters, from 16 to 106, who have registered and who turn up at the polling place on the day—having decided not to use proxy votes or postal voting—to be able to vote. We try as far as possible to remove potential barriers. We have been discussing with the Local Government and Regeneration Committee the issue of access to polling stations, the language that is used and so on. Those are all issues that we have to consider constantly.
Local authorities work closely with the Electoral Commission on the public awareness exercises that it explained in its evidence earlier. Local authorities are focused on ensuring that as many people as possible are aware of the electoral event, what they need to do to take part and how to take part. We will continue that throughout local authorities in Scotland.
Bearing in mind that the number of people who will participate in the referendum is likely to be higher than in a normal election, has any assessment been made of the need to extend polling stations and polling places within polling stations?
Yes. My colleagues throughout the country are looking at those issues. Do we need more polling places? Should we have more staff in them so that we avoid any possibility of queuing, particularly at the close of poll? I know that members are interested in that issue. Should we have more staff involved at peak periods?
I want to bore down into an issue that James Kelly rightly raised with you, regarding 14-year-olds. The canvass form that will go out—which is in schedule 2—refers only to 15-year-olds at this stage. It depends on the date of the referendum, but you expect that that might need to be adjusted. I think that that is really what you are saying.
Yes. If canvassing happened more than a year before the referendum day, very few 14-year-olds would be asked to complete the form. However, we have had discussions with Scottish Government officials about the practicalities. There may be ways round that so that we do not need to capture the 14-year-olds while they are 14; we can wait until they are 15.
If we find out this afternoon that the referendum is before 1 November, there should not be an issue. Have I got that right?
Pretty well, yes.
“If,” convener?
I assure you that I do not know anything. [Laughter.] I have tried very hard to find out but I know nothing.
I am happy to give you cover any time, convener.
I work for Renfrewshire Valuation Joint Board—I am deputy ERO there—and for some years now we have been running schemes in partnership with our local secondary schools. We aim to speak to every sixth year pupil where the headteacher has given us permission to go into the school. We run a workshop called “Democracy Cookbook”, which is based on some really good resources that the Electoral Commission issued some years ago. We explain the voting process, we ask the participants to build a politician—
I hope you did not bring any samples.
I could have done, but you might not have liked some of them. [Laughter.]
It gets to run the country.
Absolutely. [Laughter.]
There are some examples of excellent practice across the country. We must ensure that the key agencies work in a co-ordinated fashion so that what happens in Renfrewshire also happens elsewhere. We would like to assure the committee that we will be doing that work, and that no matter where youngsters are—or indeed, given Rob Gibson’s earlier question, what their native language is—they will be able to access the information.
Does that imply that we will not face the situation that Kate Crawford described, in which there is good activity only in schools where the headteacher chooses to let people in? Will it be clear to all schools what is expected of them?
Yes. Clear guidance will be given. I have a meeting with directors of education on Monday and the issue is on our agenda. We need to establish clear guidance, so that young people, parents, carers and educators understand the rules of engagement. It should not be left to the whim of an individual.
Will the guidance be publicly available and consulted on?
Yes.
Several members have supplementary questions.
I want to tease out what Bruce Robertson said about it not mattering whether someone lives in Helensburgh or Helmsdale. How can directors of education ensure that every school provides balanced materials to promote informed discussion about the referendum in personal and social education and modern studies classes?
I do not want to get into the technicalities of the curriculum. Not every school offers modern studies, so we need to ensure that there are opportunities in every secondary school’s curriculum. That is where work in collaboration across the 32 education authorities and with School Leaders Scotland, which is the association of secondary headteachers, will enable people clearly to understand what is happening. That is what we all aspire to. We cannot have a situation in which a set of children in Helensburgh has an opportunity to engage that is very different from the opportunity that children in Helmsdale get.
Wearing my chief executive’s hat for a minute, I can reassure members that the issue is of concern to council chief executives, too. If there is guidance that has been consulted on, we will expect schools to use the material that is made available, so that there is awareness of what is being said. We will support our director of education colleagues in taking that forward.
Uptake of 83 per cent among sixth years is exceptional. Could the activity that Kate Crawford described take place with fourth years, too, given that they are compelled to be in school? Beyond the referendum, could work be rolled out with young people from first year?
In our case, the reason why we do not do the work with children further down the school is simply a resourcing issue, given the number of schools in the joint valuation board area. We can manage the secondary schools and the sixth year pupils, but our aim would be to roll out the work further. From this year, we are extending the work to younger pupils who will be of the age to vote in the referendum. The resourcing of the work is the biggest issue.
The referendum next year will be a huge event, irrespective of which way people vote and of our thoughts or opinions. Younger people are now engaged just as much as people aged 18-plus. There is a huge opportunity and it would be a shame for younger people not to take full advantage of it. The Parliament is good at engaging with schools, whether through MSPs going out to schools or through schools coming to the Parliament. We all appreciate that engagement, as do schools, which try to work with the Parliament to improve things.
Absolutely.
Our panel of young witnesses last week accepted that, in the dissemination of information, a balance must be struck between providing information and not distracting pupils from essential activity within schools at what may be a critical period—for example, during examinations. How do you get that balance right?
It is interesting that they said that to you. In the development of this journey, it is important that we continue to ask young people for their views on key issues. It is important that a disproportionate amount of time is not given over to this activity because most of the young people who will be involved in it will be in the senior phase of curriculum for excellence and studying for national qualifications. However, within the senior phase there are parts of the curriculum and parts of the pupil week where pupils are not focused solely on qualifications. It is in the PSE classes that have just been mentioned that the activity would take place, although there would be spin-offs from that into the more formal aspects of the curriculum and some of the qualifications. That is the happy balance that we need to strike. I want to leave you feeling confident that we will not tilt the balance, as that would be unfair on the young folk.
Thank you very much.
Good morning and thank you for coming.
I refer back to what John McCormick said about our communications network, which works very well with the communications team at the Electoral Commission but could have a role beyond that in talking to representative groups of young people about what they would find useful and valuable. When I get back to my office I will speak to my communications manager—who is an active member of that network, as the communications staff in Edinburgh will be—to see whether they can contact the witnesses to whom you spoke last week and take forward some innovative thinking around that area. It is an interesting question. As was said in the previous evidence session, we are having to do things differently for a different generation but the overall message is that we need to reach out to all voters.
There is a unique opportunity for YouthLink Scotland, which is an umbrella body, to play an important co-ordinating role. For me, that will be crucial. Obviously, the Scottish Youth Parliament, Highland youth voice and so on will be desperate to engage with the process. I think that managing that engagement might be the issue.
Thank you.
That is a very positive perspective—I like that.
I think that the bill states that no application may be made before 1 December, which could be quite a serious limitation.
Tell me a bit more about that—explain to the committee what you mean.
The bill states that
I understand. That is a good point and is very helpful.
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