Hansard

In opening the debate for Scottish Labour, I say at the outset that we will support the bill at decision time tonight.

The Scottish Elections (Dates) Bill is a concise and effective piece of legislation that aims to make the next term of the Scottish Parliament a five-year term, which will mean that the next elections to the Scottish Parliament, after this May, will be held on 6 May 2021. As a consequence, the Scottish local government elections will also be delayed by a year, which will mean that, after 2017, the next Scottish local government elections will take place on 5 May 2022. Thereafter, elections to Scottish local government will return to taking place every fourth year.

The change to the law will ensure that we do not see a repeat of 2007, when Scottish parliamentary and local government elections were held on the same day, which resulted in mass voter confusion and a record number of spoiled ballot papers. In the aftermath of the 2007 election, the Gould report was published. It recommended complete separation of local government and Scottish Parliament elections—that is exactly what the bill does.

The change to the law will avoid any potential clashes that may arise with Westminster general elections following the introduction of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. The next UK general election is scheduled for 7 May 2020, so moving the Scottish Parliament elections to the following year will avoid a clash of those two very important elections.

As has already been mentioned, holding multiple elections on one polling day causes problems including an increase in the number of spoiled ballot papers. That is exactly what we saw on 3 May 2007, when the Scottish local government elections and Parliament elections were held on the same day, which resulted in a record number of 142,000 spoiled ballot papers. I am sure that we all across the chamber agree that we should do everything in our powers to ensure that that situation never occurs again.

A five-year session for the Scottish Parliament will maintain its stability, scrutiny and performance. As Joe FitzPatrick pointed out, it will be up to the next Government to determine when elections take place after that. An alternative three-year session for the Scottish Parliament, which would bring the Scottish Parliament elections forward to 2019, would also have avoided a potential clash with the UK general election, but the main problem with a three-year session would have been the risk of the next Scottish Government implementing poor and rushed legislation in an effort simply to introduce new laws within its short term.

The other devolved institutions—the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly for Wales—also have five-year parliamentary terms, as does the UK Parliament. The Scottish Parliament should also have five-year parliamentary terms and remain in line with the other Government institutions in the UK.

This is a short but nevertheless important debate. I confirm our support for the bill.