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The third agenda item is evidence taking on the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Bill. The first panel consists of one witness from Scottish Borders Council, who will address the bill's registration services aspect. I ask members to restrict their questions to that subject. I welcome Neville Dundas to the committee. We look forward to hearing his evidence. I ask him to make any introductory remarks, after which we will move to questions and answers.
I am pleased to be here this afternoon, but I would have been more pleased if my chief registrar had been with me—unfortunately, she is in hospital. I must point out that I speak not as a registrar or as somebody with great registration expertise, but as a manager of the local authority registration service. I speak specifically from the point of view of Scottish Borders Council, which might be in a slightly different situation from that of other councils. I am conscious that sitting behind me is a colleague from Clackmannanshire Council, who may have a slightly different take on some of the registration issues.
I will pick up on your point about the possible loss of income from supplying extracts. Might that be significant?
In terms of numbers, it might not seem significant, but in terms of income to the service, it is significant. We have 13 registration districts in the Borders. Two of them have full-time offices; the remaining 11 are part-time. In some cases, they operate for just a few hours a week. One service consists of a parlour registrar. If any of those offices, particularly the smaller ones, loses revenue, it is very noticeable, because of the small-scale operation that we conduct. The issue would be of some concern to us.
I want to ask you about registration service staff and the bill's impact on their jobs, not only in terms of numbers but in terms of changes of role.
I hope that the roles of the registration staff will not be greatly affected. Effectively, we have operated as a single area—our districts do not cross borders. We have been quite self-contained, and we have managed to evolve the service so that it suits the area and the operation that we undertake. I do not think that the proposals in the bill would change that hugely.
Would the bill mean, for instance, that registrars would have to travel more to service the offices that you talked about? If they were going to be there for a considerable time, would they have to do another job and multitask?
Our registrars occasionally travel quite extensively. Our structure allows several part-time registrars to travel so that they can cover for other registrars. They now also travel to perform civil marriages at venues outwith registration offices. They are accustomed to moving about quite a bit.
Given that finance seems to be of some importance, does the council feel that the bill will not have any impact on its ability to recover fully any of the costs that are involved in registration services?
I am not sure that I am the best person to answer that. We endeavour to recover as much of our operating costs as we can, not only by using the set fees that the registrar general has set down, but by applying the discretionary fees for marriage ceremonies, for example. Those are set at a reasonable level, and allow us to cover our costs. However, the income that we get from any source does not entirely cover the basic cost of providing a registration service in the Borders.
Could you check that with whoever you think is the appropriate person and write to the committee with a full response, so that we know the council's position?
I am happy to do that.
You seem to have some difficulties with the idea of multitasking. Why?
The feeling has come through very strongly from registration staff that the service that they provide is very personal. Sometimes they provide it to people who are under extreme emotional stress. They are able to offer the service in a way that takes account of those people's needs and in the best possible surroundings in which to perform what can be quite painful registration operations. Staff are concerned that they could be in an office in which someone is collecting council house rent, council tax payments or district court fines when the next person in the queue is waiting to register a stillbirth. That is hardly conducive to the sort of personal service we want to provide.
That dealt effectively with my question. There might be an argument, though, for accommodation and resources to be shared with other council functions, particularly in rural areas. Could there be such sharing? The registrar could have their own identity within a building to prevent the anomaly that you referred to.
Most of our office facilities are in buildings in which other Scottish Borders Council functions are carried out. The buildings and the space exist; it is just a case of providing the service in the way that we think is best for the customers. There will be areas in Scotland in which multitasking is undertaken, because there is a specialised office that is designed to cope with different aspects. However, we feel that what we currently do offers the best service.
You said in your introductory remarks that you would be able to have sub-districts that would recognise original place names. Scottish Borders Council in particular was concerned about that issue. For clarification, are you satisfied that you will have the flexibility to allow people to register in places where they have traditionally registered?
Yes. Following discussions with the registrar general, we are happy that we will be able to make an entry for Scottish Borders district Kelso or Selkirk, for example, which will maintain the identification of those places and therefore satisfy the needs of people in the Borders.
Would categorising the records in that way present any administrative difficulties for someone searching them in the future?
No. Indeed, it would be better that way than, for example, having as an identifier a number that would be meaningless to an outsider.
Okay. We have no further questions, so I thank you for your evidence, which has been clear and concise.
I thank the convener and the committee for inviting SOLAR and others to give evidence.
I will start off with a question about the 2007 elections. You acknowledge the short timescale between the passage of this bill and the parallel bill at Westminster and the preparations that you must make for the 2007 elections. Will the timescale present any returning officers with overwhelming problems in preparing for holding the Scottish parliamentary elections and the first-ever local government elections under the single transferable vote system on the same day?
No, any problems will not be overwhelming. I state that on the basis that we have always managed to achieve what has been asked of us. The difference this time is that we will have to make many more assumptions before the ink is dry on many of the policy decisions and the bill.
We will suspend the meeting until we have sound again.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
We have our sound back. We were in the middle of a response from Gordon Blair on the challenges that returning officers face as a result of late changes to electoral administration and the forthcoming election.
I was saying that, in our pre-planning for the elections, we must make a number of assumptions, one of which is that the boundaries for the new wards will follow the provisional proposals of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland. Another assumption is that the bill will be passed in time; we have to assume that some of the policy proposals that require legislation will have been passed and delivered. The boundary commission's final recommendations will go to the Scottish ministers this August and I understand that the deadline for statutory instruments to effect the ward boundaries is this December.
I want to ask a couple of questions about that before I bring in other colleagues.
The answer is yes, it needs legislative provision, and I think that it will be in the new Scottish local government elections rules, where the current rules about counting votes are to be found. Those rules will be laid before the Parliament in due course.
As you will be aware from your experience as a returning officer, at a count, the existing practice among political parties is to sample the votes that have been cast so that they can assess their level of support area by area. Political parties find that information useful in future campaigns. Does SOLAR have a view on what degree of information from an electronic count, if any, should be made available to political parties, so that vote levels can be assessed district by district, while preserving the anonymity of individual voters?
SOLAR does not have a position on that, but my personal view is that the e-counting process must be transparent and must provide the same information as is currently available to allow political parties to engage with the electorate. What information is available is one issue that will need to be considered in the detailed rules for e-counting. I hope that the first stage of an STV count will be displayed, which will show everyone the first preference votes. The extent to which that will be displayed, in polling stations or in polling place areas, remains to be seen, but that kind of transparency will need to be considered. With an e-counting process, there is no technical reason that I am aware of that would prevent that kind of detailed information from being given.
Before I bring in other members, I have a question about what will happen if we do not have electronic counting and we stay with the traditional manual counting of votes. I am aware that many returning officers have raised concerns about the length of time that would be required, particularly for an STV count, if we were to continue with manual counting. What would your recommendations be for conducting those counts? Should the Scottish Parliament count continue to be done overnight or should it be delayed until the next day, and should local authority counts be spread over several days?
Again, I do not think that SOLAR has a position on that. My personal view, based on experience in my area, is that I would prefer the Scottish Parliament votes to be counted on the night and the STV council votes to be counted during the day. Of course, I am not dealing with the regional returning officers' duties, and they will have the list MSP results to declare as well. I am fortunate in that I have not, as yet, encountered any problems in recruiting enumerators, but I know that other colleagues do have such problems. I suspect that you will not get a universal answer to the question, and Rod Richardson may well have a different take on it because of the logistics with which he is familiar.
That is certainly the case. Like Gordon Blair, my staff look after only one constituency, and we do not have to concern ourselves with the regional count. The list vote count takes a considerable amount of time overnight and it is a long day for staff. In the past, we have had staff working continuously for up to 36 hours, and their concentration and their ability to make key decisions will obviously suffer as a result. However, the suggestion that counts should be held during the day causes us other concerns, so I agree with Gordon Blair that there is no straight answer to the question.
Are you making a formal or an informal suggestion that, from a manpower perspective, there would be merit in decoupling both parliamentary election systems from the council election system?
The Association of Electoral Administrators has considered that issue since 1999 and people have had mixed views. From the previous serious debate on the issue, I recollect that the recommendation was to decouple. It has been recognised that the complexity for the voter in the polling station is perhaps not as significant as some parties make it out to be and that there may be an advantage in voters being exposed to both elections at the same time. However, on the administrative side, serious concerns have been expressed about the continuation of the principle of overnight counting, accuracy and staff's ability to deliver as a result of their continuous working hours.
SOLAR's view is that the elections should be decoupled not only because of the logistics that are involved—to which Rod Richardson referred—but because, with three different electoral voting systems and three different ballot papers, there is potential for at least some voters to be confused and to mark their papers incorrectly. Some academic research has been done on other elections in which an STV system that involves people putting 1, 2, 3 or 4 on their ballot paper is combined with a system in which one cross is put on the ballot paper. I understand that that tends to diminish the possibility of papers being made void as a result of being filled in incorrectly. However, SOLAR's experience is that that remains a potentially significant area for our members, particularly for council elections. When there have been dead-heats in elections in the past, every vote has counted. I suspect that every vote would count under STV and that any vote that is rendered void as a result of the ballot paper having been incorrectly filled in could affect the result of the election more significantly than it would have done before. Decoupling would cut through that.
You spoke earlier about performance standards for returning officers. Should I take it from what you have both said about decoupling and manpower that you have concerns about performance standards and about focusing on how many bodies come through the door rather than accuracy?
We do not have concerns about the principle of performance standards—indeed, everything else that we do is subject to performance standards, best-value audits and so on; the concern is that performance standards will be introduced that do not relate to the responsibilities of returning officers, for whom the bottom line is to have the relevant number of persons elected in accordance with the election rules. We are concerned that performance standards might stray into areas that are more to do with turnout. It should be remembered that returning officers' areas of responsibility touch at the margins of turnout, but do not go to the heart of it. Obviously, that issue will arise in the consultation process.
Would you both prefer the issue to be dealt with by affirmative instrument, so that there is scrutiny by a parliamentary committee?
Are you referring to performance standards?
Yes.
The Association of Electoral Administrators is concerned about performance standards in general. Everyone accepts that we need to justify what we do quantitatively and show that we provide value for money and quality of product—Gordon Blair mentioned that. However, I reiterate his point: we should measure matters that are fully under returning officers' control.
Mr Blair comments on validity in section 3 of SOLAR's submission. Will you be more specific about what could be done to deal with errors such as identification numbers or whatever being transferred across? Could any mechanism eliminate the difficulty, if it were the result of a genuine error?
I suppose that the risk of that error happening is lessened, because the proposal is to abolish counterfoils. Presiding officers will not be able to put numbers on counterfoils erroneously, because there will be no counterfoils. However, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a presiding officer who thought that they had to write the electoral number on something, because they had always done so in the past, would put the number on the ballot paper. I am sure that a feature of most returning officers' training is ensuring that presiding officers do nothing that invalidates the vote, but no fail-safe mechanism will prevent that completely.
I have had the good fortune to be involved in elections overseas and to see how different systems work. One issue that arises not infrequently is that when ballot papers are unstamped, the returning officer has no option but to reject them, in accordance with the regulations. When we have set up elections with a lot more freedom, the principles behind authenticating a ballot paper have come into play. The intention is to prevent counterfeit or otherwise improper ballot papers from being introduced into the system and to balance what has been issued with what is in the ballot box. For example, one methodology that we have used is to say that if the number of ballot papers in the ballot box is no greater than the number that was issued at the polling station, the papers will be accepted, whether or not they are stamped.
In your experience, what percentage of people are disfranchised as a result of such errors?
Unstamped ballot papers are encountered relatively infrequently. I can speak only from my experience. I applaud my polling staff when we have a nil rejection rate. At the previous election, we had seven unstamped papers in a constituency. That is not a huge number but, as Gordon Blair mentioned, when we come to implement STV, under which we will deal with smaller numbers of ballot papers with much closer margins in a different format, seven could make a heck of a difference.
On decoupling, do you accept that similar concerns were raised before the 1999 elections about some of the difficulties that would arise from the list system? I remember that some people were concerned that there would be chaos because we were issuing voters with three ballot papers. I am not an advocate of STV, but voters will still be issued with three ballot papers, not more, and there might be a reduction in the number of candidates. It will be difficult, but surely the issue can be dealt with.
I think that Gordon Blair stated earlier that we have always delivered. However, we have not always delivered at no cost and the cost has sometimes been to the health and family life of the staff whom we use to deal with the elections.
You mentioned a rejection rate of 6 per cent. Are you arguing that if we do not decouple the elections but continue to hold them on the same day, the rejection rate will be more than 6 per cent?
I am suggesting that that 6 per cent would spread across the three ballot papers. There would be additional confusion about whether all three papers should be marked 1, 2 and 3 and I suspect that we would get crossover contamination.
Has SOLAR quantified the cost? There would obviously be costs to holding the elections on two separate days. What would the cost be of running a public information exercise for the elections if they are held on the same day as opposed to the cost of holding the elections on separate days?
I do not speak for SOLAR; I speak for the Association of Electoral Administrators. I do not think that the cost has been quantified, although Gordon Blair might correct me. Obviously, holding the elections on the same day provides economies of scale, which would be lost if the elections were decoupled. We could not argue against that, but the counterargument is one of setting risk against cost. How much is reducing the risk of rejected papers worth?
SOLAR has not done any exercise on the increased costs of decoupling. The crucial point is whether an error rate of 6 per cent would affect the election result significantly. It would have a significant impact on a council election that was held under STV, although it would have less of an impact on the Scottish Parliament election because we are dealing with bigger constituencies. It is a question of balancing the extra costs of decoupling against the effect on the democratic results.
In the Northern Ireland election that Rod Richardson mentioned, were the 6 per cent rejected papers all spoiled papers? Was a distinction made between spoiled papers and mistakenly marked papers? Some people deliberately spoil their papers.
The rejected papers had not been deliberately spoiled although, within the 6 per cent, a number of papers were totally unmarked.
So there will be protest votes within the 6 per cent.
Absolutely.
Is there no way of quantifying the proportion of protest votes?
No, they are not separated out. The vast majority of the rejected papers in that Northern Ireland election were marked with multiple crosses rather than with a ranking order.
With the will and the resources, can we deliver both elections on 6 May 2007? Obviously, as was the case prior to the 1999 elections, there will be challenges attached to that task. The committee heard evidence about an election in Australia in which there were 256 candidates—the tablecloth election. We do not have that kind of challenge here. When we consider the examples from throughout the world, surely we can deliver the elections on the same day as long as good public information is provided.
I would like to say that anything is possible. Almost anything is possible—certainly with advances in technology. If we introduced electronic counting, that would make a massive difference at the back end of the process. There are already moves to start to consider the education process for electors.
I understand Mr Blair's point of view when he says that it is not the job of the returning officer to increase turnout. However, does he accept that the location of polling stations is a crucial issue that returning officers must consider? More work must be done to ensure that we consider polling stations as a crucial element of turnout. We should focus not on locating polling stations in the local supermarket but on making them more accessible and being more flexible about where they can be located.
The designation of polling places is for the local authority. You are right that that is one issue that impacts on accessibility to the voter. A lot of work is done to make polling places as accessible as possible and to sub-divide polling districts as much as possible to create more polling places. That is why we need the change to be made in the United Kingdom bill so that a ward is not one polling district.
Before I bring in Andrew Arbuckle, I will come in on some of the issues that Paul Martin raised about spoiled papers or papers that are ruled out because of the way in which the voter has filled them in.
On your first point, I was referring to the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in 2003. I had the opportunity to be involved with only one constituency. I do not know whether, as was suggested earlier, what we saw was the result of a huge protest vote. I accept that 6 per cent may have been above average, but I have to say that it shocked me.
The Electoral Commission will no doubt give guidance to returning officers for the Scottish Parliament elections, which are within its remit. Technically, council elections in Scotland are not within the Electoral Commission's remit, but it could be invited to give guidance to returning officers in council elections on what is a good or bad ballot paper. The net result is that there should be guidance.
The Association of Electoral Administrators states that the changes in relation to candidates' election expenses "should alleviate the confusion". SOLAR states that the changes
At present, returning officers have only limited involvement with candidates' expense returns. The returns are not something on which returning officers must advise and guide candidates; the officers simply receive the returns and make them available for inspection. However, it is not uncommon for returning officers to be asked for guidance—personally, I always preface such guidance by saying that if somebody wants proper legal advice, they should go and buy it, but I try to be helpful.
The bill will provide for Scottish local council elections what the UK bill will provide for all other types of elections. That will introduce consistency for political parties on the rules for candidates' election expenses. That is a good thing, because there is nothing more confusing than the situation that we have had in the past of having rules for Scottish council elections that are different from those for other elections. That is a recipe for confusion.
If we go down that line, we are perhaps failing to get the best that we can get.
That may be a question to put to the UK Parliament.
That brings us to the end of our questions. I thank Gordon Blair and Rod Richardson for their evidence.
Convener, I have a couple of points that I have not had the opportunity to make.
If you wish to make other key points, we would welcome them.
I will do my best not to stray into anything that Gordon Blair has said or which has been discussed at length.
Could your association send us a single page or so outlining exactly what your queries about the cost are? You have obviously spoken to your English colleagues and know what things they have been given more money for, so could you tell us what things you think you will need more money to deal with?
We can certainly do that.
I thank Gordon Blair and Rod Richardson for attending the committee.
I have a dual purpose in that I am also the secretary of the Scottish Churches Committee, which represents all the main Christian denominations in Scotland. I have accordingly consulted our committee members about the bill. We are grateful for the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon.
Thank you very much for that evidence. It is good to hear that the bill has at least one fan. I am sure that in due course the committee will consider your point about the solemnisation of marriages.
Referring again to the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977, deacons in the church of Rome can perform marriages and, as far as I am aware, have always been able to do so. Was that just a bypass of the legislation, or is it provided for in a special section?
I suspect that that comes under a different section of the legislation. There is a specific reference in the act to
Thank you for making that point. I was not aware of the issue.
I understand that we are talking about marriage ceremonies within territorial waters. I believe that, under the bill, that area will constitute a single registration district. At the moment, by contrast, within the Firth of Clyde there are least two registration districts and the entire ceremony must be completed in one district. It seems to us that the bill will solve what is a potential problem at the moment.
Thank you for your evidence. My constituency is based very much on the parish of Bothwell. In fact, the registration office in Bellshill is housed in what is known locally as the parish chambers. However, my constituency covers parts of both North and South Lanarkshire, and Bothwell is in South Lanarkshire. Under the bill, the registration districts would be changed to make them fall entirely within one local authority area. Does that cause you any difficulty?
I have not had any feedback to suggest that it would cause us a problem. Obviously, one feels a certain attachment to the old parish boundaries. However, the civil parish boundaries are now very different from our Church of Scotland boundaries, because we have changed as well. The explanatory notes outline why the advantages of clinging on to the old boundaries are outweighed by the benefits of aligning registration districts with local authority areas. However, as an old-fashioned girl, I was glad to hear that there will be an administrative procedure that will allow the old names to be retained for the future.
I have recently contacted registrars not a million miles from Michael McMahon's constituency on behalf of family members. On both occasions, I went to the wrong registration office. Although I know the area quite well, I did not know which office was the right one to deal with the people concerned, based on their addresses.
I return to the matter of deacons being able to conduct ceremonies, which seems to be eminently sensible and reasonable, for the reasons that Janette Wilson set out. Plainly, the general assembly has done a great deal of work on the issue, as have individuals such as Janette Wilson. I assume that a request was made in writing to the Executive for the necessary legislative changes to be made. Is that correct?
Yes. Although I have not been personally involved, I understand that there has been a dialogue with the registrar general, who tried to facilitate this arrangement. However, I assume that it was felt that the bill is more to do with registration procedures than the question of who might solemnise a marriage. Perhaps that is why it was felt that the bill was not the correct place for such a provision. My worry is that I am not sure how long we might have to wait until some more appropriate legislation comes along in which to include the provision.
The Family Law (Scotland) Bill has just completed its passage through Parliament.
By the time we appreciated the problem with the bill under discussion, the Family Law (Scotland) Bill was at too advanced a stage for us to intervene. Frankly, that bill dealt more with divorce and so on, and provision for who may solemnise a marriage might not have sat easily in it.
I was asked whether it might be appropriate for us to promote an amendment to the Family Law (Scotland) Bill. My feeling was that what we propose fits more naturally with the long title of the Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Bill.
Fine. Has the Executive given a reason as to why it has not included your amendment in the current bill? If so, what was it?
We have heard indirectly. However, I was not the person who heard about it and would therefore be uncomfortable in making a further answer, but I am pretty certain that it was felt that this was very much a nuts-and-bolts bill to do with registration procedures and therefore our proposal did not sit very happily in it.
My reason for asking is that, in the light of your opening statement, it is incumbent on us—it is a duty that I am sure we accept with some willingness to fulfil—to investigate the Executive's view and find out whether there is a reason why it feels that it is not appropriate to include such provision in this bill, what that reason is and whether we accept it. It is open to us, as the convener implied, to pursue an amendment as a committee rather than as individual MSPs. It might be that this is an occasion on which the committee might wish to examine that option. With that in mind, I invite you to submit what relevant material you have on this particular aspect and its technicalities. There may be a broad desire to look into the matter on a committee basis to see whether we can homologate a practice that is already authorised by the registrar general on a year-to-year basis.
That would be helpful and I am happy to do what Fergus Ewing asks.
The bill enables the registration of births, deaths and marriages online. Do the churches have any views on those aspects of the bill?
If you had asked me that a while ago I might have felt, "Oh well, is this really going to be safe and secure?" It is slightly difficult to comment because I presume that such matters will be dealt with in secondary legislation.
I have one final question. The bill proposes the creation of a new public record—the book of Scottish connections. Do you think that that innovation will be a step forward?
Personally, I think that it will be a step forward. Even judging from the contact that is made with our offices, I think that people are increasingly interested in genealogy. Visitors from overseas, in particular, are keen to find out about their Scottish ancestry and it is proper that they should be able to do that.
As there are no further questions, I thank Janette Wilson and Graham Blount for their evidence, which has been helpful.
Meeting continued in private until 15:56.
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