Meeting of the Parliament 06 February 2020
As the convener of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, I am pleased to speak on behalf of the committee in this debate.
As has been mentioned, the Scottish Elections (Reform) Bill proposes a number of changes to electoral practice and administration in Scotland. It is a technical bill, but it is an important one because it is vital that any changes to our elections work effectively and enhance the democratic process. The electoral system must be accessible to everyone who has the right to vote.
I am grateful to committee members for working together to produce a unanimous report on the bill. I also acknowledge the experts in the field of running elections who generously gave up their time to inform our scrutiny of the bill.
The bill contains a number of provisions, and I will highlight the main conclusions that the committee reached. We heard different views on the relative merits of four and five-year terms for Scottish Parliament and local government elections. Ultimately, the committee was satisfied that the balance of evidence supports a move to five-year terms for both. That schedule will make clashes between elections less frequent, and there is an argument that a five-year term will allow more time for policy development.
The committee also supported the proposal in the bill to allow two-member and five-member wards for local government elections. We anticipate that that will be particularly useful in more remote and rural areas. We heard some concerns about the impact of two-member wards on the proportionality between votes cast and wards won. The committee believes that two-member wards should be recommended only in exceptional circumstances, such as in remoter rural areas, including islands.
The committee supports the proposal in the bill to make it an offence to vote more than once at Scottish local government elections that are held on the same day. That will bring local government elections into line with UK and Scottish Parliament elections. However, we were not clear about how that provision will be enforced, as there are challenges in cross-referring between electoral registers.
The committee welcomes the Scottish Government’s proposed approach to electronic voting. There is a need to proceed with caution in relation to what is relatively untested technology. The proposal to undertake pilots is welcome, as is the focus on smaller-scale improvements to enhance the accessibility of the voting process, particularly for people with disabilities, which has been mentioned. We suggest that the Scottish Government accelerate its engagement with groups that represent disabled people.
A number of other provisions in the bill were welcomed by the committee, including the proposed simplification of the rules to allow anyone aged 14 and over to register as an attainer before they are officially old enough to vote.
The committee took evidence on some topics that are not included in the bill. For example, we heard evidence about the list-order effect, whereby candidates whose names are nearer the top of the ballot paper are more likely to be selected. That is potentially unfair to candidates whose surnames come later in the alphabet. There was no consensus on how the list-order effect should be addressed, but we recommend that the Scottish Government ask the Electoral Commission to take a wider look at different approaches to ballot design.
Another issue that the committee has highlighted is the requirement for candidates’ addresses to appear on ballot papers for local government elections.