Local Government and Transport Committee, 28 Feb 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Official Report 323KB pdf

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Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Item 3 is further consideration of the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. I welcome the first of two panels who will give evidence on the bill today. The Deputy Minister for Finance, Public Service Reform and Parliamentary Business will appear on both panels. Colleagues will have the opportunity later to question the minister on registration, but first we will consider electoral administration. On the first panel, George Lyon is supported by Rab Fleming, Russell Bain and Shazia Razzaq from the Scottish Executive.

I ask the minister to make some opening remarks on electoral administration.

Part 1 of the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Bill deals with electoral administration. The provisions in part 1 aim to improve access to and participation in elections, to enhance security and to improve administrative effectiveness.

The Executive's stated policy is to bring the procedures for Scottish local government elections into line with the procedures for Scottish Parliament elections, where it is practical to do so. Therefore, much of the bill mirrors the Electoral Administration Bill, which is United Kingdom legislation. The UK bill also contains a number of changes to parliamentary election rules and the equivalent changes to local government election rules will be covered in secondary legislation. If we do not make those changes, returning officers and their staff may well face practical difficulties when they administer combined elections.

I am conscious that a number of points have been made about part 1 of the bill and I hope to address some of them in my opening remarks. The Local Government and Transport Committee discussed performance standards at length with witnesses and two main concerns were raised: what the likely content of the standards would be and the lack of parliamentary scrutiny of the standards.

As the committee knows, the Electoral Commission's report, "Voting for change", recommended that the Electoral Commission should take on the new power of setting and monitoring performance standards for returning officers. Accordingly, the UK Electoral Administration Bill contains a provision to that effect. As the Electoral Commission does not have a locus in relation to Scottish local government elections, the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Bill gives Scottish ministers the power to set and monitor performance standards for those elections. However, we have made it clear that the Executive's policy aim is to bring the procedures for local government elections into line with the procedures for Scottish Parliament elections, with which they are combined. We believe that the performance standards must be relevant to the responsibilities of the returning officer and compatible with the standards that the Electoral Commission will produce for Scottish Parliament and Westminster elections.

We believe that giving ministers the power to amend the standards and mirror changes that the Electoral Commission makes is the correct approach. It will give us the flexibility to ensure that, in combined elections, both elections are conducted to the same standards. As for the likely content of the standards, the Electoral Commission has made it clear that, in partnership with KPMG, it has started to define what constitutes an excellent electoral service. That work will be the basis for the performance standards that the Electoral Commission is likely to be asked to produce.

I understand the Parliament's wish to engage with the process that the Electoral Commission and ministers will undertake to produce the standards and I am happy to ensure that the Parliament and, of course, the Local Government and Transport Committee are involved.

I emphasise again that the standards for returning officers in Scottish local government elections must be relevant to their responsibilities and compatible with the standards that the Electoral Commission will produce for Scottish Parliament and Westminster elections. They will therefore be the product of extensive consultation with electoral administrators and their key purpose will be to improve the effectiveness of electoral services through the sharing of best practice.

The committee has discussed access to documents and the possibility of electronic counting. Any legislative provisions to govern the introduction of e-counting would have to be contained in the election rules under section 3 of the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. I make it clear that the current election rules require returning officers to give counting agents

"all such reasonable facilities for overseeing the proceedings, and all such information with respect to them, as he can give them consistently with the orderly conduct of the proceedings and the discharge of his duties in connection with them."

We have no intention of changing that, and nothing in the bill would impact upon it. I should also say that no final decisions have yet been taken about whether to go ahead with e-counting in May 2007. We hope soon to be in a position to make a decision on whether to proceed.

The committee has focused on preventing electoral fraud. Neither the Scottish Executive nor the UK Government believes that electoral malpractice is widespread. However, any electoral system is capable of improvement, and there are issues that have arisen during the course of recent elections that may have had an impact on public confidence in the system. The bill therefore introduces new offences in relation to absent voting and strengthens the law in other areas. The new offences are intended to increase the deterrent factor and to clarify the law on absent voting. Those offences mirror new offence provisions in the UK Electoral Administration Bill and have been developed in response to the Electoral Commission recommendations. It will be clearer that certain acts in relation to applications for absent votes constitute serious criminal offences and can attract prison sentences. Although it may have been possible for similar acts to be prosecuted under legal provisions such as the law of forgery, recent cases in Birmingham and Blackburn have highlighted the importance of clarifying the law in that area.

I have attempted to address some of the concerns that have been raised by the committee, but I and my officials will be happy to answer any questions that members may have. I would also like to say a few sentences later about registration, under part 2 of the bill.

We have always been aware during our consideration of the bill that there is parallel legislation at Westminster. Would you like to advise us of any changes that have taken place as the legislation has gone through the UK Parliament that have had an impact on what the Scottish Executive has had to do in relation to the bill that we are considering?

A couple of amendments to the Westminster bill have been proposed. Russell Bain will update members on those amendments, which have arisen in the past few weeks, and bring the committee up to speed.

The Electoral Administration Bill has just entered the House of Lords, which will consider it in committee. There are a number of small changes that we would be looking to replicate at stage 2, but they are quite technical. A slightly more substantive provision is the description of an independent candidate—we would seek to replicate that in secondary legislation—which has been changed slightly. That has a consequential effect on our bill, so we will lodge an amendment on that. We are monitoring all the provisions in the UK bill to see where the changes are likely to occur, but we would like to wait and see how the UK Parliament reacts to those proposed changes and whether it accepts them. Ministers will then take a view on whether they want to mirror any changes that are relevant here.

In your discussions with the Department of Constitutional Affairs, have you raised any issues that have arisen during our consultation that you would like to lead to changes at Westminster so that the two sets of legislation are compatible?

No, there are no such issues. We have engaged not only with the UK Government but with the Electoral Commission, because 80 per cent of both the UK bill and ours is built on recommendations from the Electoral Commission. There is a good working relationship between us and the Electoral Commission. There is a fair bit of work that the Electoral Commission still has to undertake with regard to developing the code of practice and the performance standards, and we are engaging with it on those issues. I understand that Sir Neil McIntosh indicated in his evidence that he was willing to engage with the committee in developing the standards. I know that there is concern about that and that it is felt that the Parliament should have at least some input into the development of the standards, because they are quite important.

With regard to observers at elections, it has been suggested that there should be a UK-wide code of practice. If you are going to have a UK-wide code, ought not it to be included in the legislation?

The code of practice?

Yes.

That is still in development. The purpose of the provision on observers is to honour the agreements that we have with other major democracies throughout the world for allowing election observers. That is what the UK bill seeks to do and we are reflecting that in the provisions in our bill. We believe that that is the right way to guide how returning officers judge whether observers are adhering to the code of practice and whether to allow them continued access during an election.

Do you envisage penalties for any violation of the code of practice? Will it be backed up?

I envisage that the returning officer would be able to exclude observers from the proceedings if the code of practice was breached. Ultimately, the returning officer is in control of the election and it is within his power to exclude people from or grant them access to the electoral process. That will continue.

Has any research been undertaken on e-counting? Has any assessment been made of the e-count in the tolls referendum that the City of Edinburgh Council ran in February last year? Are there any lessons from that for the possible e-counting of the Scottish Parliament and local government elections next year?

We are aware of the e-count that took place, but there might be more value in our making a comparison with and an assessment of other examples. I am thinking particularly of the Greater London Authority elections, which have twice been electronically counted. The electorate for those elections is similar to the total number in Scotland. We have had discussions with the GLA about those counts and those discussions will continue as we consider e-counting.

Trials of the e-counting procedures have been taking place over the past three weeks in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Every local authority has been invited to attend those trials and see how the procedures work. The feedback so far has been pretty positive and will feed into the decision making on whether we adopt e-counting.

We want to offer committee members the same opportunity to see for themselves how e-counting works. We intend to have another demonstration in the next six to eight weeks and we invite committee members to attend that so that they can ask questions about access, access to information, how the count works and how it will be displayed. Potential councillors and MSPs will thus have seen it for themselves if we decide to use the system.

Is it likely that the standards that are to be set for the conduct of election counts will include a standard for how long it should take to conduct a count and deliver a result? We are all aware of wide discrepancies in performance on that between local authorities.

That will certainly be a feature of the performance standards. Early feedback on the e-counting system is that an e-count should, we hope, be much faster than a manual count. That is especially important with the count on a single transferable vote system. If we decide to opt for e-counting, it is to be hoped that results would be announced more quickly than in the past.

Has thought been given to how the responsibility for the public information on the new voting system for electing councils next year will be split between the Scottish Executive and returning officers? If so, how much of that burden will fall locally on returning officers? How does that fit in with the additional responsibilities and burdens that result from the bill?

As regards the responsibilities that returning officers will have, the intention is to produce guidance, especially on the STV count, because there will be issues about spoiled papers, for example. It is important that we ensure consistency throughout the country.

To ensure that people are fully up to speed on how the new system will work, we have set aside a substantial amount of money to help not only with the costs of the election, but to promote how it will work and to provide good-quality information about it to individual citizens on what to expect when they go into a polling station.

Is that likely to take the form of a leaflet to every household, and newspaper advertisements, for example, to explain how STV will work?

That is what is envisaged, so that the maximum number of people are reached and informed and got up to speed on the new system. I suspect that there will be quite a bit of media interest as we get nearer the time. We expect the media to play its part in explaining to people exactly what will confront them when they go into the polling booth.

Given the equipment that will have to be ordered for e-counting, and the staff who will have to be trained in its operation, is it possible for ministers to commit to using e-counting for the 2007 election? Is the equipment that you are considering capable of counting the results of both single-vote elections, such as the Scottish Parliament elections, and multiple-vote STV elections?

Yes, the equipment is capable of counting the results of both systems. It would not make much sense to end up counting electronically the results of one system and using a manual count for the other.

We are in a position to decide whether e-counting will work for 2007 and whether it can deliver the result that we expect. The trials and demonstrations are about ensuring that the questions that local authorities and returning officers have are answered, and that they can see how the system works and how candidates can access information—as they can during box counting at the moment.

If we decide to go down that route, we hope to be in a position where we are comforted that the system can count the election results, is robust and can deliver the information that the candidates, their agents and those who are interested currently expect.

Section 1 of the bill says that

"The Scottish Ministers may—

(a) determine standards of performance"

and goes on to say that the standards of performance will be those that the Scottish ministers shall prescribe. However, when we asked the witnesses who have come before the committee so far what the standards of performance should be, no clear answer emerged. Would it not have been much better if you knew and could tell us exactly what the standards of performance should be as they apply to returning officers in the conduct of local government elections?

Clearly, we are talking about enabling legislation. The remit for developing the standards for the Scottish Parliament elections lies with the Electoral Commission. Although it does not have a remit with regard to local government elections, we intend to draw heavily on its advice and the standards that it develops for the parliamentary elections. It is important that standards are consistent for both elections. We believe that the provision in section 1, to which Mr Ewing referred, will allow us to mirror the Electoral Commission's recommendations to the UK Government so that we can implement them here in Scotland. I do not know whether Mr Ewing heard my introductory remarks, but I have already acknowledged that the committee is concerned to be involved in the process. I understand that Sir Neil McIntosh has offered to report back to the committee on how the standards are developing, and I am certainly willing to examine ways in which the Executive can assist that process.

Is there any concern that the powers that would be conferred on ministers, which as the bill stands would be subject to no parliamentary scrutiny whatever, would introduce into elections an element of political involvement that we have never had in Scotland or the UK?

That is the reason why the committee and the Parliament should be fully engaged in developing standards. I certainly intend to ensure that the committee can access and scrutinise as much information as possible in that regard before ministers put the standards in place.

I heard what you said at the beginning of the meeting, minister, and have re-read the evidence that Sir Neil McIntosh and others gave to the committee. As the bill stands, ministers will simply set the guidance, and Parliament will have no scrutiny role. Do you agree that, if engagement itself is to have any positive meaning instead of being some vague abstract noun that means whatever you want it to mean, the only acceptable way in which we can have any real engagement in the process is the orthodox way and that, in that respect, section 1 should be amended to state that the standards will be laid in a statutory instrument to give Parliament the chance to consider whether they should be approved? Is that not the only way in which Parliament can have any effective scrutiny role?

If, as I suspect, your answer to that question is not yes, will you tell us what you mean by engagement, other than allowing us to see some press release that will have been issued to the media beforehand?

I intend to ensure that the committee gets sight of the standards as they are developed. Moreover, I imagine that the committee will want to take up Sir Neil McIntosh's offer to come back and give evidence to the committee; indeed, that is how I read his evidence. I believe that that will give members quite a bit of comfort about how the standards are developing and, I hope, some input into the final decisions on their shape. I am certainly willing to facilitate that process and, once the standards are developed, to provide the committee with any further clarification on whether changes have been made. Certainly, the intention is to lift them as the Electoral Commission publishes them as recommendations for implementation.

Obviously there is a slight difference between the warm words that we are hearing now and the legal duty that would be created if statutory instruments were required to be laid. Correct me if I am wrong, but I assume that you are ruling out that option.

If ministers set standards—and I suspect that we will attempt to amend the provision at stage 2 to ensure that Parliament has a formal role in scrutinising them—there will be pressure on returning officers to comply with them. Given that any standards are bound to include criteria such as cost, accuracy and the speed and conduct of the count—indeed, the whole polling day operation—does the minister, as a Liberal Democrat, not feel uneasy that local government officials will now be under pressure to respond to targets set by Scottish ministers on the conduct of elections? If not, perhaps he should be, given that returning officers might well feel under considerable pressure to respond to edicts on the cost of elections and might be influenced in their decisions on how elections should be carried out, particularly with regard to the length of time that counts can take. Indeed, returning officers might even decline to do things that they might do otherwise and thereby risk the role's impartial nature, which I have always taken to be a fundamental constitutional principle beloved of Liberal Democrats everywhere.

I am sure that that principle is still beloved.

Mr Ewing, you are obviously very sceptical about the process. However, you should be reassured by the fact that the Electoral Commission will develop the performance standards. If you are calling into question the Electoral Commission's independence in carrying out that work, that is quite a leap in your position. I certainly have great confidence in the Electoral Commission's ability independently to develop the proper performance standards. It is our intention to mirror its recommendations exactly and to implement them, and the mechanism that we have chosen for doing that is quite clear.

Finally, I would like to pick up a point made by Mr O'Neill from the Electoral Commission, that it is starting to think about the performance standards and that it has sought a consultants' report from KPMG, which I believe is a firm of accountants. Is it KPMG that is, in fact, going to dictate what Scots law will be, rather than the Scottish ministers?

That is a question that you would need to put to the Electoral Commission, Mr Ewing.

Sylvia Jackson wants to ask a brief supplementary question.

It is just a point of clarification. Fergus Ewing is raising issues about the performance standards as if they are something new or something that we might not like in future. However, I remember that the Subordinate Legislation Committee raised issues with the minister, particularly about how the standards might come back to Parliament and whether they should. The main thrust of the minister's response was that the aim of the exercise was consistency across the board at UK level. I would have thought that that would reassure Fergus Ewing about what will happen in that process. Do you agree with that, minister?

Yes, consistency is the key point. When the returning officer will be presiding over two elections on the same day, it is important that the performance standards are applicable to both and are consistent across the piece. That is why we have chosen to go down that route and why we will adopt the recommendations that the Electoral Commission makes. The commission is the independent body that has been set up and charged with that role, and quite rightly so.

I would like to ask the minister two separate questions, the first of which relates to representations from the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, which expressed concerns about the administration of local council elections and Scottish Parliament elections' being held on the same day. What are your views on the concerns that SOLACE raised?

I read with interest the evidence that SOLACE gave, but we believe that holding the elections on the same day is the correct way to proceed. That has been our position on the matter for quite some time.

Are you quite clear that the Scottish Executive is committed to putting in place resources and that the will exists in local government to ensure that the elections can take place?

Yes. As I said, we have set aside a budget to help local authorities to meet the cost of the elections and to ensure that proper information is given to the electorate and to individual citizens about what the new system will mean to them. There is a substantial budget in our spending plans to assist with both those key objectives.

On a separate issue, why is there no reference in the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Bill to improving barrier-free access for people who currently experience difficulties at polling stations? Why are we not legislating to ensure that there are more effective means for people to access voting?

We are aware of Capability Scotland's concerns on that matter and are discussing with it how we might address them. We will continue to work with it to ensure that they are addressed.

Does the Executive have any proposals for amendments to the bill or for guidelines to ensure that there is a more robust system? I think that you will accept from the "Polls Apart 4 Scotland" report and from our own electoral experiences over the years that access to polling stations is still a major problem, as is the promotion of postal votes. Perhaps local government could be more effective in promoting postal votes.

Access is clearly important, but we do not need legislation to address it; rather, we need to engage with local authorities and other relevant bodies to ensure that we address the concerns that they have raised with us. We are taking steps to ensure that we widen access as much as possible. I am sure that Russell Bain will want to give details of some of the actions that we are taking on that.

We will include a number of the issues that Capability Scotland has raised in the secondary legislation for the local government election rules. For example, Capability Scotland highlighted the fact that the UK bill contains provisions for a hand-held copy of a large-print ballot paper; we can cover that in the local government election rules. We will seek to widen access where possible.

Are you looking to engage with local government officers to ensure that a more robust system is in place to secure access for people who currently have difficulties accessing elections? Under the current regime, it is thought that a ramp is sufficient to provide access. However, we know from experience that we have to ensure that doorways are sufficiently wide and take account of other difficulties that people experience. Will robust discussions take place before the 2007 elections to ensure that those issues are dealt with?

I reassure Paul Martin that we will engage with local authorities to ensure that the concerns that he has expressed are genuinely tackled and that everything possible is done to ensure that polling stations are as accessible as possible.

I return to the fact that the council elections will be held on the same day as the Scottish Parliament elections in 2007. The Arbuthnott commission, which considered the matter from a different angle, recommended that the elections be decoupled because of the potential for confusion, but you have confirmed to us today that you do not intend to decouple them. To pick up on the point that Paul Martin made, there seems to be potential for confusion. The Society of Local Authority Lawyers and Administrators in Scotland is concerned about the preparation of the new and amended Scottish local election rules that are required to implement the single transferable vote system, and about the criticality of passing the rules and the bill in time for its members to be able to prepare. Also, the Association of Electoral Administrators tells us that because a number of local government election activities cannot be combined with those from another poll, the full cost of the activities will fall on councils. The association has listed a number of such areas in written evidence.

Are you absolutely confident that the issues that SOLAR has raised can be overcome? Is your decision not to decouple the elections right? What work has gone on to quantify the additional cost that will land on councils as a result of the changes? The Association of Electoral Administrators is signalling clearly that there will be additional costs, so the committee needs to be sure not only that the Executive is able to deal with the additional costs for which it is responsible but that local government can deal with the additional costs that it will have to bear. How has that cost been quantified? How much is it and how are you dealing with it?

As I said in my previous responses, a substantial budget is set aside in our spending plans to deal with that matter and we will engage with local authorities on meeting some of the costs that they believe they will incur under STV. If we decide to go for e-counting, that will involve costs and the spending plans have taken that into account.

We are in the process of working up election rules, which will be conjoined with Scottish Parliament election rules that have been worked up by the UK Government and will be the subject of a combined election order that will be laid at Westminster. I believe that the timescale—

Our intention is to have the local government election rules ready for the parliamentary process before the summer recess. That fits in with the combined election order, which will be laid at Westminster before the summer recess.

As for the other issues that must be addressed to ensure that the election takes place and that all the challenges that local government will face are taken into account, we are confident that we are on track to deliver in May 2007 a successful new combined election and that resources will be available to meet its costs and needs.

I want to tease this out a little. If you know that the resources will be available, you must be able to quantify the additional funding that local government will require. Have you got any figures for that?

We are still discussing the matter with local government. As I have said, we still have to decide whether to go ahead with e-counting, which will obviously have a knock-on effect on our discussions about costs. Those matters are being discussed as we begin to firm up our plans. I assure the committee that, in our spending plans, we have set aside a budget to deal with the matter, and that money will be drawn down both when the election begins to gear up and when it has been completed.

I, for one, would find it useful if you could write to us with the details of the budget that has been set aside and, when you find out the figures, if you could quantify the additional funding that will be available, particularly for local government. The fact that you say that the resources will be available, even though you do not yet know the full costs, makes me slightly nervous.

As I pointed out, we still have to take decisions that will impact on costs. It is difficult to put the cart before the horse in that regard.

I appreciate that you cannot be precise about costs, because much of the issue depends on whether e-counting is introduced, and I realise that there is a broad range of arguments over the question whether both elections should be held on the same day. However, it seems reasonable to conclude that holding elections on the same day will cost less than holding them on different days.

That is a fair point. Given the time and resources that will be involved, e-counting might well reduce the costs of the elections. Other costs, such as the equipment that will be required and so on, will obviously increase. However, as I said, your point is well made.

I am sorry, convener, but I was late for the meeting. Have we dealt with section 4, on access to documents?

Partly, I think.

As the minister knows, the Subordinate Legislation Committee took the view that certain conditions, such as the use of information for commercial purposes, ought to be included in the bill. The Executive's response was that the intention behind the use of restrictions was to limit the use of information to electoral or related purposes and that it is not possible to provide a comprehensive list of circumstances because those might evolve over time. When the Subordinate Legislation Committee asked the Executive that question initially, the answer was not very clear about any of the circumstances that might arise. Do you have any more information about section 4 and any response to the Subordinate Legislation Committee's concerns?

Section 4 is intended to provide a scheme for overall access to documents that will be much the same as the current scheme for accessing the electoral register, which is set out in the Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2002 (SI 2002/1872). The regulations, which are pretty extensive, specify that copies of the register should be made available to the Office of National Statistics for statistical purposes, with subsequent regulations governing the use of that information and whether it can be supplied further.

Provision is also made for law enforcement agencies to have access to the register and for bodies such as the National Library of Scotland to have access in certain circumstances. The idea is to provide clear guidelines on who may access such information and thereby to exclude groups that do not have a particular right to access. The regulations make it clear that candidates, political parties and others may access the information for electoral purposes. We can, by considering the level of detail in those regulations, get a clear picture of the sort of scheme that we envisage being in place for access to the election documents that the new provisions in sections 4, 5 and 6 govern.

So, basically, you do not think that there is any reason for specific provisions to be included in the bill.

If we were to follow the current model, we would not seek to include other provisions in the bill. The current model is clear about who may or may not have access to information, and about the purposes for which access might be allowed. The inclusion of provisions in the bill would make it more difficult to describe properly the access that people should have. I know that the Subordinate Legislation Committee raised the issue, but the current scheme for access to the full register is a good guide to the scheme that we envisage being in place.

That concludes our questions on the electoral administration aspects of the bill. Before we address its registration aspects, I will allow the minister to change his team.

I welcome Paul Parr, Alex White and Graham Fisher, who will support the minister as we discuss part 2 of the bill. The minister said that he had something to say about part 2, so I will allow him to make some remarks before our question-and-answer session.

The provisions in part 2 of the bill aim to modernise and improve the registration service. In particular, they take advantage of advances in information technology and will make it possible to offer new and more efficient services; for example, there is the option of e-registration in addition to face-to-face registration, which will give the public more choice and will meet their expectation to be able to do business electronically. Electronic notification of events to third parties will reduce the burden for members of the public, who currently have to do that for themselves. That will also be a new and potentially significant source of fee income for local authorities and—because we think that it will be popular with the public—it should help to mitigate reductions in fee incomes from a downturn in the sale of extracts. Local authorities raised that concern in their evidence.

The traditional arrangements for sharing information will continue, but new electronic means of sharing information will mean that it can be shared more quickly. As an alternative to a third party or Government body requesting a bulk search of the registers, it will be possible to provide the information electronically and automatically. Such bodies may not require all the information that is currently provided on a register page, so the new service will tailor the information to meet their needs. The creation of local family-history centres, which will be made possible by online access to the whole public genealogical database of Scotland's people, is another potential new source of fee income.

On allowing deacons to solemnise marriages, which the Church of Scotland raised, the registrar general has already authorised all the Church's deacons under existing legislation and he is discussing with the Church the identification of a suitable legislative opportunity to provide for specific reference to be made to deacons in statute, in the same way that statute refers to ministers.

In conclusion, I hope that it is clear to the committee that the bill aims to improve access to and participation in elections, to enhance security, to improve electoral administrative effectiveness, and to provide a high-quality, modern and efficient registration service. Representatives of the General Register Office for Scotland and I are happy to answer questions. Mr Parr will answer questions on details.

It might be useful for members if I mention the solemnisation of marriages by deacons of the Church of Scotland, to which the minister referred. The guidance from the clerks is that such an amendment would be outwith the bill's scope. I say that for members' information, but I note the minister's comment that the Executive is looking for alternative ways to make that reform in statute.

I will ask about abbreviated death certificates. I recall from my time dealing with estates that the person who registers a death is provided with an abbreviated certificate—a green certificate—for the purpose of notifying what was the Department of Social Security, now the Department for Work and Pensions, of the death of a pensioner. I believe that that information is also transmitted to other public sector pension bodies, such as the national health service pension scheme administrator. A full extract is additional to that certificate. What will the proposed abbreviated death certificate achieve that what I call the green death certificate—the original abbreviated certificate—and the full extract do not achieve?

The green document to which Mr McLetchie refers is not a certificate; it is an information form that is given to the informant of a death to allow him or her to notify the Department for Work and Pensions of a death. It does not stand as an official extract, unlike a full extract or the proposed abbreviated extract.

On a death, the informant is given two free documents: the green form that helps them to notify the Department for Work and Pensions and a form that allows for disposal of the body. That is all. If the deceased's relative wants to check with a bank about releasing money into the estate or to deal with an insurance company, they do that with an official extract from the register of deaths, which can at present take the form only of a full extract that details all the deceased's particulars, including the cause of death.

It is reasonable that some people would like to have an abbreviated extract for two reasons. If the extract is given free, it will benefit a person who might not have much money or have an insurance policy on the deceased but who might need to close the deceased's Post Office account or bank account and transmit the funds into the deceased's estate. All that a bank or building society needs is official proof of a death. An abbreviated death certificate could help in that circumstance and prevent embarrassment if the deceased's relatives felt uncomfortable with the cause of death.

We want to mirror what we do for births. When an informant gives a registrar details of a birth, the registrar issues a free abbreviated birth certificate in all circumstances. That gives the informant official proof of the birth without having to purchase an extract at £8.50 from the registrar. It is reasonable to mirror that and to make that provision universal, so that people have a general expectation that a free abbreviated death certificate will be given in all circumstances. That would not highlight the fact that an abbreviated death certificate might be issued because of suspicion about or discomfort over the cause of death. A free abbreviated certificate will give people who do not have a great deal of money official proof of the death, which they can use to release money from a bank, building society or Post Office account. It would not replace the green form or the form that is given to the undertaker for disposal of a body because those would already have been completed, nor would it replace existing schemes that allow the council tax registration officer or the electoral registration officer at the local authority to be informed. The local registrar does those tasks automatically.

Under the new scheme, what legal purpose is not served by an abbreviated certificate that will still require a full certificate?

A full certificate would probably be required for an insurance company, because it would be interested in the cause of death in case the cause invoked an exclusion in the policy. The abbreviated certificate would give the immediate particulars of the person concerned and the date of death, but not the cause of death or any of the other information that is collected at the time of registration, such as the parenthood and so on of the deceased person. We would prescribe the information that would be included by regulation and would enter into negotiations with the local authorities and the Association of Registrars of Scotland on the format of the certificate.

On the notification of third parties such as banks and insurance companies, if the registrar were to do such notification for a fee, to whom would the bank or insurance company respond on receipt of the notification?

I presume that you are referring to the new power that we take in the bill to allow notification of certain bodies. The process is that an informant in a birth or a death would sit with the registrar and would be shown on the registrar's computer a menu of the bodies—including third parties—that could be informed of the birth or death. The registrar and the informant would go through a tick list to check which bodies should be informed of the event and the registrar would hit a "submit" button. Behind the scenes, the General Register Office for Scotland would do the work electronically. The fee would go to the local registrar because he would be doing the work at that time. If there was any question about the receipt of the information or its accuracy, that would arise with us in the General Register Office, not with the local authority registrar.

Suppose that the registrar notifies Standard Life insurance company, for example, that a person whose life is insured under an insurance policy is dead. What would Standard Life do with such notification?

It would do what it does now when it is presented with a death extract; it would treat the notification as evidence of the fact that the death had occurred. I assume that the insurance company would be reacting to someone's making a claim on it as a result of a policy that is held for them. The company might check the name against its list of policyholders.

That is the point that I am coming to. What usually happens under the current arrangements is that the executors of the deceased intimate the death by giving an extract death certificate to Standard Life, which then responds to the executors, or the lawyers acting for the executors, by sending the appropriate claim forms for completion to enable the policy proceeds to be paid out into the estate. It is necessary to write to the insurance company to intimate who the executors are and to get the relevant claim forms and it is then necessary to fill in the claim forms and submit them to the insurance company. None of that will be done by the registrar. Therefore, what is the point of paying for a notification service through the registrar? What will that achieve that does not have to be done anyway as a further link in the process? What is the value of the notification service?

The value is that one transaction with the registrar will allow a range of authorities or bodies to be informed of the death, which will prevent the informant from having to purchase several death extracts to trawl around organisations with. It will save the informant time, effort and travel and will ensure that the information comes direct from an authoritative source to the recipient, so there will be no possibility of interference with the information between the General Register Office's system and the system at Standard Life, for example.

The nature of an extract is such that it is official proof of the event. We take certain security measures in producing those documents, but no paper-based system is entirely fraud proof or foolproof, and there is always the possibility of some intervention. A direct electronic communication sent securely from the General Register Office for Scotland to Standard Life, to use the example that Mr McLetchie chose, would mitigate or reduce the risk of interference or fraud. The effect would be twofold; it would reduce the burden on the person who has to trawl round several banks, building societies and solicitors with documents, and it would ensure a more direct and secure transmission of information.

There would still be follow-up correspondence anyway.

There would be some correspondence, but let me give you a parallel example: the pilot that we are working on with the Student Awards Agency for Scotland. The agency had difficulty in handling not only applicants' forms but their birth certificates—receiving them, holding them securely and ensuring that each certificate was returned safely to the correct student. However, all those difficulties fade into the mist if the agency gets a direct transmission from the General Register Office for Scotland to confirm that a grant applicant was born on a certain date.

Yes, but that is an ex post facto thing. That is basically verifying the claim that Mr X was born 18 years ago. I am talking not about a verification service, such as the SAAS example, but about a service of contemporaneous notification that is required as part of the legal processes that follow a death. That is a completely different thing, is it not?

It is not contemporaneous, although the time differential is not large. The death obviously has to have happened and have been registered to allow the notification of the bank or building society to happen, so it is reporting on an historical event, even though it is not greatly historical.

I can see the value in the second example, in relation to the students, because people lose their birth certificates and so on, and the service reduces paper handling. However, given that there are many other paper stages in the process that follows a death registration, I find it difficult to see the enhancement value of the new service, as all the other costs will still be incurred and time will still be needed for notification and for filling in and submitting forms. That is all going to happen anyway, so I do not quite see where the value to the public is with that service.

I have explained what I think the value is. First, people do not have to buy so many extracts or trawl them around so many organisations along with the other paperwork. If organisations start to change their own administrative systems to fit in with the service that we offer, that may over time reduce the whole burden on the relatives of the deceased person. It is not the responsibility of our office to dictate to Standard Life, or to any other body of that ilk, how it should change its procedures, but we are seeding the field with a mechanism that would allow that.

So, if Standard Life is told electronically, "Mr X is dead," it would simply record that fact and do nothing further, having received an electronic secure notification of his death. It would still be up to the executors, relatives or next of kin of Mr X to go to Standard Life and say, "By the way, my father's died." In other words, they still have to go to all those offices, have they not?

They still have at least to contact any company that makes a payment in connection with Mr X's estate, but they do not have to provide companies with an extract.

Your point was that your service would save them time, but it does not save them time if they still have to go along and identify themselves as next of kin or as an executor. At the moment, they have to do that and they have to present the death certificate, so the new service does not save them any time at all. All that is happening is that there will be electronic certification of the death, whereas under the present system they must physically hand over an extract death certificate. Is that not the case?

Certainly, under the present system, it is necessary to hand over an extract. That is the only legal proof of a death.

So no notification time will be saved on the part of the relative.

Well—

I think that the point that David McLetchie is making is that if there is no added value, there will be no reduction in lawyers' fees because people will still have to go back to the executor, in which case no one will use the system.

I see no point in introducing a system or service that is of limited value. I have yet to hear an explanation of the value of the new service.

I think that the point that you are making is that no one will use the service.

Indeed, but the issue then becomes one of whether people will have false expectations of the worth of a service that they are having to pay for and which, in the end, will not save them time or cost. That is my point.

It may save them some cost. Instead of perhaps purchasing more than one extract, they will pay one single fee.

But does the bill not propose a fee per notification?

We have to specify the fee in secondary legislation. We intend to set a fee that is attractive to the customer.

Frankly, given the limited value of the service, it would be a good idea for it to be free.

We will move on. You have so far failed to convince Mr McLetchie on that aspect of the bill.

I thought that you would be getting a death certificate for me, convener; I was losing the will to live there.

During the consultation on the bill, a general consensus emerged that the coterminosity of local authority and registration district areas is a good idea. However, the trade unions raised the concern that coterminosity might lead to the closure of some offices, which could obviously result in job losses. Have you done an analysis of that potential outcome? Do you share the trade unions' concerns on the matter? If not, can you reassure them that their fears are unfounded?

I understand the general concern that the trade unions and others have raised. In my introductory remarks, I made the point that we believe that other benefits will arise from the introduction of the services. We believe that the new services will at least balance out the reduction in income that may result from the changes in registration services. Indeed, we also believe that local registration offices should have the opportunity to bring in other fee income from the extra services that they will offer. At present, those offices cannot access the central database, which means that people who are looking for information on their ancestors or making other genealogical searches always have to come to the centre to get that information. The bill proposal is for those services to be made available locally. I hope that that will bring in extra business to the local authorities.

Although there is the potential for a reduction in service, there are also opportunities. If there are instances of a reduction in service, it would be up to the local authority to resolve it. An authority may use job sharing, which goes on at present given that this element is a small part of the job. Our general view is that there is enough opportunity to balance out any reduction.

If we go for coterminosity, do you believe that the bill provisions are sufficient to allow changes in registration district boundaries to reflect any future local authority boundary changes?

Yes, we believe that the bill takes care of that. We can deal with that eventuality.

The member mentioned the effect that boundary changes could have on jobs. In the past, 22 of the 32 local authorities have made use of the provisions in the 1965 act to rearrange their boundaries. The process is slightly laborious and I will not bore you with details of the various stages. However, among the 22 local authorities that now have what is, in essence, a single local authority area for their registration service, only two offices closed. Both were in one local authority area and both were within 3 miles of existing offices. People were not denied the registration service and I understand that there were no job losses.

I want to go back to the issue of who can solemnise a marriage, because I remain to be persuaded why it cannot fit in the bill. The Church of Scotland wants both ministers and deacons to be able to solemnise marriages. The bill says that it will

"amend the law in relation to … procedure in relation to marriages and civil partnerships".

Bits of the bill amend the 1965 act; a fair number of bits of the bill amend the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977, section 8 of which covers solemnisation of marriage, I believe; and some bits of the bill amend the Civil Partnership Act 2004. The 1977 act is amended as regards marriage at sea to allow the solemnisation of marriage in Scottish waters. If you can use enough imagination to cover marriage at sea in the bill, I find it hard to understand why you cannot make a simple change so that a deacon of the Church of Scotland may solemnise a marriage. It may be that marriage at sea is a civil process and not a church process.

The church has amended its own laws to try to deal with this issue and we should try to go a wee bit further to see whether we can make a change. It might be technically impossible; if so, I am sure that the minister will tell me why. At first sight, it is difficult to understand.

We are aware of the issue. Under his general powers, the registrar general can and does allow deacons to solemnise marriages. We know that the Church of Scotland would like the arrangement to be on a firmer footing, and we are in discussion with the church to find an appropriate way of doing that.

As the convener has said, the bill is quite narrowly drawn and is about the nuts and bolts of improving the registration service. The issue that you raise is therefore outwith the scope of the bill. However, I assure you that we are in discussion with the church on how we can put the arrangement on a firmer footing. It is important to emphasise that deacons can continue to solemnise marriages under the current powers.

I understand that and I appreciate what you say, but when I consider the minutiae in the bill—for example, in section 40, "Marriage procedure: miscellaneous amendments", or in section 41, "Marriage procedure: electronic communications"—it is difficult to understand why other measures are outwith the scope of the bill. Will you give me a more technical reason why this particular measure is outwith the scope of the bill?

The advice that I gave on the scope of the bill came from the committee clerks and the lawyers of the Parliament.

Well, that does not help me very much. Are you telling me that I have to go back to them? Do your officials have a view on this issue?

As I say, I am not a lawyer. I have been told that the issue is outwith the scope of the bill. The clerks have confirmed that. That is the position, but I have assured the committee that we are engaging with the Church of Scotland to ensure that we can find a suitable vehicle to address its concerns.

I have circulated to members a letter outlining the advice that I have received. If it would be helpful, I can certainly discuss with the clerks whether we can supply more technical information on the issue that Bruce Crawford has raised.

I am most grateful, convener. That would help the church to understand better as well.

It might be useful for the committee to know that, as the Church of Scotland representatives may have mentioned, the view was taken in discussion with the Parliament that no particular element of registration is connected with the solemnisation of marriage by deacons. It could certainly be the Executive's view that that is a solemnisation issue and nothing else.

You say that that could be the Executive's view, but is it the Executive's view? What is the Executive's view?

That is the view that was taken by the Executive in discussion with the parliamentary authorities.

I have received the note from the clerks. I look forward to receiving justification because I do not understand why we cannot interpret the bill's long title, which sets out what the bill purports to do, in a slightly less restrictive way. After all, the bill says that civil partnership procedures can be conducted at sea, so surely we can accommodate the Church of Scotland in a way that everyone at the table would support and no member of Parliament would oppose. Given the bill's rubric, it seems to me that the Executive—for reasons that I do not understand—has taken an extraordinarily restrictive view. Mr Fisher referred to solemnisation, but that is not mentioned in the long title.

There are two headings under which the Church of Scotland's modest proposal, which would cause no harm to anyone and might well ease expense and smooth the flow of arrangements for weddings, could be dealt with. The bill intends

"to reorganise local registration services"

and to amend

"the procedure in relation to marriages and civil partnerships".

I would have thought that to say that the way in which a marriage is conducted is not part of the procedure is a pedantic and somewhat legal distinction. I am puzzled about why the minister cannot just overrule his civil servants. Everyone is in favour of the Church of Scotland's proposal. The registrar general is indulging in what the Church of Scotland appropriately describes as "ad hocery", which involves spending extra money and wasting cash. Just for once, will you overrule your civil servants?

I will certainly examine what you and other members have said on the matter.

I want to ask about e-registration. What discussion have you had with GRO Scotland about testing and the training of registration staff? In an earlier evidence session, linkage with other databases and computer systems, notably in the NHS, was mentioned. How is that going? The last time that we asked, it did not seem that much progress was being made.

I will deal with your second point first. In the evidence that we gave on 17 January, we said that we were in discussions with the Scottish Executive Health Department. Those discussions are continuing. The procedures in the bill will require health boards to provide the registrar general with information about births and deaths. That builds on the existing duties under the 1965 act. We want to use those provisions, together with the e-registration provisions, to enable the Health Department to inform the registrar general of births and deaths as and when they occur.

I will give an example of that. An ideal way of passing on information on births to the registrar general that we are exploring with the Health Department is to use the community health index number, which everyone has. CHI numbers are being used more often in the health service. In the event of a birth happening, the CHI number would be communicated to the registrar general and we would populate that on our database, which would allow the local registrar to perform a check to ensure that the person who registered the birth registered the correct birth. We are working on that system with the Health Department and later on in the year we hope to trial it with one health board and one local authority—they have not yet been decided on. The intention is to use that trial as a platform for implementing e-registration, which will happen in 2008, at the earliest.

I take it that the training would happen after you have done the testing.

Exactly. We have responsibility for facilitating the training of registrars at the moment. Although the registrars are employed by local authorities and receive most of their training on the procedure of registration from the local authorities, it is done to our instructions. In particular, we provide a handbook for registrars that sets the processes out. We also provide distance learning packs and training compact discs and have a trainers forum that facilitates the training of registrars. We would employ all those resources to focus not only on e-registration but on linking with the health service database, which would be a useful tool for face-to-face registration as well as for e-registration.

That brings us to the end of questions on this item. I thank the minister and both of the panels of officials who supported him.