Seòmar agus comataidhean

We will get back to the committee and confirm that detail to you, Mr Mountain.

I will answer your first question first, by saying that the 10 pm deadline was created first so that local government elections would be on a par with Scottish Parliament elections.

The reason that the deadline was initially 5 pm might have been lost in the annals of time, but Iain Hockenhull might be able to help me out on that.

The purpose of the SSI is to ensure that nobody is disadvantaged in any way if they have an expense that another candidate would not have. It creates parity.

I understand your question about security. We live in difficult times. There had already been a number of tragedies before the SSI was created, and that would have been taken into account. We must ensure that all candidates, whether for councils, Westminster or Holyrood, feel safe and have the opportunity to be safe.

At the same time, elected officials must be accessible to the public. I heard a security briefing recently at which someone suggested to me, “Perhaps you should not advertise your surgeries and not tell people what time you will turn up.” I said, “Well, that’s not really helpful, because that’s what we do.” I think that we need to be very careful that we do not end up in that place.

I will bring in Iain Hockenhull to answer those questions in more detail.

I can summarise this. We will take the data that we receive from the next election and use it to take things forward in the future. We are trying to do something. I can give a personal example of the expenditure for a disabled candidate. My sister Jennifer is a councillor in Renfrewshire and Paisley. As a disabled candidate, she had extra support needs, and Inclusion Scotland helped with those for various candidates.

It will be interesting for us to receive that data and see what we can do to make things more accessible so that everyone can engage and can be a candidate. We all accept that certain candidates will need more expenditure.

I am happy to take that point on board for future consultations. I am a great believer in such consultation. As you will be aware, my wife has multiple sclerosis, so accessibility to everything for disabled people is important to me. I will take the point on board and look at various other organisations that we can work with. On the positive side, with the ones that we have worked with, we have got good conclusions and also outcomes.

Can we do things better? That is always the case. Every day is a school day, and we will be able to do things better in the future. We will take your points on board, and, if there are any groups that you or members of the committee want to suggest, we will be quite happy to look at them.

Yes. This might make me sound like a political geek, but personally I always find that bit quite exciting, because it means that we can work out how we can make things better. When something goes wrong, I see it as an opportunity to try to make it better. That might sound a bit cheesy, but it is always the way.

Once again, I rely on Iain’s expertise.

In looking at the matter as a candidate and a former councillor, I would always say that you could spend more money on a campaign. However, you have to draw a line on what is fair for everyone, to make sure that there is a level playing field. The instrument gives us that opportunity.

When you look at the end of the previous Scottish parliamentary election, when we were finally allowed to go out, get involved and get back to some form of normal campaigning, we managed to get things moving and deliver leaflets. Personally I do not know of many local candidates in our area who used mailing to that extent. I did not do so myself but simply moved forward with the campaign as it was.

We had the campaign laid out right from the start. We made sure that we were accounting for the fact that we were living in difficult times and that things would be a certain way. Was it a nervous time for me, as a candidate? It probably was. Indeed, halfway through the campaign, I was sitting in the house, starting to worry. However, we need to give the parties the opportunity to continue with these limits, and I think that they should be okay. If, after the next election, we get data further down the line that says otherwise, we will review the situation.

Once again, it has been a pleasure.