Meeting of the Parliament 07 January 2016
I am pleased to have the opportunity to close, on behalf of the Scottish Labour Party, this afternoon’s stage 1 debate on the Scottish Elections (Dates) Bill. As my colleague Mary Fee said, Scottish Labour will support the bill at decision time, as will all the parties in the Parliament. That broad support is important, because we are changing the previously defined date of the Scottish parliamentary election after the coming one. It is important that all political parties agree to that new date. If there was not consensus, that could cause difficulties and friction in getting the bill through.
The bill has been driven by practicalities. It repeats the decision that was taken ahead of the 2011 Scottish Parliament election and has been driven by the introduction of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which introduced five-year terms at a UK level.
It is correct that the Scottish Government has put forward the proposal, which is the logical thing to do. We cannot run UK Parliament and Scottish Parliament elections on the same day. Apart from the fact that those elections deal with different issues, as some are devolved and some are reserved, the different campaigns have a completely different dynamic to them.
The possibility of having a three-year session has been discussed. On balance, I have concluded that that is too short and I believe that the practicalities are such that we are right to move to a five-year session.