Official Report 418KB pdf
Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedules 4 and 5 and Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc) Order 2015 [Draft]
Item 2 is a draft Scottish statutory instrument. We have witnesses with us this morning. I welcome John Swinney, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy and the Deputy First Minister; Stephen Sadler, team leader from the Scottish Government’s elections and constitution division; and Neel Mojee, policy adviser in the elections and constitution division. I thank the Deputy First Minister, in particular, for coming to the meeting at such extremely short notice. We are very grateful that you are able to attend in the circumstances. I suspect that you wish to make an opening statement.
Yes, if I can, convener.
I welcome the committee’s invitation to attend the meeting and to present the draft order, which will transfer competence to the Scottish Parliament to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds in Scottish Parliament and local government elections.
The terms of the draft order that you are considering this morning have been agreed by the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments to give effect to the recommendation at paragraph 25 of the Smith commission report, which calls on the UK Parliament
“to devolve the relevant powers in sufficient time to allow the Scottish Parliament to extend the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds for the 2016 Scottish Parliamentary elections”.
The powers that are to be devolved through the section 30 order, subject to agreement in this Parliament and at Westminster, are narrowly focused on enfranchising 16 and 17-year-olds. Full powers over Scottish Parliament and local government elections will follow later, through the proposed Scotland bill.
The Scottish Government is satisfied that the draft order that is before the committee will enable the Scottish Government to introduce legislation to lower the voting age for future elections for the Scottish Parliament and for local government elections in Scotland. The draft order also transfers the power to legislate to make provision about registration in order to give effect to any reduction in the minimum voting age. That will allow us to build on one of the key democratic triumphs of the referendum campaign.
As I indicated in the chamber on Tuesday, those of us who witnessed the engagement and enthusiasm of young people as they exercised their democratic rights saw the value of their participation in and their impact on the process. Since the referendum, I have been delighted to see unanimous support across the Parliament for lowering the voting age to 16, and I hope that that support will be demonstrated by agreement to this section 30 order in time for it to be considered by the Privy Council on 19 March.
At the start of the week, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution published a report on the order. Prompted by your question on Tuesday about the report, convener, Parliament was given the opportunity to make its views known on the points that were raised by the House of Lords committee. The views that were expressed on Tuesday were clear and unambiguous: the decision on whether—and if so, how—to lower the voting age is one for the Scottish Parliament to make. Subject to parliamentary approval of the draft order, the Scottish Government will shortly produce legislation setting out detailed proposals to achieve that aim, and the parliamentary stages that the legislation will go through will provide Parliament with the usual opportunity to consider the details, to seek public views and to debate our proposals.
I look forward to discussing those issues with the committee.
Thank you, Deputy First Minister. The committee now has a chance to make comments and ask questions, and the Deputy First Minister is free to involve his officials in the discussion. Does anyone have any comments or questions?
In article 5 of the draft order, there is an apparent lack of clarity regarding the extent of the functions to be exercisable by Scottish ministers concurrently with the Secretary of State for Scotland. Do you have any views on that, Deputy First Minister?
I have seen the report of what used to be called the Subordinate Legislation Committee—one day I will remember what that committee is now called. The powers in article 5 are to deal with something that is certainly not an issue from our perspective. There must be an understanding in the draft order that certain powers over registration, particularly individual electoral registration, will continue to be exercised by UK Government ministers. Article 5 contains a recognition that how we act on that issue must be compatible with the steps that UK ministers take. We have no issue with that and understand the requirement. As I have said, the article is focused on activities regarding individual electoral registration and the digital implications of all that.
Thank you.
Good morning, Deputy First Minister. In its report, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution expressed concern that the extension of the franchise in Scotland goes beyond what the Smith commission recommended and highlighted that there had not been wide consultation on the order. Do you have any concerns about that?
No. On the point about translating the Smith commission recommendations into practice, the view that was settled on in the commission’s report about devolving
“the relevant powers in sufficient time to allow the Scottish Parliament to extend the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds for the 2016 Scottish Parliamentary elections”
is very clearly reflected in what is being taken forward in the order. The additional element is the devolution of responsibility for local authority elections, which the Smith commission provides for in other respects within its wider responsibilities with regard to full powers over Scottish parliamentary and local authority elections following in due course.
The only point of any substance that the House of Lords committee has made relates to the issue of consultation, which will be remedied by the legislation that we introduce. It is not as though this is the last word on the matter. A bill will have to go through the usual channels of analysis and scrutiny that any bill in the Scottish Parliament has to go through, and that will provide the opportunity for a range of stakeholders to make their contributions.
The practical, democratic point at the heart of all this is the Scottish Parliament’s intention to ensure that 16 and 17-year-olds can participate in elections for which we have responsibility. We have form on that, because we have legislated for it on previous occasions for the independence referendum and the pilot exercises for health board elections. I am happy with the agreement that we have reached with the UK Government, and the order will enable us to take forward the proposal in a practical form to reflect the Scottish Parliament’s democratic intentions.
The purpose and intent of the order are clear, and I think that they are, as you said, cabinet secretary, broadly supported. One of the points made by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution highlighted what it regarded as a difference between provision in the draft clauses for future amendment of the franchise and provision in the order. Is that something that you recognise? If so, what are your views on it?
Again, those issues will be covered by the bill process that the Scottish Parliament will go through. The point that the House of Lords committee missed completely is that the Scottish Parliament will undertake a process of legislation in which it will explore all those questions with its usual rigour. My answer to the point that you raise is, therefore, that all issues will be properly captured by the bill process that we will undertake.
Would it be fair to deduce that the constructive engagement that you have had with the UK Government on the issue means that the bill will reflect the intention behind the draft clauses that the UK Government has published?
The focus of the draft clauses is on extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds for Scottish parliamentary and local authority elections. That will also be the purpose of the legislation that the Scottish Government will produce.
An apparent concern in the House of Lords committee report is about data protection issues for young people and vulnerable people. We covered that subject extensively in the Referendum (Scotland) Bill Committee, all the members of which had concerns about protecting people in that regard. Was the extensive work that we did in that committee taken into account by the House of Lords? Do you or your team have any concerns at all about how that issue was dealt with in the referendum process?
The issue was highlighted by stakeholders, first, then exhaustively considered by a committee of the Scottish Parliament, which influenced the legislation that the Government produced for the referendum. I have not had any representations from people who are concerned about the way in which the issue was handled for the independence referendum.
It is vital that the issues of data protection, privacy and the protection of vulnerable individuals are all absolutely and comprehensively addressed by the Scottish Parliament. No concerns about those issues were expressed to me in the aftermath of the referendum, which is a tribute to the strength of the scrutiny that was undertaken by parliamentary committees in advance of the referendum. There are lessons to be learned from that process, and there will be strong foundations on which our position should be based in taking forward the order and the forthcoming bill. However, we should not take the view that, just because we got it right in the run-up to the referendum, we will automatically get it right in the run-up to the Scottish parliamentary elections.
We should test the issues concerned with as much rigour as we did previously, and I encourage the committee to do so. The Government’s interest will be the same as the Parliament’s interest, which is to ensure that there is no breach of privacy and that the interests of vulnerable individuals are properly taken into account. That will be reflected in how the Government interacts with the committee on the question. I invite the committee to be very clear in its challenge to the Government around how we progress the legislation.
09:15
Perhaps, the next time that you are down at Westminster, you can invite the House of Lords to take a look as well.
The concerns and issues that were raised in the House of Lords report about the process that had taken place—or about anything relevant to that—did not take into account the robust process that had been carried out by the committees of the Scottish Parliament and by the Scottish Government.
This would be incredible, but if the House of Lords were not to pass the order today, what would be the impact of that on the ability to give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote and get the legislation passed in time?
I am not sufficiently familiar with the timetabling and circumstances of the interaction between the House of Lords decision and the meeting of the Privy Council. However, if the order is not passed satisfactorily and does not reach the Privy Council on 19 March, there will be no section 30 order before the United Kingdom election. In that context, I cannot see how it would be practically possible for the Scottish Parliament to legislate were a section 30 order to be passed at a later stage or, if we were to rely on the proposed Scotland bill taking its course, in time for 16 and 17-year-olds to exercise the vote in the 2016 elections. The crucial date to be reached is 19 March, when the Privy Council will meet—that is fundamental to enabling the Scottish Parliament to commence its legislative process.
I understand that the Privy Council will meet on 19 March, so timescales are very tight. The Parliament will have to consider the order next week if we are to meet the deadline for the Privy Council.
If the order is not approved by the Privy Council on 19 March, I cannot see how 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to vote in the Scottish Parliament elections in 2016. The order will not have been approved, so we will not be able to start our legislative process. If we were to wait until after the UK election for another section 30 order to be approved, that would take some time and our window to successfully legislate and undertake the process of registration would be severely curtailed. Therefore, I think that that would be utterly impractical. It would be completely impractical for us to wait for a bill.
I thank the Deputy First Minister on behalf of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee—the clerk had to give me a note about that because I never remember its full name either.
I invite the Deputy First Minister to move the motion.
Motion moved,
That the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee recommends that the Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedules 4 and 5 and Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2015 [draft] be approved.—[John Swinney].
Motion agreed to.
09:18 Meeting suspended.Next
Borrowing Powers