Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have nothing further to add, convener. I will press amendment 63.

Amendment 63 agreed to.

Amendments 64 and 65 moved—[Ross Greer]—and agreed to.

The question of randomising ballot papers, or the advantage or disadvantage of alphabetical order on ballot papers, is not unique to Scotland or the UK, and I am sure that members will be familiar with the issue. This is a long-standing area of debate in all parliamentary democracies.

There is strong evidence that appearing at the top of the ballot paper is an advantage. A quite comprehensive study in 2015 in Denmark found, on average, a 4 per cent advantage to the candidates at the top of ballot papers. In Scotland, the advantage might not be as significant as 4 per cent—there has not been the same rigorous study here—but there are plenty of other studies from across the world showing various levels of advantage to candidates who are at the top of ballot papers. Nothing can be done to prevent that, because somebody needs to be at the top of the ballot paper.

However, based on the principle of fairness, but also the perception of fairness, I think that we should randomise ballot papers so that there is no way to secure that advantage. I remember one particular incident in which a candidate from my party was accused of having changed their surname so that it began with A. That candidate was successfully elected—

Yes, by something in the region of 4 per cent.

I can confirm that that candidate was not particularly enthusiastic about being elected to the local authority in question, and most certainly had not changed their surname to secure that advantage. If they had realised that in advance, they perhaps would have kept their previous surname, although their partner might have had something to say about that.

Because of that unfair advantage, I am proposing randomisation, but I have not prescribed a method of randomisation. Local authority returning officers could simply draw straws or pick names out of a hat. They might want to do it like the cup draw for the football and get minor celebrities in, live stream it and make it a bit more exciting for the three people who will be watching. That is for returning officers to decide. I have simply stated that the ballot papers should be randomised to tackle the issue.

The committee will be glad to know that I will speak to the amendments only very briefly, because I believe that they align with the Government’s intentions. I will use two examples to illustrate why the amendments, which relate to agents and candidates, are necessary.

Amendments 64 and 65 deal with the current requirement for election agents to use their home address. In the relatively recent past, there was an incident in which an individual turned up at the home address of a party election agent on the weekend after an election, because they were seeking the successful candidate who had been elected. The candidate had, quite reasonably, not used their home address in the nomination process, but that individual was able to find the election agent’s home address. Thankfully, the incident did not escalate, but it illustrates the need for us also to give the option that candidates have to their election agents, to ensure that everyone can engage with the process safely.

Amendment 63 would give candidates a new option to state the ward that they live in. At present, candidates can state the local authority area that they live in or the constituency that they live in, when that is relevant.

The example that I will use for amendment 63 relates to the recent Arran by-election. Arran and Cumbrae are the two islands in the North Ayrshire Council area. As you would expect, it is very important to Arran residents that they know that candidates live on the island and, therefore, understand life in an island community. One of the candidates who was put forward by a party did not live on the island, which resulted in the candidates who were Arran residents feeling under pressure to publish their home addresses in order to demonstrate that they lived on the island. The other option was simply to state that they lived in the North Ayrshire Council area, but that could mean that they lived in Irvine, Kilwinning or Ardrossan—in other words, not on the island—and did not have lived experience of island life.

A number of people have approached me to say that they want to be able to demonstrate that they have a connection to the relevant community. That applies not only to islands: particularly in larger local authority areas, a candidate being able to demonstrate that they live in the area is important. People want to be able to demonstrate that without compromising their and their family’s safety by publishing their home address. Amendment 63 would simply provide candidates with the additional option of stating what ward they live in, which would clarify their connection to the community.

I move amendment 63.

I am happy to take up the minister’s offer of further engagement and therefore I seek the committee’s agreement to withdraw amendment 66.

Amendment 66, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 67 and 68 not moved.

Section 28—Pilot schemes under the Scottish Local Government (Elections) Act 2002

I am going to speak only to my own amendment, convener, and I will be quite brief.

Amendment 69 will require parliamentary approval not for all pilots but for any pilot that alters how votes are cast. My primary area of concern is e-voting—electronic voting, digital voting or however you wish to phrase it. I am not seeking to ban e-voting pilots outright, although in all honesty I would do so, but I think that any move from a paper to an electronic ballot, even as part of a pilot, would be of such significance that it should require specific consideration before it went ahead. Any trial of a new system, even in a single area, will still be part of a live election in which somebody will be elected to represent a community.

Given the significance of long-held concerns about the potential ability to compromise such a system, there should be that additional level of scrutiny. Therefore, I propose that any pilot that changes how votes are cast be subject to the Parliament’s approval.

I move amendment 69.

I thank the committee members and the minister for taking part in the debate. I recognise that these would be significant changes, but we should be a bit cautious about the argument that significant changes cannot be introduced to bills through amendments, because that robs everyone other than the Government of the ability to make significant changes. Back-bench MSPs from the governing party, as well as Opposition MSPs, also have the right to legislate for substantive things.

Good morning, everyone. It might seem a little odd in the first instance that I, a Green, am moving an amendment to get rid of cash deposits, now that we are finally at the stage of other parties in that we can afford to pay those deposits ourselves. I am moving it because I do not believe that participants in elections should face financial barriers, and cash deposits obviously create such barriers. The ability to pay £500 bears no relation to the demonstration of a reasonable level of support.

Deposits originated after world war 1 as a way to pay for elections. The political parties themselves, combined, had to pay for the administration of elections. Clearly, we have moved well beyond that, and cash deposits are a legacy of a different era of electoral administration.

The Electoral Commission has reviewed the issue a couple of times. Most recently, in 2015, most of the countries that it reviewed—certainly across Europe—had no cash deposit system. Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands do not have such a system. The United States has quite complicated ballot access arrangements but it does not have a cash deposit system. Those countries that had such a system tended to require financial deposits of far less than the equivalent of £500.

The argument that is used now for cash deposits, given that we have moved beyond the point where they are used literally to pay for the administration of elections, is that they provide a barrier to filter out unserious candidates. They limit the length of our ballot papers compared to those in, say, Australia—where, for some senate elections, ballot papers can reach 1.5m to 2m long, with over a hundred candidates on them.

The length of the Scottish Parliament’s regional list ballots suggests that cash deposits are not exactly acting as a significant disincentive in that manner. Plenty of “unserious” candidates can afford £500, but the financial barrier gets in the way of what might be regarded as more serious candidates, particularly independents.

What I propose instead is that we strengthen the system so that it is equivalent to the nominator or subscriber system that is part of the Westminster general election nomination process. That system long predates cash deposits—it has been in place for Westminster candidacies since the 1870s. Currently, only 10 electors are needed to sign each nomination, but that requirement sits alongside the £500 cash deposit.

For some reason—which I have not quite been able to get to the bottom of—when the Scottish Parliament was established, we replicated the requirement for a cash deposit for Holyrood constituencies but we did not replicate the 10 nominations threshold.

I want to emphasise that this amendment is about implementing a long-held recommendation of the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission’s 2015 report states clearly:

“We recommend removing the requirement to pay a deposit at all elections, as we do not consider that there should be a financial barrier to standing for election.”

Instead, I propose to implement a nomination threshold. For constituencies, the threshold would be 0.05 per cent of voters, or 50 individuals. In practice, in most mainland constituencies, 0.05 per cent of voters would usually be slightly more than 50 people. However, the reason that I include the 0.05 per cent as well is to reflect the fact that island constituencies have much lower populations, and it would therefore be reasonable to have a lower nomination threshold in an island constituency. For the list system, the threshold would be 150 voters, or 0.05 per cent of voters—which would generally be around 150 people.

I have included provision in amendment 57 for ministers to vary those thresholds in the future, to reflect population change. I would also propose that cash deposits still be allowed in the event of snap elections, to recognise the fact that it takes a bit more time to collect signatures than it does simply to lay a cash deposit.

The amendment also includes a provision whereby, if a member of a party is elected, the party gets automatic ballot access at the subsequent election. That is quite common across other electoral systems comparable to our own. The fact that a party has had a candidate elected previously is a clear demonstration of its credibility and a reasonable level of public support—therefore, why should any barrier be placed in the way of its standing a candidate again? For example, all of the parties represented in this committee would have to go through the nomination process once, but, assuming that at least one MSP from each of our five parties were returned at the 2026 election, we would not have to go through that process again in 2031.

For the existing Holyrood parties, the amendment would end what I see as, frankly, a total inefficiency whereby hundreds of thousands of pounds are transferred from all our bank accounts at the start of an election period to a council bank account and then transferred back into the party accounts afterwards—assuming that we reach a vote share of 5 per cent in all the relevant locations.

That is amendment 57. You will be delighted to know that I do not have nearly as extensive a set of speaking notes for all of my subsequent amendments. Amendments 57 and 68 are the substantial ones.

To start off, I would just say that, as much as I am grateful for the minister’s various offers to take to consultation some of the issues that have been raised as part of this process, the fact is that we are now heading towards the point where the Government is committing to a consultation on dual mandates, residence requirements, deposit reform and by-election reform. Indeed, we are getting to the point where there will be further consultation on more issues than are contained in the bill in the first place, which I think brings us back to the issue that I raised before—that this has been a missed opportunity to take forward a more holistic and substantive package of reform.

Nonetheless, amendment 58 seeks to end the anomaly in which peers, quite rightly, cannot be MPs—they cannot even vote in a general election—but they can be MSPs. This is not a judgment on individual peers who have been MSPs; it is purely about the principle of democratic accountability. In that respect, it is somewhat different from Graham Simpson’s dual mandate amendments, because it is not concerned about somebody's ability to do two jobs simultaneously. Instead, it is more focused on the issue of democratic accountability.

The Lords is not, by definition, a democratic institution. It is unaccountable; it makes law, but it is not accountable to the public. I find that an affront to parliamentary democracy, and I think that it is contrary to the values of this Parliament, too. Peers are absolutely free to become MSPs—they should just resign from the Lords first. This simple amendment follows through on that simple principle. I welcome the Government’s commitment to consult on the matter, although I do not find that, in and of itself, necessarily a reason for Parliament not to move forward with it for the 2026 election. Nonetheless, we are where we are on that.

I should also put on the record that I spoke directly to Katy Clark before lodging this amendment, particularly to emphasise that this is not about individuals but about a democratic principle. Of course, it would apply only from the next election; it would not apply to anybody currently in that position—that is, Ms Clark herself.

On amendments 60 and 62, which relate to the aggravators, I want to give a little bit of clarification with regard to what the minister was indicating. The amendments would give those sentencing someone convicted of an offence against the categories of people involved in the elections the ability—and the option—to reflect on the harm done to the democratic system at large by the offence. It does not mandate the giving of a more substantive or different sentence; it simply gives those sentencing the option to consider the matter. We should recognise that, as well as the harm that is done against the individual, these offences do harm against the democratic process as a whole.

The minister, quite rightly, made the point that we have seen rising concern in recent years. Our democracy is under a bit of pressure—not as much as in some other nations, but increasing nonetheless. Indeed, those who are involved in our democracy face increasing hostility, something that I have no doubt we have all experienced, and the amendments simply give those sentencing an additional option. The measures would apply only to those convicted of an offence that had been directed at one of the six categories of people in question, and there is also the option to consider it as an aggravator in the way that the minister mentioned—that is, with regard to emergency service workers.

With amendment 61, on the disqualification register, I have lodged what I think is quite a simple amendment. As has already been mentioned, there is no list of disqualified individuals. We have a system that relies on self-policing by those who, by and large, have been disqualified because of their conduct in relation to the electoral process and offences committed against those involved in it. These people are generally going to be on the disqualification register because, by definition, they do not particularly respect the democratic process as it stands.

I think that the Electoral Management Board is the appropriate body to maintain such a list and to make it accessible to the returning officers. As I have already pointed out, nobody will be required to check 2,500 names off the list. For a start, that 2,500 gets divided by 32 at the local council elections, but, in any case, you would be checking the smaller list against the larger one, rather than the other way round. I think, therefore, that this is a simple amendment that would come with a small additional cost, as we would be talking about a—thankfully—relatively small list and a small number of individuals.

We are talking about a group of individuals who have already, by definition, disrespected the democratic process, so relying on self-policing by them would seem to be a vulnerability.

I expect that the minister was indeed about to do so, given that it is something that we have already discussed. However, as he has mentioned the number of candidates standing for election, I would emphasise that, in any system in which a list of disqualified individuals was maintained, surely there would be a mechanism to check the list of disqualified individuals, not the list of candidates.

Unless there is an explosion of the kinds of issues that result in people being disqualified, the list of disqualified individuals will always be far smaller than the 2,500 people who stand for election to local authorities. All that a returning officer would have to do would be to cross-check the list of disqualified individuals; at no point in the system would anyone have to check all 2,500 candidates. It is just a matter of checking one list against another, rather than the other way around. As much as the minister is factually correct to point out the number of people who stand for election, that bears no relation to the workload involved in checking who is disqualified.