Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Act 2006 (Consequential Provisions and Modifications) Order 2007

I shall resist the temptation to tease the noble Duke about the fact that he is an expert on ballot papers when I do not think his name has ever appeared on one. I shall return to ballot papers in a minute and make four brief points about these regulations, which my party welcomes on the whole. The first is the question of prisoners voting. Why has this matter remained unresolved when the European Court came to its decision in October 2005? The issue was live even before that because some people saw it coming down the track. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, a former Home Secretary, is one of an all-party group that supports a campaign by the Prison Reform Trust and the ex-offenders’ organisation Unlock to give prisoners the right to vote. In April 2005, almost two years ago, the former Chief Inspector of Prisons in Scotland, Mr Fairweather, made the point that: "““We say to prisoners, we’re preparing you to be more responsible when you come back out and then in the same breath if you say you can’t vote then we sound a bit hypocritical””." It was a live issue before the European Court came to its decision. Yet we had to wait 14 months after that decision before the Government even issued a consultation document in December 2006; and the consultation closes today or tomorrow. Why the delay? It is unnecessary to produce an order when the Merits Committee has drawn the attention of both Houses of Parliament to it on the grounds that it makes an unusual and unexpected use of the powers conferred by Section 12 of the Scotland Act. That is a polite parliamentary way of saying that the Minister is chancing his arm—not this Minister, I hasten to say. The Government are chancing their arm as it is contrary to the court decision. I want to know why this has been so long delayed. Now that the consultation period is closed, is the Minister able to give the Committee any indication of how long it will be before this matter is resolved so that we do not have a repeat in future elections of orders that run counter to the European Convention on Human Rights? The second issue I wish to raise is about ballot papers. Like the noble Duke, I am entranced by the exotic paper. It is an improvement to have one paper instead of two, as we had in previous elections. If my recollection serves me right, however, when we had two separate ballot papers the party ballot paper had the names of the candidates nominated by the parties. They seem to have disappeared, so when somebody goes to a polling station, will he have factual information about who is being nominated by the parties before he gets into the booth to put his cross? Otherwise, the candidates remain anonymous on the left-hand side of the ballot paper. I welcome the use of the symbols. When I first came into politics, there were no party labels on ballot papers, simply names. There was a very good reason for that, which was that we were elected to serve a particular constituency and your party was irrelevant because once you were elected you served everybody. That was the theory. At a later date, it was the general view of the House of Commons that it was for the benefit of the electors to have the party label. I do not dispute that. There was a change, and the party labels started to appear. I am all in favour of the symbols and party labels appearing, but I now read in the press that there are attempts to sloganeer on the ballot paper. That is an abuse of the ballot paper. We are told that the Scottish National Party is not happy to have ““the Scottish National Party”” listed on the ballot paper, but want something like ““Alex Salmond for Top of the Pops””. That is quite wrong. I hope that, if not these regulations then future ones, will be more tightly drawn to prevent that abuse of the ballot paper. Thirdly, on the actual franchise, I had an interesting experience. I am a registered local government elector in London by virtue of the rented flat I occupy. I pay council tax to Westminster City Council and therefore have a vote as to who my councillor is; well, I had, but I have given up the flat. I did, however, have a local government vote in Edinburgh by virtue of the small flat I own there and which I occupied when I was presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament. My name has been removed from the register, and I questioned this with the registration officer. He is correct. He said that it depends on the rate of occupancy of the flat, and I am obviously not now occupying it as I did. That raises a difficult question, however. Why should we have taxation without representation? I pay council tax in Edinburgh. There are issues around my flat which concern me and about which I have been in touch with my local council. Yet, I have no opportunity to vote and choose who my local councillor is. Perhaps that ought to be examined in the future. Finally, I am sure that electronic counting is an advance. Like the noble Duke, however, I have some lingering doubts, stemming from my experience of observing election counts in other countries. In countries where computer systems are used, they have been greatly suspect. I am not for one second saying that they would be suspect in Scotland, but they are less transparent than the manual system of counting. Can the Minister give us any more indication of how electronic counting would work, how we are protected against system breakdowns and whether there is a fall-back position for manual counting?