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

The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has raised a number of extremely important points. I am only sorry that this debate is taking place in the Moses Room, because that the public need to know that the House of Lords is discussing the issue. I hope that we shall be able to have a further discussion when the order goes before the Chamber. The point about sloganising in the name of the party is extremely important. People really resented this. Members of the Committee who were here at the time may remember when the ballot papers for the Scots Parliament election went through the House of Lords and we discussed it here in the Moses Room. We looked at the ballot papers and raised these points. I asked whether it was necessary for a party to call itself the same thing in different parts of Scotland. I received a letter saying that it was not. A party could put itself at the top with the letter A in one part of the country and lower down with another letter in another part. That is quite extraordinary. People in Scotland were horrified by what they felt was a performance worthy of a banana republic; that was said in a number of newspapers, and people living around me agreed. They were very embarrassed on Scotland's behalf that we should have such an ineffective system. The reasons have all been given, but one incident was reported in several papers, although I have not confirmed it. A ballot box arrived from some remote polling station and, when it was opened, the ballot papers were soaking wet for some reason that nobody understood. It was reported that there were 400 more ballot papers in the box than votes had been cast at that polling station. That is very shocking if it is true, and the Electoral Commission needs to go into it. The commission is right to want to be able to look at the ballot papers and deduce from its examination what actually happened. Having asked for this, the commission is pleased to see the order; but it feels that two things are wrong with it. First, the commission can do this only if instructed by the Secretary of State. The commission is independent and does not want to be mixed up with politics. It would prefer the order to have been worded in such a way that it could do this under its existing powers. Why is it being done in this way? That is a big question. My last question was very small and I was horrified to hear that I was going to get a letter about it because nobody knew the answer. But this is a big question and I am sure that the Minister will be advised why it is being done in this way. The other point that the commission makes, which my noble friend the Duke of Montrose has already mentioned, is that the Secretary of State can do this again and again under the order. The act that he is performing can be repeated—and not only can it be repeated but it is likely to have a knock-on effect for elections for other bodies. We do not want our electoral systems to be totally different or for their rights and wrongs to be totally different in different types of elections and different parts of the United Kingdom. So there could be a knock-on effect. The commission suggests that this could be a one-off order just for the circumstances of this time. and it will be interesting to know why that is not the case. It seems a much more sensible idea. Why does the Secretary of State have to give the instruction if it could be done by an independent commission with a different order to enable it to do that? Could it not be a one-off affair in any case?