Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) (Amendment) Order 2007

Perhaps I may preface my remarks by expressing some sympathy for the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Evans. It seems to me that he is constantly being dragged here to propose Scottish orders in which he has no genuine interest. I want to know what has happened to the Advocate-General who is now installed in the House. The noble Lord, Lord Selkirk of Douglas, will agree that he was a perfectly good Solicitor-General in the Scottish Parliament. His light was not hidden under a bushel there and I do not see why it is hidden here; we never hear from him. It would be very good to have a Scottish Minister presenting these orders. So I have every sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Evans. Turning to the issue, I endorse entirely what the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, has just said: this was an extremely grave matter. The scale of spoilt ballot papers ruined the reputation of the elections in Scotland. It is very serious when the number of spoilt ballot papers in many constituencies exceeded the majority of the elected member. That is a disgraceful situation. It is why many of us pressed for a wholly independent inquiry into the conduct of the elections. None the less, the Electoral Commission has taken this on board. Mr Ron Gould is well known to me—he is a Canadian expert with whom I worked in the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm—and I look forward to having a one-to-one meeting with him later this week when I will no doubt repeat my speech to him personally. It is sensible that, for the inquiry to be properly conducted, it must be able to look at the ballot papers and see what caused this extraordinarily large number of spoilt papers. I fully endorse the Government’s decision to bring forward this order to enable Mr Gould and his colleagues to do that. In my view, some of the theories about why there was a large number of spoilt papers are misplaced. After the noble Lord repeated the Statement in your Lordships’ House, there was a lot of criticism about the fact that the elections for the Parliament and the local authorities were held on the same day. However, that had happened before and we did not have the problem then, so that cannot be a real grievance. My own experience of going into the ballot booth was that the instructions on the ballot paper were extremely inadequate. I think that that will probably be discovered as one of the main reasons why there were so many spoilt papers. As to the conduct surrounding the postal votes, I hope that one question the Electoral Commission will consider is why on earth some local authorities took it into their heads to subcontract the handling of the postal votes to an organisation south of the border. I have no prejudice against organisations south of the border but clearly they could not have the knowledge of the local geography that a local authority has. In my view, they had no business exporting responsibility for seeing that the postal votes were delivered to the right people. As I think I have mentioned before, my noble friend Lord Kirkwood, who lives a couple of miles away from me in the Ettrick Valley, was sent the ballot papers for a completely different ward, so the organisation handling this clearly did not understand the nature of the geographical boundary, and I do not think that that should be allowed to happen again. I know that that is going a bit wide of the order but it should certainly fall within the remit of the inquiry. I am also seeking an assurance from the Minister that, in presenting the order, the remit of the Electoral Commission’s inquiry will be extremely wide. It should not just look at the issue of spoilt ballot papers—and I know that that will not be the case—but I want to ensure that it will genuinely look at the whole administration of the election. When I first came into politics, party names did not appear on the ballot papers, and that was for a very good reason. Every time the returning officer declared an election, he said that we were elected to serve the people in such and such a constituency, so the ballot papers did not contain the party names. That was changed later and I understand why. It was for the convenience of, and to provide clarity for, the electorate. But now things have gone too far and we have sloganising on the ballot paper. I think that that was a contributory factor in the shambles of the Scottish election. Why should we allow someone to declare on the ballot paper that they are standing for Free Lollipops for the Masses (Liberal Democrat)? It appears that there is nothing to stop that happening. Campaign slogans were introduced by Tommy Sheridan. He was the first person to use them in the previous election, and that was followed up very strongly by Alex Salmond. Most of the candidates who stood for the Scottish National Party put on the ballot paper, ““Alex Salmond for First Minister””, even when they were standing for local elections. That made a complete nonsense of the whole local authority election. They did it partly because having a name starting with the letter ““A”” meant that he was at the top of the list every time, but it also caused confusion when it came to choosing between individual members and the party list system. Therefore, I hope very much that the Electoral Commission will look at that process; it will probably mean taking back responsibility for registering political party names. Of course, if a political party is allowed to register itself under a whole series of names and then select the one that it thinks it might be advantageous to have on the ballot paper, that will be an abuse of the system. These wider issues have to be examined, and I am sure that Mr Ron Gould will do so if he is allowed. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us an undertaking that the inquiry will be thorough and widespread, and that this order is simply one small part of it.