Official Report 798KB pdf
Absent Voting at Scottish Parliament and Local Government Elections (Signature Refresh) (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Order 2025 [Draft]
Representation of the People (Absent Voting at Local Government Elections) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 (SSI 2025/263)
We move to consideration of a draft order and a Scottish statutory instrument, both of which relate to arrangements for the signature request requirements for proxy and postal votes for the forthcoming Scottish Parliament elections. The draft order is subject to the affirmative procedure and the statutory instrument is subject to the negative procedure.
The committee has an opportunity to take evidence from the Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans before we consider whether to recommend to the Parliament that the instruments be approved or whether we wish to make any recommendations. I welcome the minister, Graeme Dey. He is joined by Scottish Government officials: Iain Hockenhull, the head of the elections team; and Lorraine Walkinshaw, from the legal directorate. Minister, would you like to make a short opening statement before we turn to questions from members?
I would, thank you. I am pleased to be here today to present these instruments. Members will be aware of the recent passing of a private member’s bill in the United Kingdom Parliament that will allow the Scottish Parliament to legislate on access to the online absent voting application for voters in the Scottish Parliament and local government elections. Although I welcome the change, it is regrettable that the bill’s passage through Westminster took longer than planned. I understand that that was largely as a result of the time that was taken up by the assisted dying legislation.
In any event, both the Scottish and Welsh Governments are now working on secondary legislation to allow full access to the system. We are also consulting the Electoral Commission and electoral registration officers on when the system should go live. The very strong recommendation from the electoral community is that it is now too late for the system to be available ahead of the 2026 election. As well as the technical risks involved in a system roll-out, there are significant practical challenges involved in merging the separate records that voters have for devolved and reserved elections.
Last week, I wrote to the committee to confirm that I had decided to postpone implementation until as soon as possible after the Scottish Parliament election in May. Taking the decision now to defer online absent vote applications removes uncertainty and will allow clear communication to voters of a projected go-live date, and it will also provide more time for the Electoral Commission to prepare guidance for administrators and the public on absent voting.
The instruments that I am presenting today seek to minimise potential confusion and inconvenience for voters ahead of next May’s election. Around 75,000 voters would have been asked this winter to refresh their signature sample in order to retain a continuing absent vote for Scottish Parliament and Scottish local government elections. That would have happened at the same time as the reapplication process for between 750,000 and 800,000 United Kingdom Parliament postal voters in Scotland, and there is concern that voters might have incorrectly thought that a reapplication via OAVA for a UK Parliament absent vote was the only activity required to vote by post or proxy in the Scottish Parliament election on 7 May next year.
The two instruments before the committee today seek to avoid that by extending postal and proxy votes that would lapse before the election if no signature sample were provided. That will mean that the 75,000 voters whom I mentioned will not need to take any further action to vote by post in next May’s election. It is hoped that the move will remove the scope of voter confusion and the potential for people to have to suddenly seek an absent vote in the spring of 2026.
I hope that those comments are helpful, and I am, of course, happy to answer any questions.
I am grateful for that opening statement. Do members have any questions?
Good morning, minister. We understand that the action that is being taken is intended to remove any scope for confusion, but are there any risks associated with the extension that is being proposed? If so, how have they been assessed?
That is a very good question. In looking through this in detail, we have identified one slight potential risk. That is where a voter’s signature might have changed substantially since their original application in 2020. If that is the case, there is a risk that the postal vote might be rejected due to signature mismatch.
The risk with regard to signatures is deemed to be highest among older voters and the very youngest voters, but we have been discussing the issue with the electoral registration officers and the Electoral Commission, and there is no evidence that the UK Government’s similar extension of postal votes as a transitional measure in 2023 resulted in any impact on postal vote rejections. The numbers that are available suggest that the postal vote rejection rates for the 2024 UK election were in line with previous elections; they were 2 per cent in 2024 and 1.9 per cent in the 2019 election in Scotland. That was despite many postal vote signatures being refreshed.
Clearly, we want to avoid any negative consequences. We have been in conversation with the EROs and the Electoral Commission on ways of mitigating any potential risk, and we will continue that work. As I have said, the risk is quite low, particularly among younger people—after all, the number of young people who are likely to access voting as absent voters is relatively small—but we are across this, if I can put it that way.
Thank you.
I see that there are no other questions from members, but I would like to pick up on your previous point, minister. The situation is that, in effect, the archive of signatures is potentially five years old; you have identified the two demographic groups where there is most likely to be a change; and you have said that a risk has been identified in that respect.
I have two questions. First, can you illuminate us further on any discussions that you have had about how that risk will be reduced, particularly with regard to younger people? As you have said, we will be talking about a small group of voters, but they might be as old as 21 now, if they applied when they were 16. I note that the Government has issued the normal United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child compatibility statement, but what is your confidence that that statement is correct, given the risk that you have already expressed?
I will bring in Iain Hockenhull to talk about the work that is going on, and perhaps Lorraine Walkinshaw can talk about the compatibility issue.
A slightly curious point that we identified while we were creating the children’s rights impact assessment was that this does not apply to anyone caught within the convention, because they are all aged past that point now. Therefore, it says in the impact assessment that we have written that the concern is in relation to people who were of children’s rights compliance age at the time, but are no longer, so it would not apply to anyone under 18 at the moment. This is not relevant to them, technically speaking.
As for the actions that we are taking, we have been discussing this issue with the electoral registration officers and the Electoral Commission, and one concern is that we might inadvertently create confusion among voters whose signatures are actually fine. For example, if you wrote in certain terms to a household with one young person and there were, say, four other people who were older and whose signatures were static, they might all suddenly think, “Oh, what do we need to do about our signatures?”
09:00We do not want to create false alarm, but we do not want to avoid looking at the problem, either, so we are discussing with the Electoral Commission and electoral registration officers the best way of targeting the most likely persons so that we can speak to them, or of trying to get information out there that says, “If your signature might have changed, please consider resubmitting a form.”
There is a potential read-across to the signature sample for someone’s UK Parliament postal vote, because the period for UK Parliament postal votes is now three years. If people compare the two signatures, they might be able to see that the recent sample for UK Parliament elections is not the same as that for Scottish Parliament elections. However, there is a potential data protection issue there, because they will have the information for two different reasons. That is another point that we will explore before progressing with that approach.
The solution is, in essence, going to involve a positive outreach, if that is appropriate, to very specific individuals, presumably driven by their age—or their place in the demographics; let me put it that way—to tell them that there might have been substantial change. Are you confident that that will be facilitated in the period of time that we have?
My understanding is that, when the UK Government did this exercise in 2023, it did not take that approach and statistically there did not appear to be any impact. However, we are still mindful of the issue and want to explore it.
Minister, can I request that we get an update on this, given how close we are to the election? I think that it is right to say that we are talking about a relatively small number of people across the whole electorate, but those people could potentially lose their vote. An update would be helpful.
My other question is in relation to—[Interruption.] My apologies, Lorraine. Did you want to add anything about the UNCRC?
No. I think that Iain Hockenhull covered it.
I am grateful.
My other question is on the need for this as we move forward. Obviously, we will be running into the Scottish elections early next year, but, once they are finished, the minds of people in the electoral world will be turning to the council elections. Are you satisfied that everything is going to be in place and that the committee that will follow us in the next parliamentary session will not be in the same position next November with regard to the council elections the year after?
Iain Hockenhull is across all of the detail about what is actually happening, but, at this stage, we are looking to move to the new system in June next year—I think that that is the date that we have in mind. There is a lot of work going on to ensure that we move seamlessly out of the Scottish Parliament elections and get the new system in place for the council elections.
The number of postal votes that are due for refresh next January is already unusually high, because the people in question applied ahead of the 2021 election under Covid conditions. Even if we were doing nothing else, that would add to the large spike in applications and create quite a substantial amount of work next January.
However, there is good news. When the online absent vote application system goes live, the merger process will look at someone’s UK Parliament postal vote, if they have one, and, if that has been renewed more recently, it will become the new record. In other words, if someone did it this year for their UK Parliament postal vote, it would run until 2028, I think, meaning that they would not need to reapply next spring for their devolved absent vote, because it will get extended automatically by the system going live. Therefore, we hope that the OAVA going live will not only reduce this as an issue, but remove or reduce that large spike that is already there for next winter.
That go-live date is doing a lot of lifting. I would in no way wish this to happen, but if challenges emerge, it seems that, given that you are looking at June, there will still be a period of time in which steps can be taken to obviate any problems.
Yes.
That is excellent. If members have no further questions, I will move to the next item on our agenda, which is a debate on motion S6M-19176. As members will be aware, only the minister and members can speak during the debate on the motion, which I invite the minister to move.
Motion moved,
That the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee recommends that the Absent Voting at Scottish Parliament and Local Government Elections (Signature Refresh) (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Order 2025 [draft] be approved.—[Graeme Dey]
Motion agreed to.
Our next agenda item—oh, I am doing this the wrong way, aren’t I? [Interruption.] My apologies—give me a moment. We have two Scottish statutory instruments to go through.
Ah, right. Are members content to note the Representation of the People (Absent Voting at Local Government Elections) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 (SSI 2025/263), which is subject to the negative procedure?
Members indicated agreement.
That is excellent. We can now move on to the next item, but first I thank the minister and his officials for attending today.
Convener, you asked me whether we would provide an update to the committee on the point that you raised. I did not get a chance to say this yet, but we absolutely will.
I am grateful for that. I now suspend the meeting to allow a changeover of witnesses.
09:06 Meeting suspended.