Local Government Committee, 23 Oct 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 23, 2001

Official Report 283KB pdf

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Scottish Local Government (Elections) Bill: Stage 1

We will now deal with the Scottish Local Government (Elections) Bill, colleagues. That will be a total change of subject, which will bring other parts of members' brains into use.

I welcome Peter Peacock, who is the Deputy Minister for Finance and Local Government; Leslie Evans, who is head of the Scottish Executive local government constitution and governance division; Frank Duffy, who is head of branch 1 of the local government constitution and governance division; and Murray Sinclair, who is the Scottish Executive divisional solicitor in the finance and central services department. All the witnesses have been before the committee previously, so they know the format.

I invite the minister to say some words and I will then open up the meeting for questions. I hope that he does not mind if we continue to drink our tea. We have a busy agenda and I wanted to give members a break.

I will be brief. I discussed the bill previously with the committee during the consultation phase. There was a significant response; I think that 80 responses were received, of which 31 were from councils. Only one council did not respond.

The responses supported the main thrust of the bill. All the councils indicated that they were in favour of a four-year electoral term. A clear majority—22—of the councils that responded was in favour of the coincident elections that are proposed. When the McIntosh committee canvassed opinion on that issue before the previous Scottish Parliament elections, only 16 councils supported coincident elections, so there has been a shift in favour of such elections.

As always, the consultation process was very helpful. It confirmed our view that coincident elections are important. Such elections strengthen the legitimacy of councils and ensure that turnout at council elections never differs from turnout at parliamentary elections. That means that people cannot make a distinction between the legitimacy of one tier of government and that of another. The consultation also encouraged us to make significant changes to the draft bill that the committee considered previously.

I want to flag up two specific changes. The first relates to the concern that the committee and councils expressed about the wide-ranging powers that were proposed for ministers. Those powers would have allowed them to coincide local government elections with extraordinary elections of the Parliament. When I gave evidence to the committee on the bill previously, I hinted that we were considering changes to those powers and that we would ponder the matter further during the consultation period and thereafter.

As members know, we are proposing to narrow significantly ministers' powers to alter the date of local government elections. The bill now seeks to establish a relevant period during which ministers would have the power to coincide local government elections with extraordinary elections of the Parliament. That period is quite tightly drawn. Its beginning is limited by the date on which a council sets its council tax rate for the year. In no year would a council be prevented from doing that by the calling of an extraordinary Scottish Parliament election, but that could have happened under the previous draft bill. The relevant period would start on 11 March and run to the normal date of a Scottish Parliament election, or to the date of a Scottish Parliament election as varied by the Presiding Officer, who has the power to change that date in particular circumstances.

Only during the narrowly defined period that I have set out would a minister have powers to vary the date of a local government election. The proposed powers are a purely pragmatic measure and are designed to ensure that local government and Scottish Parliament elections are not held on different days within a very short period. I trust that the changes that we have made will address the concerns that were expressed by the committee and others.

We have continued to receive representations, mainly from local authorities, concerning the need for local authorities to have powers to experiment with the way in which local government elections in Scotland are run. Local authorities are seeking a set of powers that mirror the powers that have been available for some time to councils in England and Wales. We have therefore introduced provisions to the bill that would give ministers the power to authorise local authorities, at their request, to experiment with the way in which local elections are administered. The intention is to improve flexibility, to increase turnout at elections—an issue that concerns members of the committee as well as the wider public service in Scotland—and to encourage greater efficiency in running elections. Under the new powers, local authorities will be able to present ministers with ideas that they want to experiment with and ministers will be able to approve them. We want to encourage local authorities to come forward with ideas and to make applications to ministers in due course.

Those are the two significant changes that have been made to the bill since we discussed it last. One provision is new, whereas the other seeks to address concerns that were expressed by the committee and others about ministers' powers to alter the dates of local government elections. I am happy to answer any questions from members.

One issue that was raised by most councils to which we spoke and by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in the consultation is that of publicity during election campaigns. I suggest that when Scottish Parliament and local government elections are being held at the same time, the media will concentrate on national rather than local issues. During the previous Scottish Parliament and local government election campaign people were informed that they had two votes, when in fact they had three. How will the bill address that issue? It is important that, when elections are called, there should be equality. During elections local authorities should feel that they are on an equal footing with the Scottish Parliament.

The bill addresses some of, but not all, the points that the convener has raised. I will explain how we are addressing the issue of ensuring equal footing. One way to ensure equality is to ensure that when elections are being held on the same day, people understand that they are voting for two different levels of government. That would help to clarify the position, because it would allow people to distinguish between local authority and Parliament elections.

In the past, when elections did not coincide, national issues tended to dominate local elections. Some commentators would invite people to cast their vote at a local election as if it was a referendum on the national Government. Clearly that is wrong. By using coincident elections, we have the opportunity to give greater parity to both types of election than was the case in the past.

The bill per se does not deal with the question of publicity. However, the Scotland Office, which deals with elections to the Scottish Parliament, has established control of administration of those elections. A working group of Scottish Executive and Scotland Office officials has been set up. The intention is to bring in, in due course, others—including electoral registration officers, returning officers, others from the local government community and other interests that might have a bearing on the question—to examine all the matters that relate to administration of elections. That would include publicity.

I accept the point that was made by the convener. In future, it would be helpful to be seen to be helping a democracy day, if you like, in a way that reveals to people the true extent of the powers that they as citizens have in casting their vote. The intention is for that working group to address all those issues and to seek to co-ordinate the actions of the Executive and the Scotland Office in the administration of both elections. A comprehensive agenda is being set out for the working group to examine a range of matters, including those that were raised by the convener.

In your introduction, you said that one of the reasons for having coincident elections was to strengthen the legitimacy of councils. I remind you that Kerley said in his report:

"coincident elections would bring to local government:: a share in the increased turnout that a national election brings… However, the higher turnout could not be claimed as an increased democratic mandate for local government: it would not bring additional voters to the polls because of their involvement in local government issues. In fact, coincident elections would tend to reduce the electorate's focus on local government issues."

Will you comment on that?

I set out our thinking the last time I gave evidence and I am happy to do so again today. We believe that it is important to have equality of legitimacy in electoral terms between the Parliament and local government. It would be deeply unfortunate to take the alternative to what we suggest. That alternative would be to have elections on different days and to discover—all the evidence suggests that we would—that Scottish parliamentarians were being elected on an average turnout of 60 per cent. It is hoped that that figure could be increased in time—it is in everybody's interests to do so. Thereafter, local authorities might be elected on an average turnout of 30 to 40 per cent. That would give rise to people questioning the difference in legitimacy between those two tiers of democracy in Scotland.

Our objective is to make it clear that such a difference should not exist and the best way to do that is to ensure that we have a similar, or almost similar, turnout at both elections. That would remove the grounds for people to undermine in any way local government and its democratic legitimacy. I understand what Kerley said but, on that point, we have chosen the course of action that we suggest in the bill because we feel that that is the best way to achieve equality of legitimacy.

I am sure that we are not going to agree about that. Higher turnout does not in itself confer legitimacy on local government, if local government has not had the opportunity to be examined within an election period. There is no doubt that the Scottish Parliament and the local government elections that were held in 1999 did not examine local government issues. Where is the evidence to suggest that in the coincident elections of 2003 the examination of local government as a separate entity will take place?

One must come to a judgment about such matters. Our judgment is clear—as I said in my opening remarks, all the evidence from past local authority elections has shown that local elections have tended to be treated as national referenda on the national Government of the day. As somebody who came into Parliament through local government, I regret that. It is important that local authorities get the scrutiny at which Tricia Marwick is hinting, and that people base their judgments in local elections on local issues.

However, in the past all political parties have been guilty of using local elections as national referenda. Having elections on separate days would not guarantee that local democracy was open to any more scrutiny. The evidence seems to show that local elections used to be hijacked for national purposes. I can understand the argument that if a local election were taking place, that would be disguised by the Scottish Parliament and national issues, but I do not believe that that would be inevitable.

The opportunity exists to characterise the elections as a democracy day in Scotland, where people would cast three votes—two at the Scottish Parliament election and one at local elections. Through that device, people would be able to characterise the differences in those elections. People would be asked to examine the issues on that particular day. In that sense, I am not therefore concerned about the argument that Tricia Marwick makes. I think that there is an opportunity to sharpen up the definitions of the two levels of government and to allow people to make choices on election day about local government and the Scottish Parliament.

It is certainly true that, to some extent, local elections have been used in the way that you describe. However, your knowledge is of being an independent candidate. In what ways do you think independent candidates will suffer when two elections are held on the same day and the focus is clearly not going to be on local government issues?

I do not think that it makes a difference to any kind of candidate, whether independent or standing under the banner of a particular party. That was the case at the last election. If one considers the areas where there has been a tradition of independent candidates, the balance did not shift in local elections. I do not think that there is any evidence to suggest that independent candidates would be more affected than any other group of candidates. They would stand equally with other candidates on the day and would be judged by the electorate in the normal way.

I am particularly pleased about the provision in the bill for pilot schemes. I welcome the innovation of allowing local authorities to seek permission to consider different practical methods of casting votes and where votes might be cast. However, for a long time, the disabled community in Scotland has been trying to ask questions about their difficulties in being able to cast their votes. Is there any scope in the bill to allow local authorities to pilot schemes that would promote better access to the voting system for people in the disabled community?

The short answer to that is yes. We have a similar concern. However, more is happening and I will set that out and put it into the context of the provisions of the bill.

I have a friend who is visually impaired; she has had difficulty with voting in the past and has been campaigning hard for change. From her efforts, I am aware of what is happening and of the concerns that exist.

Our officials recently met representatives from the Disability Rights Commission and Capability Scotland. The officials set out proposals—they are already being progressed; we plan to introduce them at the same time as the bill—on secondary legislation to improve the way in which we can service that part of the community in the way that Michael McMahon described. No doubt that secondary legislation will go to the Subordinate Legislation Committee and might well also come to the Local Government Committee—I am not clear about the procedure. The proposals include large-print ballot papers, with visually impaired people in mind. The use of Braille and other devices that are available to help blind people to cast their vote will also be considered, as will a companion facility in which a person who has a disability can be accompanied to the ballot box and helped to exercise his or her vote. That is part of a package of proposals that will regularise a number of anomalies that exist in electoral law. The Disability Rights Commission and Capability Scotland were pleased to hear about those proposals.

Beyond that, the working group to which I referred a few moments ago has on its agenda action that we must take to implement the spirit of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. In order to widen access and opportunity, the group must also ensure that, as far as is possible in all the provisions for elections, returning officers and others involved in the organisation of elections make proper provision for all types of disability.

The working group will consider all those issues with a view to issuing guidance to returning officers, including training and, perhaps, a checklist of steps that returning officers should go through before any election to ensure that we cover all angles in relation to different disabilities. The working group should make progress on that.

Beyond that and as part of the provision for pilots and experimentation, disability is the sort of area in which we would be keen to consider innovative ideas. If there are applications for pilots that will allow people to experiment further, we will be more than sympathetic to those applications. The one qualification that I make to that is that we do not want pilots to be used to take action that people ought to be taking anyway to implement the spirit of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Pilots should be used to test ideas for measures that are genuinely innovative, that take everybody's thinking further forward and that might be applied more widely. We would be more than willing to consider such pilots and would be pleased to receive applications of that type.

I want to touch on pilot schemes before I ask my other question, because the issues are tied together. I agree—I am sure that everybody else here does—that we want to make elections as accessible as possible for everybody, regardless of what disabilities people might have. Ease of access makes it easier for everyone to get to elections and allows proper proportional representation across the board. My original question was about proportional representation.

Pilot schemes have been mentioned and I am glad that they will be included in the bill, but they are to be used only for local government elections. If we wish to be consistent, could not they be used for Scottish Parliament elections? As the minister said, some councils have decided that both sets of elections should be held on the same day. The minister makes the argument that Scottish Parliament and local government elections should be held on the same day. However, local government is not elected by PR, but the Scottish Parliament is to some extent. Local government elections are now being subjected to pilot schemes, but the Scottish Parliament elections are not. That seems to be a bit of a mishmash.

I remind members that PR is a reserved matter for us. Part of the question does not need to be answered, although it is difficult to separate it out.

There are two questions.

You should pick up on what you can.

I clarify that I asked one of the questions that appeared on the briefing paper. Perhaps somebody does not know that PR is a reserved matter.

That was not the question.

I normally do as I am told, which is why I asked the question. Anybody who had a bit of common sense would ask that. The public will wonder why, if we are to vote in two elections on the same day, we will vote using PR to an extent in one election, but not in the other.

We do not need to be reminded of the fact that one of the Kerley report's recommendations was that there should be PR for local government elections. I know that two of the parties that are represented in the committee support PR for local government elections.

The minister will know that he is free to answer and I am sure that he will answer honestly and in an up-front manner.

The intention of the bill is not to deal with PR in local government elections. It is about how we administer the current electoral system. It is about improving the administration of elections and making it easier for people to vote whatever the system of election and it is about increasing turnout. Those are the essential qualities of the bill. It is not intended to be a means by which to try new electoral systems. I am sure the committee is aware that a ministerial group is considering the outcomes of the Kerley report and that the partnership is committed to making progress on the question of electoral reform. The bill, however, is not intended as a vehicle for electoral reform.

The second question was about the fact that the Scottish Parliament elections, despite being held on the same day as the local government elections, would not be capable of running pilots in the same way as the local government elections. The administration of the Scottish Parliament elections is a reserved matter and we cannot have a direct impact on that. Having said that, I am aware that the working group will also consider whether the Scotland Office needs or wants to take—or whether we can encourage it to take—the same powers that we have in relation to local government elections. That would ensure that, if we wanted to approve an experiment or pilot to take place on the day of a Scottish Parliament election, a pilot could be conducted. That is ultimately a matter for the Secretary of State for Scotland. I know that she is generally sympathetic to moving in the same direction, but it is a question of finding the legislative vehicle with which to do that. We are working with colleagues in the Scotland Office on the matter to minimise any discrepancy that might exist between the two elections.

The timing of local government elections and their voting systems are our responsibility, but Scottish Parliament elections are a reserved matter. To be wholly consistent, why do not we have the elections to the Westminster Parliament on the same day? Perhaps you cannot answer that hypothetical question because it is a reserved matter, minister.

Absolutely. That clarifies the point. The minister cannot answer that question, because it is a reserved matter.

I welcome the changes to the bill, which deal with the concerns that I raised with the minister. I thank him for making those changes.

Does the minister agree that the suggestion that local government elections might be overshadowed is not backed up by the evidence from the 1999 elections in Scotland and from studies that were carried out in parts of England where local elections were held on the same day as UK general elections? There is significant evidence that people vote differently in the different elections. For example, in Perth and Kinross and in Moray, the local administration was kicked out of office, but people voted differently in the Scottish Parliament elections. Does he agree that the electorate are quite capable of voting differently and of understanding that they are voting in different elections?

I thank Iain Smith for his help and for the points that he made about the draft bill. The changes that we have made are, in significant part, due to some of the concerns that he raised with us.

I agree with what Iain Smith said. The evidence does not support the suggestion that local elections are totally swamped. People are quite capable of making different judgments. In fact, they might make different judgments within the Scottish Parliament election, and may cast their second vote in a different way from their first. There is some evidence that that happens. People may also cast their local authority vote in yet another direction. There is evidence that the electorate are sophisticated, that they understand the system well and that they can participate fully, as Iain Smith described.

My second question relates to points that were raised in evidence on the draft bill from the returning officers, who have concerns about the different rules that apply to different types of elections, which could cause some problems when running simultaneous elections. Is the Executive trying to ensure that the rules are, as far as possible, consistent for the Scottish Parliament and local government elections? That would minimise administrative inconvenience.

The working group is part of the mechanism for deciding that. In the package that we are considering in relation to secondary legislation on disability matters, we will consider nomination criteria for candidates seeking election to the Scottish Parliament and to a council. At the moment the criteria are different and we need to tidy up things like that. The working group will identify such matters. If we can deal with such matters through secondary legislation we shall do so, and we shall encourage Scotland Office colleagues to do the same in relation to their powers, to ensure that there is no discrepancy between the two sets of elections.

My final question is technical. Until the bill is enacted by the Parliament, the due date of the next Scottish local elections remains 2 or 3 May 2002—I cannot remember which date is the Thursday. Normally, when a local authority vacancy arises within the six months prior to the date of the elections, no by-election takes place. If we extend the life of councils by another year, that will obviously create an inconsistency. Is that being examined, and will councils be given guidance on what to do in such circumstances?

I am grateful to Iain Smith for raising that point and for giving me notice that he would raise it. He has a point—we are actively examining the matter and we will probably introduce a small amendment at stage 2 to cope with that problem and ensure that matters are regularised. We believe that the problem might not be as stark as it first appears and that there might be powers in the Scotland Act 1998 that would cover such circumstances. However, to avoid doubt, we shall introduce a small amendment to tidy up the matter unequivocally. We intend to deal with that.

I can see that Iain Smith is following in the footsteps of Donald Gorrie with his very useful points.

What did you learn from the pilot schemes that were run during the 2000 elections in England that we will be able to feed into our pilot schemes? Do you have any ideas about the form that the pilots might take or who will fund them?

The evidence from the pilot schemes that have taken place south of the border is mixed. Postal voting has been shown to be the element that raises turnout the most by making it more convenient to vote. Other implications follow from postal voting, but it looks quite promising. However, initiatives such as extending elections over a couple of days or using electronic voting mechanisms have tended not to have significant impact on turnout—perhaps there have been marginal shifts of between half a percentage point and a couple of percentage points. That is not to say that it is not worth persisting with such initiatives, as people may become more comfortable with them, especially electronic voting using the internet.

What has happened in England and Wales would not rule out any experiments in Scotland. Similar experiments, perhaps marketed differently, might be more successful in Scotland. We genuinely want people to tell us what they believe suits their community best. The Scottish Executive is not pushing any particular experiments. We have an open mind and will consider suggestions dispassionately. I encourage any local authority that is thinking about the way in which it holds its elections, counts the votes and so on, to tell us its thoughts. If the Scottish Executive approves the initiatives, we would allow the local authority to experiment.

We are examining funding and I do not want to give a commitment on the issue today. Some experiments could be on a large scale. The evidence from south of the border and the financial memorandum that accompanies the bill indicate that the cost should not be great, but we might need to do something to encourage certain forms of experimentation that might have a higher cost than others. We are not ruling out the provision of funding yet, but we are not ruling it in either.

We must address the fact that, especially in local government elections, the majority of people do not cast their vote. Are you convinced that pilot studies are not just, at best, a public relations exercise or, at worst, a waste of public money? I do not know how the pilot schemes will be assessed, other than that the Executive will have some sort of group. Also, I do not know how the matter will be pursued after that point. I understand why postal voting was the most successful initiative in England. Have you investigated whether the majority of people in other European countries are also failing to cast their vote? People to whom the committee has spoken have felt that, while pilot schemes sound like a good idea, no one is sure what to do after the evidence has been gathered.

Pilot projects alone will not boost electoral turnout, apart from by making it more convenient for people to cast votes. Postal voting appears to be more convenient and raises turnout. We should not dismiss that, as postal voting might become more widespread. Equally, electronic voting might become more fashionable, particularly for the younger generation, which is more used to using the internet and the technology that surrounds it. I have not personally examined in depth all the lessons from overseas on turnout. We could do work to see whether there are lessons that we can learn.

Fundamentally—this is a much longer-term issue, which we all have to work on—people cast a vote because they believe that it is relevant and that they can affect the affairs of their local community. That takes us into other areas, such as how councils make decisions and how they organise themselves. Are councils decentralised or centralised? Do they consult their consumers, customers and citizens? Are they highly interactive? If they are, people may have a different view of their ability to influence events in their council. People may have a better understanding of their council and be more enthusiastic about casting a vote, because they know that it can make a difference, which it undoubtedly can, as we all know.

Pilots are an important ingredient in the mix of measures, but they are by no means the only way of encouraging turnout. All of us in politics must continue to address how we properly engage citizens so that they can see the relevance of their vote and its enormous power to change events.

You are right that pilots in themselves will not do that. Everybody must work together.

You said that high turnout is important, and we all agree with that, but if the issue was just about high turnout, we would be proposing a legal requirement that everybody should vote. I will take you further and ask about engaging citizens. How much has the Executive consulted residents groups, community councils and the rest of civic Scotland, or has the consultation been confined to councils, returning officers and those with a vested interest?

All our consultations are entirely open. It is for people to pick up the documents—they are widely available and are published electronically—and comment as they see fit. Obviously, local authorities have a particular interest in such matters, as do other groups such as returning officers. They will continue to give a lot of attention to these matters. We received quite a number of representations from an SNP branch in the west of Scotland, which demonstrates that information flows out to all sorts of places.

That is hardly normal, though. Not even an SNP branch is normal. My question was about engaging ordinary citizens. The problem is that they do not vote.

If you are saying that the SNP branch members are not ordinary citizens, that debate should take place elsewhere.

I am talking about vested interests.

People are free to participate. Local authorities are in regular contact with, for example, community councils. Community councils are aware of that, in the same way that they are aware of a whole range of things to do with the functioning of their council. Residents groups are also aware of that and they are free to comment on any consultation. Of course, the extent to which they choose to do so is a matter for them.

Okay, that seems to be it. Thank you for coming along, minister. The session has been useful. I am sure that we will see you again.

I have to leave to put in a bid for the civic participation event, so behave yourselves.

I welcome Alan Campbell, the chief executive of Aberdeenshire Council. Would you like to say a few words?

Yes. I am also the returning officer for elections. I was just checking the minutes and back in 1997, when I was chairman of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers in Scotland, I was on record as suggesting that we should have the local government elections and the Parliament elections on the same day. I was particularly concerned about turnout figures for local elections. I felt that the experience of 1999 vindicated that approach in relation to the sensitivity that the voters exhibited.

I was a bit disappointed with the McIntosh commission's recommendations, but I am pleased that the bill now takes account of my primary concern, which was not to put any obstacle in the way of voter turnout. That is my independent view as a returning officer. The majority view in the council coincides with that; it is believed that it is clearly beneficial to have the elections on the same day. However, a minority expressed concern that local government issues would be made secondary if that were to happen. The majority of the council, however, is in favour of the bill as presented.

Do you still have any concerns arising from the bill as drafted?

I feel that the bill now takes account of our previous concerns. I am in favour of the bill's provisions.

You probably heard me say that I welcomed the opening up of the bill to local authorities to promote innovative ideas to get people to the polls and allow them to vote. Have you or your authority had any ideas that you would be keen to introduce or at least try in order to seek ways forward?

Yes. Much of our area is rural and I have considered that postal voting might well assist the turnout figures. We do not have a tremendous history of huge turnouts in north-east Scotland, and I felt that postal voting might be appropriate. I am aware that the current system is quite robust in many ways. There is a concern that, if you offer widespread postal voting, it may be abused by unscrupulous individuals. That would have to be safeguarded against. Postal voting is probably more important than some of the electronic systems, which are still in their early days, I think, and their integrity is questionable.

Are there any administrative or financial implications with regard to pilots? Could extending pilot schemes across a local authority for an election have wider implications?

A local authority will always be concerned about whether the Scottish Executive will support a pilot that involves extra expenditure, even when both the expenditure and the pilot are reasonable. It seems clear that election arrangements will be different in five to 10 years' time. It would be helpful to try a range of pilots, even if some are apparently more expensive than others. There might have to be financial assistance to authorities to encourage them to experiment with those pilots that might be more expensive.

It would strengthen your argument that democracy does not come cheap.

Indeed.

My question follows on from Michael McMahon's point about the pilot schemes and concerns the Scottish Parliament elections. However, I will not go into that matter fully with you as I have had answers from the minister. Do you envisage problems arising from having the ability to pilot schemes for local government elections but not for Scottish Parliament elections?

Yes. I think that one can envisage difficulties if voters receive one form of ballot paper through the post but have to turn out in the normal way for another election. Also, systems are different in local areas. Publicity will be extremely difficult. However, it has to be said that the experience of 1999 showed that the electorate were much more sophisticated than many pundits gave them credit for. We should bear that in mind. There is a concern that young people are not voting and we have not really found out why or what we can do to change things.

That clarifies some of the pilot schemes and the difficulty of getting people to vote. Will the added difficulty—as I see it—of having one scheme for local government elections and another for Scottish Parliament elections mean that more money and resources from local councils will have to be put into advertising and public relations exercises to explain why people must vote in local government elections?

We should do that. A lot of money must have been spent nationally on the 1999 elections. A large amount of money was spent on training staff. We must maintain that level of investment and not see it as a one-off in relation to the inauguration of the Scottish Parliament. Training for staff is important so that they can get the message across to the voters when they come to polling stations.

I have a question that leads on from Sandra White's comments. I do not know whether you were in the room when the Deputy Minister for Finance and Local Government was here, but in response to a question from Iain Smith the minister said that he was trying hard to harmonise the two procedures. Do you welcome that move?

I would certainly welcome that. There are several anomalous situations that make it quite difficult for returning officers, but despite that, the benefits of having the elections at the same time outweigh the disadvantages.

There are also problems in relation to the count. We are sometimes too ambitious in conducting the two counts one after the other. I favour starting the local government count the day afterwards at noon. That happens to suit us locally. If that were synchronised across Scotland as far as possible it would be helpful as public expectations would be equal.

The minister said that a working group is looking at the anomalies in the system. Are there any particular anomalies in synchronised elections that you would like that group to address to make life easier for returning officers?

There were some allusions to anomalies around the nomination process. They are fairly technical. The difficulty is that the Scotland Office seems unable to respond at the speed that we would like. We anticipated some difficulties in relation to the general election, for example, and even though it was slightly postponed we found that we were running up against the wire before those matters were dealt with.

I am not sure why the Scotland Office cannot respond—it has nothing else to do.

Has the Executive been in touch with returning officers to ask them to highlight issues?

Yes, there is to be a meeting. We had little contact prior to the general election and lots of contact prior to the Scottish Parliament elections. We need to resume that contact. It is fair to say that, because the elections use different systems, new issues are always being thrown up. Regular contact is important, particularly if there are to be experiments.

How much, if any, consultation on possible pilot schemes has Aberdeenshire Council had with the electorate, community councils, residents or tenants associations?

We have not done any consultation but I would propose that we do. We have community council forums at which representatives of community councils get together. Those forums would be a good place to discuss possible approaches.

How conscious are you of personation in piloting innovative new schemes? What are your thoughts about that? One of the strengths of the present system is that returning officers in many polling stations have held their position for, say, 20 years, and know almost everybody in their ward.

Being an old lawyer, I am particularly conscious that the system as currently operated is pretty robust in many ways. Having said that, I am conscious of two cases of personation, neither of which has come to court. I am obviously concerned that, in any scheme, whether experimental or adopted, we open the door to distortion in that way. It is up to us collectively to ensure that any scheme that is introduced, if it is to bring benefits, also eliminates as far as possible personation and other possible distortions.

Thank you for coming along, Alan. We will take away your ideas about the consultation that is still needed.

We will have a brief adjournment while we wait for the representatives from Clackmannanshire Council.

Meeting adjourned.

On resuming—

I welcome two people from very near home: Keir Bloomer, the chief executive of Clackmannanshire Council, and Keith Brown, the leader of the council. I invite you to make some opening remarks.

We are grateful to you for inviting us to come along to supplement the responses that we have already submitted on the Scottish Local Government (Elections) Bill. We wish to touch on only one main issue in our introductory remarks, although I appreciate that you may wish to ask us about other issues raised by the bill: the simultaneity of local government and Scottish parliamentary elections.

We appreciate the fact that there has been a serious deterioration in democratic participation. That is an issue that the Parliament will, rightly, wish to address. Our council is also anxious to address it. To that extent, we share the objectives behind the bill, but we see the decline in participation in elections not as the result of some technical difficulties in the voting system, but rather as that of a popular concern that participation does not lead to practical results, that the elected bodies are somehow out of touch with the needs of ordinary people and that politics is failing to address the issues that concern people. Those are the issues that require to be addressed if we are to rebuild faith in our representative democratic system.

Members might say that making adjustments that would raise turnout will not be harmful, and that we might as well do what little good we can in that direction, but we are concerned that the notion of simultaneous elections is counterproductive when we consider the causes of low voter turnout. People's desire to participate in local council elections will be restored if they feel that the councils that they are electing have genuine powers and have the capacity to exercise those powers independently. The most obvious instance of that would be reorganisation of local government finance so that we have greater autonomy and control over our own resources.

The bill would result in local government elections being held at the same time as Scottish Parliament elections, which would ensure that the issues that dominate both elections are national rather than local. That would diminish the level of interest in what our part of the elections ought to be about and in our view would contribute to the democratic deficit rather than help to alleviate it. Although we feel that the bill is well-intentioned—we understand the concerns that lie behind it—we think that that important aspect of it will be counterproductive and ought to be abandoned. We ought instead to concentrate on other measures to ensure that local government—which has an independent democratic mandate—is given more autonomy and independent status so that its significance in voters' eyes is enhanced and we can move towards restoring a genuinely pluralist democracy in Scotland.

Keir Bloomer has hit on the key issue for us, which is the coincidence or otherwise of the elections. We made representations on other aspects of the bill. We support the idea of a four-year term, which makes a lot of sense to most people in local government. In relation to new ideas to try to increase turnout, we are mindful of the pilot schemes that the Home Office ran last year for the English local elections and the fact that the only one that seemed to have a reasonable impact was the introduction of all-postal votes. You may know, convener, from your experience on Stirling Council and from the postal ballots for community council elections that that has had a big effect.

Nevertheless, I reiterate the point that Keir Bloomer has made. The pilot schemes may lead to temporary and sometimes substantial increases in turnout, but the real question is whether people feel that, in local government elections, they are voting for a body that has some power and autonomy and a mandate that is distinct from that of central Government. That is why we feel that it is important to follow McIntosh's recommendation for alternating the elections.

Do you think that the arguments for and against simultaneous elections have to be mutually exclusive? You said that the arguments that are made for increasing turnout and voter participation pale into insignificance if local authorities are regarded as more important by the electorate, local government has greater autonomy and the democratic deficit is removed. Why should those arguments be mutually exclusive? Why cannot there be increased turnout through synchronisation of the elections and greater esteem for local authorities through increased financial autonomy and so on? You phrased your comments in such a way as to suggest that those things are mutually exclusive.

There are things that could be done to attempt to improve turnout that would not exclude the increased autonomy for local government that both Keith Brown and I are concerned about. There are other possibilities, which involve the voting system. Keith touched on all-postal voting. There are other innovations along those lines that could be considered. Indeed, the bill mentions the possibility of new models. The difficulty with simultaneous elections is that which I mentioned: if there is campaigning on a Scotland-wide basis on issues of concern to everybody the length and breadth of the country while there is campaigning in the 32 local authority areas on a wide variety of issues, the publicity will be attracted to the former campaigning rather than to the latter. It is in that sense that the proposal for simultaneous elections undermines the standing of local government, and that is an either/or issue.

I am sure that you have heard arguments about the impact on a national Government and its standing among the electorate when a local authority election falls in the middle of the term of that Government. Local authorities have argued that they have felt punished through the decisions that have been made by the voters in response to events that were beyond the control of local authorities.

It has been suggested that there is no clear argument that people will not be affected by issues beyond those on which they are voting. I am not convinced of that, however: there is evidence that voters at the Scottish Parliament elections and local elections that took place in 1999 easily differentiated between what they were voting for at a local government level and at a Scottish Parliament level. They were free to do so and did so.

Your first point was about the way in which local politicians have sometimes reacted to the results of elections held in the middle of a parliamentary term. The argument that those politicians present is perfectly plausible, but it reaches a conclusion opposite to yours. If the impact of national politics is so great compared with that of local politics that national factors influence the outcome of local elections even when they are not held at the same time as national elections, how much more will they influence the outcome of local elections when they are held simultaneously?

I conclude that although the point that those local politicians make has merit, it does not support the notion that elections should be simultaneous; it supports the contrary notion. I am sorry, I have forgotten your second point, Mr McMahon. Could you remind me of it?

You have confused me. The first point, which I do not necessarily agree with, was about mid-term elections. The evidence that we have from the previous election shows that if elections are synchronised, people can differentiate between the levels of government that they are voting for. Therefore, even if the first argument does not hold water, the statistical evidence shows that people can clearly differentiate between voting for the Scottish Parliament and voting for local government.

The evidence showed that a percentage of people feel sufficiently strongly about a local issue or candidate to vote differently in the local election and in the Scottish Parliament election—but the percentage is small, so that argument tends to favour the opposite side of the debate.

The evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of people voted in the same way in both elections. A variety of conclusions can be drawn from that. It might be that people want to support the same party for the same reasons in both elections. It might be—I would argue this in a lot of cases—because of the fact that the national debate has assumed prominence in the minds of the majority of voters. There is no means of saying which conclusion is correct, but we can conclude that the number of people who exercised their right to vote differently formed a comparatively small percentage of the overall number of those who voted.

That is one way of considering the issue. I am not sure that I read the evidence in the same way. Even if the elections are held on different dates, one cannot argue one way or the other for whether people are voting on national or local issues. It is no different if people vote at the same time. There is no evidence to suggest that people who vote in my constituency vote differently because the elections are on the same day or on separate days—voting records show that. Where does your evidence, which suggests that the vast majority of people are voting on national rather than local issues in local elections, come from?

I can only refer back to the point that Mr McMahon made a moment ago in the first of his two statements. He said that local politicians, presumably as much in Mr Smith's party as in any other, tend to take the view that in mid-term elections they have been the victim of the national circumstances of their party. I assume that they argue that more often when they lose. They appear to be persuaded that in non-coincident elections, national issues hold great sway. If that is true, it is damaging to the democratic framework so we require to take steps to ensure that the autonomous mandate of local government is protected. Exacerbating the current difficulties through ensuring that the elections always coincide would not best protect the mandate.

We may have to agree to differ on that point. I accept what you said about ensuring that local government has a strong democratic base and that there is a point in voting in local elections. Those are valid points.

I have a couple of questions on your original submission on the draft bill. I want to discover whether some of your points have been taken up and covered in the bill as introduced. You refer in particular to the case of "an extraordinary general election" for the Scottish Parliament. Are you satisfied that the bill's new provisions meet the points that you raised in the report that you submitted to us on 13 June?

As I understand it, the period is currently limited to six months, which is obviously a considerable improvement over the position at the time I wrote my response.

Actually, I think that the period is limited to two and a half months, from 12 March to the beginning of May.

After reading your submission and examining the bill's proposals, I do not think that you and the Executive differ very much. You are quite happy with extending the local government term of office to four years; you are considering other innovative methods of voting; and you are looking forward to the introduction of pilot schemes. The one matter on which you differ with the bill is the timing of elections. Your submission seems to suggest that voters in local government elections and the autonomy of local government should be protected. I think that all members would commend anyone who takes that position.

You said that there are other ways of persuading people to vote, besides holding elections on the same day. Do you agree that the provisions on the timing of elections are a short-term solution to a long-term problem? Michael McMahon and Iain Smith mentioned the issue of constituency and consistency. There are different ways of voting in Scottish local government and Scottish Parliament elections. For the purposes of consistency, should a bill on the timing of elections include provision for a proportional representation system for local government elections? Would it also be consistent to extend voting pilot schemes to Scottish Parliament elections? Finally, as far as the whole picture is concerned—and as I have already asked the minister and various councils—why can we not hold elections to Westminster on the same day as the other elections, if it does not pose such a problem, promotes democracy and encourages people to get out and vote?

Sandra, I should remind you that the convener has already stated that we cannot discuss reserved matters. Mr Bloomer, you do not have to answer any questions about Westminster—or even Scottish Parliament—elections.

I am sorry, but I find it strange that even though I am a member of the Scottish Parliament I cannot legislate on when I can have an election. The witnesses can answer whatever questions they wish.

On your first point, which Mr McMahon also raised, the arguments for and against simultaneous elections are not mutually exclusive. Our fear about such elections—which is that local elections will be submerged by national elections—also holds if local government elections are held in between general elections. I accept that.

The difficulty is that local government is not deemed to have sufficient autonomy. Such a situation came about before the Scottish Parliament was created. Local politicians of all parties pointed out that, given the extent of control over local government finance and issues such as hypothecation and ring-fencing, it was inevitable that people would start to see local government issues that are important to them being decided nationally. That underlying problem will remain whether local government elections are held mid-term or at the same time as national elections, but the problem is exacerbated if all elections are held on the same day—it almost completes the whole process in people's minds. Mr McMahon was quite right to say that this is not a zero-sum issue.

You asked whether the solution is just short term. It is perhaps not short term, as it seeks to do things that should be done—even though I obviously disagree with one or two of those measures—but it does not address the fundamental problem of the autonomy of local government. As democratic theory shows us, in competing in a pluralist society with different levels of government, local democracies will inevitably have competing mandates. It is true across Europe that democracies with their own mandates act as a check and balance on other levels of government. I do not think that we have that in Scotland or, possibly, across the UK. One level of government is tightly controlled—almost uniquely so, perhaps with the exception of France—by another.

I agree that PR should be a feature. The debate is long-standing. I attended the first debate in the Scottish Parliament when McIntosh was debated. At that time, many people in local government had, like me, high hopes that there would be real progress on some of those issues. The subsequent Kerley and MacNish commissions have disappointed a number of people in that respect. I support PR, although I am not sure that Keir Bloomer, as returning officer, holds the same view—he might do.

There is a lot of scope in the pilot schemes. I think that the evidence suggests that supermarket voting and voting on different days—voting in advance—will not make a great deal of difference, although I have no objection to their being tried. I would go back to all-postal voting, but it is just a palliative—it means that people do not have to travel to the polling station to cast their vote.

We have all campaigned and canvassed before. I remember canvassing on a Thursday night for the European parliamentary by-election for North-East Scotland. It was the middle of November and it was pouring with rain. I think that the turnout was 21 per cent. In Balfron in Stirlingshire, there was an election that same day for the entire community council because there was one vacancy—it is a single-transferable-vote system. The turnout in one community council in the west of Stirlingshire was 44 per cent at the same time as the turnout for a European parliamentary by-election was 21 per cent. There is a lesson in that on postal ballots.

Electronic voting was tried by West Lothian Council. Electronic voting can work if it is taken to the home of the person who casts the vote, but West Lothian Council found that just providing it in a polling station did not produce a great deal of difference in turnout, although the count was certainly delivered much more quickly.

I have one point to add to that from the perspective of a returning officer.

I, too, welcome the pilots and would be perfectly happy for the pilots for any of the different kinds of election to be undertaken. However, holding simultaneous elections by different systems is difficult for returning officers, particularly if the systems are complex. If we are seriously interested in trying diverse techniques—which I would welcome—that argues for keeping the elections separate.

Before you came to the meeting today, the Deputy Minister for Finance and Local Government was here. He said that there is continuing negotiation about trying to bring closer together the different procedures for the two types of election.

When the minister was here, he suggested that a higher turnout in local government elections would confer greater legitimacy on the councils and that it would not be sustainable for local government to be elected with a 40 per cent turnout while the Scottish Parliament was elected, say, with a 60 per cent turnout. He suggested that the 40 per cent turnout conferred less legitimacy than the 60 per cent turnout.

If the object of the exercise is to inflate the turnout artificially, do you agree that we should be considering a bill to make it a legislative requirement for everybody to vote? If that is not the objective, what level do you suggest local government needs in order to have the legitimacy that the minister implies it does not have at the moment?

Although that is not within the scope of the bill—nor is PR—I am happy for you to answer it, if you can be brief.

Personally, I do not reach that conclusion. I do not favour compulsory voting. The 43 per cent of the public who chose not to vote at the general election delivered an important message and there is some evidence that that message is being listened to. Indeed, the passage of the present bill—albeit for a different set of elections—through the Scottish Parliament is evidence that there is rightly genuine concern about the extent to which a significant section of the populace feels alienated from the process. Those people have the right to make that point.

So you agree that a 100 per cent turnout is not necessarily the objective? Local government must be relevant enough to encourage people to come out and vote for it in the first place.

That is the point that Keith Brown and I made. Local government must have a credible independent democratic mandate and it will obtain that, ultimately, by being seen by voters as an important aspect of the government structure. That brings us back to the autonomy of local government, its control over its own finances and so forth.

No one would disagree with your previous statement.

I will ask about practical difficulties. You said that you think that only minimal advantage would be gained or that only a small difference would be made and that the procedures for the two elections could be brought closer together. If the elections are held on the same day, are there any other difficulties—with when the count is held, for example?

If the Parliament decides to hold elections simultaneously, and if voting methods diverge as a result of the piloting exercises, it will be important to address the issue that you touched on. Candidates, broadcasters and others might not welcome it, but we could operate two radically different systems simultaneously only if we were given the time to do so. That would have implications for the holding of the poll and the amount of time that was allowed before the count commenced. In such circumstances, I would not like us to continue to count the votes immediately after the close of poll. At the very least, I would like the count to be deferred to the following day.

Do you wish to comment on any other practical aspects?

No. We have covered all the points that we wanted to.

Does it concern you that alternative ways of voting may present a greater capacity for personation? Should that be considered carefully in the pilots?

Yes. The security of the system is important. That is not confined to voting. The ever expanding possibilities of the internet, for example, mean that verification of identity is becoming a critical concern in many fields. Perhaps the way in which we resolve that in one field will help in another. You are right. If we artificially boost numbers by letting many people vote two or three times, that will not be a triumph for democracy.

It is right that we have a debate about the whys and wherefores of different forms of voting, the timing of elections and all the matters that we have discussed today. The closing sentence of the covering letter to your submission says:

"The underlying issues will not be addressed by a measure designed to manipulate voters in such a way as to produce a spurious increase in turnout for local elections."

Do I read that right? Do you believe that the bill is an attempt to manipulate voters?

I do not believe in understating the case in these circumstances. An element of manipulation exists, because the bill attempts to give local government credit for pulling out voters who have gone to the polls to vote for a different purpose and for a different democratic forum. To that extent, the bill represents an attempt at manipulation—not a discreditably motivated attempt, but manipulation nonetheless.

The more important point is at the tail-end of that sentence, which mentions a "spurious increase in turnout". If people cast a vote in their local council election only as a by-product of being in the polling place to vote in the Scottish Parliament election, the increase in turnout that is secured is spurious.

I thank Keith Brown and Keir Bloomer for attending.