Chamber and committees

That is very helpful, minister. As committee members do not have any other questions, I will now close the evidence session.

The next item is a debate on motion S6M-18103, on the Parliament’s approval of the Scottish Parliament (Elections etc) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2025. I remind those watching that, as members will be aware, only the minister and members can partake in the debate. I invite the minister to move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee recommends that the Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2025 [draft] be approved.—[Jamie Hepburn.]

Motion agreed to.

Agenda item 4 relates to a cross-party group’s application to approve a change of purpose. The cross-party group on deafness applied for a change to its purpose to include a reference to deafblindness. Members will recall that we considered the request at our meeting on 26 June and agreed to seek further information from the convener of the group, particularly in relation to any potential overlap with the work or the purpose of the cross-party group on visual impairment.

A response from the convener has been included in the papers and will be published. We have also received correspondence from the convener of the CPG on visual impairment that indicates that the group has no objection to the proposed change of purpose for the CPG on deafness and affirms that

“the two groups collaborate on issues of mutual interest.”

The question is whether we are going to agree to approve the change of purpose. Do committee members have any comments?

I thank the members for their contributions, and I think that you are right. If we allow it to flow, it can be an example in our inquiry. We can look in more detail at the details of where overlap is and who takes responsibility for pointing that out. It is interesting that the correspondence talks about the groups having so much in common.

Are we content to allow the change of purpose, which has been indicated to us, as required by the rules on cross-party groups, and that we will write to the CPGs and invite them to contribute to our inquiry in the new year?

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 15th meeting of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee in 2025. I have received no apologies from committee members.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Are members content to agree to take in private item 5, which is consideration of our work programme?

Members indicated agreement.

Our second item is evidence on the draft Scottish Parliament (Elections etc) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2025. Members will recall that, at our meeting on 4 September, we took evidence on the order from the Electoral Management Board for Scotland and the Electoral Commission. Today, we have the opportunity to take evidence from the Minister for Parliamentary Business before we consider whether to recommend to the Parliament that the order be approved.

I welcome Jamie Hepburn, the Minister for Parliamentary Business, who is joined by Iain Hockenhull, the head of the elections bill team at the Scottish Government, and Jordan McGrory and Lorraine Walkinshaw from the Scottish Government legal directorate. Good morning to you all. I think that the minister would like a few minutes to open before we ask questions.

I am grateful for that, minister. We will go straight to questions, and I go to Annie Wells first.

Thank you. I will go to Emma Roddick.

That is helpful. Thank you.

However, this is an unusual message. The vast majority of voting information is being delivered by local authorities, normally on behalf of returning officers, on the basis of a wider need for people to understand, to schools and the communities in which people live. As Sarah Mackie pointed out, care-experienced young people are a very remote and disparate community, and, if I am honest, the reality is that the process of passing information to that group has never been particularly successful. Now that we have the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is perhaps a stronger legal obligation, particularly on the Scottish Government and the emanations of state, and it is about whether we can satisfy the human rights of a group of people who are really hard to identify and who are outside the area in which they would like to express their intention to vote.

It might be helpful if you can feed back on that. My follow-on question, which I am sure will be discussed at the round table, is about the reality that, having registered, there will probably have to be a postal vote, which potentially could prove very difficult. The returning officer will have to deal with addresses that are outside the constituency and potentially outside the region, which will throw up questions.

To go back to the most well-known Gould principle—that of the six-month period—it would be nice for the committee to have an understanding of how that issue will be dealt with. The returning officer is absolutely the individual who will have to take responsibility for that, but I have a concern that it will be impossible for the returning officer to deliver that aspect successfully. I will leave it at that. I deeply hope that the process will work, and I am confident that it will, but reassurance about the steps that are being taken would be useful.

My final question was touched on earlier in Emma Roddick’s questioning. A significant number of things are being consulted on. The committee received reassurances from the Government that a lot of the issues could and should be dealt with in secondary legislation. We have an element of secondary legislation that does not go as far as we expected, or at least as far as I expected.

Is there anything that has been missed that concerns you for the purposes of the election next year? Is there anything that should take priority for the next piece of secondary legislation that comes through, from the perspective of delivery but also of the oversight that you have?