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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 25 November 2024
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Displaying 1320 contributions

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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Minister for Parliamentary Business

Meeting date: 23 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

—what I am saying is—

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Minister for Parliamentary Business

Meeting date: 23 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

Therefore, before the end of this year, we will see the publication of your response, in essence, to the report—

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

I am grateful for that explanation. As you suggest, it was a set of circumstances that perhaps could not have been anticipated. I appreciate that you have put in the resource request. Are you confident that, if the request is met, there will not be the same problem this year?

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

Our second agenda item is evidence from the Electoral Commission. I welcome to the meeting Dame Susan Bruce, who is the electoral commissioner for Scotland; Shaun McNally, who is the chief executive of the Electoral Commission; Craig Westwood, who is the director of communications, policy and research of the Electoral Commission; and Andy O’Neill, who is the head of the Electoral Commission Scotland. I invite Dame Susan to make some opening remarks about the annual report and the position in which we now find ourselves.

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

That is fine.

We were going to look at the support that is provided to political parties. As I said, the kick-off on 1 November caused a marvellous rush all around here, with regard to indications and so on. How is your interaction going with political parties at party level and with individual candidates? Last time, we discussed the work that you do after events to reach out to candidates on their experience. Who would like to comment on that? Craig, it is going to fall to you again.

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

I appreciate that, and it is powerful that you are advocates for democracy education. That is a helpful role.

I will bring in Stephen Kerr.

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

We are posing that the range of 650,000 to 1 million is quite broad when that is compared with the more obviously available figures—we know who is registered, for example—that we have. We have focused on the latter figure, but that is a big range. If we could get some explanation as to why that category is used or, indeed, whether steps could be taken to make the figure more accurate, that would be helpful.

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

I know that Ivan McKee would like to come in, but can you just clarify that the inaccurate register entries are a subset of those that are not correctly registered, rather than in addition to that?

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

Are you satisfied now?

Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Electoral Commission

Meeting date: 9 November 2023

Martin Whitfield

Subject to that.