Hansard

As the convener of the lead committee on the bill, I am pleased to be taking part in the debate. I thank all those who gave us written and oral evidence and I thank the clerks, the Scottish Parliament information centre researchers and my colleagues on the committee.

Whether to decouple the local government and Scottish Parliament elections, and the debacle of the 2007 elections, are issues that the committee has considered in great detail. Ron Gould produced a comprehensive report and, following its publication, we conducted our own inquiry into the issues, on which we reported to Parliament in June 2008.

Among our many recommendations, we endorsed the view that the Scottish Parliament and local government elections should be decoupled. It was clear from the evidence that we took that, although there have been differing views over the years, there is now broad agreement that the elections should be separated.

However, some concerns were raised with us, which we have highlighted in our report. The first of those is about turnout, which is an issue that we also considered as part of our inquiry into the 2007 elections. People were concerned that if the local government elections were held separately, turnout would fall. However, we recognise that the issue of turnout is broader than just the decoupling of elections. In evidence, Dave Watson from Unison said:

"All of us—civic society, politicians, political parties and local authorities—need to focus on the reasons for the low turnout by doing much more work to make people want to turn out in local elections."—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 25 March 2009; c 1884.]

We welcome the indication from the Minister for Parliamentary Business that he would be happy to engage with the committee on that, and we look forward to working with the Scottish Government on the issue. I hope to hear—today or soon—how we can take that work forward.

Our report shows that we are concerned about voter registration. Of course, that is a reserved issue, so we are calling on the Scottish Government to continue to work with the UK Government to increase levels of registration.

As we are all painfully aware, there was a lot of voter confusion during the 2007 elections. In our inquiry into those elections, we pointed out that the high level of rejected ballots in the Scottish Parliament election should not eclipse the high level of rejected ballots in the local government elections. It is clear that there needs to be further information about how the STV system works.

Ron Gould said in his report:

"In essence, the local government elections are not simply about ensuring a reasonable number of voters show up at the polls on polling day. More important is that they engage with the campaign in a meaningful manner and make a knowledgeable decision on their ballot paper."

There is a consensus that there needs to be an information campaign to raise awareness about the importance of local government elections and to educate people on the method of voting.

We have asked the Scottish Government to consider the role that the Electoral Commission can play in any information campaign, given that it does not have a statutory role in relation to local government elections in Scotland. Given the need for a good information campaign, it is also important that there is sufficient funding. Tom Aitchison, the chief executive of and returning officer for the City of Edinburgh Council, told the committee that he remembered being allocated somewhere in the region of £15,000 to promote public awareness in 2007, which does not seem sufficient funding for a city the size of Edinburgh. He told us that he would

"strongly support any move towards making more resources available generally for election management in Scotland and specifically for public awareness to encourage people to vote and so get a better turnout."—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 25 March 2009; c 1865-66.]

Given how vital public information campaigns will be in helping people to engage with the process and educating them about the STV system, the committee has recommended that there should be a meaningful discussion with local authorities over the funding that would be required, and that that funding should be reflected in the next Scottish Government spending review.

Funding is also an issue when it comes to e-counting. After 2007, the word "e-counting" should send a shudder through most of us in the Parliament. However, we need e-counting for local government elections because of the counting method that is used for STV elections. Again, that raises the issue of costs.

The Association of Electoral Administrators was concerned about that, given that the Scotland Office will not be contributing as it did in 2007. William Pollock from the association said:

"It is likely that the costs would increase because the economies of scale that are achieved with a combined election would not be achieved with decoupling. Under the current arrangement, the costs will fall on the local authority if the matter is not addressed."—[Official Report, Local Government and Communities Committee, 25 March 2009; c 1868-69.]

The minister told the committee that a cost cannot be put on an e-counting system yet because the Scottish Government has to go through a competitive tendering process. As with the other costs of the bill, it is not clear how much local government will have to find on its own and what money it will get from central Government.