Examination of Witnesses (Questions 113-119)
DAVID CAIRNS
MP, MR GERALD
MCHUGH
AND MS
SHEILA SCOBIE
13 NOVEMBER 2007
Q113 Chairman: Good afternoon. I would
like to welcome the Minister to our session The Experience
of the Scottish elections. Before we start on the detailed
questions, do you have any opening remarks you would like to make?
David Cairns: I will curtail my
opening remarks, Chairman. Thank you for inviting me here today.
I will introduce my two colleagues. On my right is Gerald McHugh,
Head of the Policy Division in the Scotland Office, and on my
left is Sheila Scobie, who is Head of the Policy Branch that deals
with this particular area. I will restrict my opening remarks
to saying how we are progressing the recommendations from the
Gould report. The Secretary of State said in his statement on
the day that the report was published that he was going to accept
five core recommendations right away: first, that we revert to
manual counting for the Scottish Parliament; second, that we revert
to separate ballot papers; third, that we extend the period of
time between close of nominations and polling day; fourth, that
we consolidate the legislation; and, fifth, we do not introduce
any new electoral provisions within six months of the Scottish
Parliament elections. He also indicated in his statement that
there was another group of recommendations that would require
some further thought and consultation. For example, the recommendation
of a chief returning officer and professional status for returning
officers and EROs, changing the law to deal with what Mr Gould
referred to as "naming strategies", and the issues around
the timing of the count. I will confirm to the Committee what
the Secretary of State said at the time of his statement, that
we will be launching a public debate on all of these issues, we
will be doing so by various means, including a consultation document
which we shall send to colleagues. In line with Mr Gould's call
that we move beyond the usual channels of communication and look
especially at the interests of the voters, we will go beyond our
normal consultation methods. We will be meeting the returning
officers, registration officers, COSLA and the political parties,
and as part of their continuing role we will expect the Electoral
Commission to initiate a robust assessment of voters' views on
all of these matters and come back to us with the results. Finally,
a brief word about the proposal in the report that consideration
should be given to what is referred to as "exploratory discussions"
on the question of whether the Scottish Parliament should be the
single jurisdiction to undertake planning and preparation of the
parliamentary elections. Just to remind the Committee, the Secretary
of State in his oral statement indicated that he would be prepared
to initiate such discussions.
Q114 Chairman: One of the main points
from Ron Gould was that "voters were treated as an afterthought"
in the May elections. Do you agree with this assessment?
David Cairns: I think in the sense
that relates to the interests of ordinary voters who are not paying
very close attention to the way in which these things are prepared,
then that is a fair assessment. He does say "by all the other
stakeholders". I think that is a fair assessment. What I
was indicating in my opening statement was that as we move forward
from Gould, in a sense that has to be the motif, for future decision-making
to be focused on how we engage ordinary voters in some of these
decisions. Voters are busy people, they are not particularly interested
in spending huge amounts of time on this issue, but we have to
find mechanisms whereby we can engage with voters throughout the
country if we are going to make some of the changes that are recommended
in the report. I will just pick one example. If we were to change
the way in which names appear on the ballot paper from the traditional
alphabetical order to a randomised order, that is something that
voters might want to express an opinion about before we do it.
I appreciate that Mr Walker and Mr Wallace might take a different
view on that from Mr Cairns or Mr Alexander. It is something that
we should be asking voters what their views are. Yes, we do accept
that we did not engage directly with the voters. We engage through
proxies with returning officers, with the Electoral Commission,
with the political parties, with the electoral administrators,
with COSLA, and obviously they all have their own lines of accountability
to voters, but putting ordinary voters front and centre of this
has got to be the motif for moving this process on.
Q115 Chairman: How would you ensure
that voters' interests take priority in future elections?
David Cairns: I think through
the consultation that I have outlined where we will consult with
the traditional stakeholders. It is the Electoral Commission's
statutory role to ensure voter education, that voters are informed
on all of these issues, and they have said they will reflect on
the way in which they do that as part of the criticism they received
from the Gould report. We have to be innovative about this. I
would not be at all averse to returning officers in each constituency
or council area having a panel of voters, however they would choose
to do it. What we cannot be is too prescriptive because that goes
against another one of the recommendations on this. I am not going
to tell returning officers in each area how they should go about
this, but it is incumbent on all of us, because do not forget
the allegation that we put the voter as an afterthought was made
against every other stakeholder, and that includes all these organisations,
so as they are considering how they should be taking forward the
recommendations I am hoping that they will be putting the needs
of the voter at the heart of that. I think there are ways in which
we can do this and we should be moving beyond simply one kind
of focus group or one mechanism and all of these other organisations
should be directly talking to voters themselves, as we will be
as part of this process.
Q116 Chairman: Minister, you will
be aware that Ron Gould has issued a letter of clarification.
David Cairns: Yes.
Q117 Chairman: Do you think it was
necessary? Was it necessary for there to be a letter of clarification?
David Cairns: To be honest, that
is something you need to ask Mr Gould, I do not know what was
in his mind when he wrote that letter. Contrary to utterly ill-informed
and baseless speculation we had no contact with Mr Gould or the
Electoral Commission which in any way, shape, manner or form precipitated
this letter. It was obvious to me if you read all 121 pages of
the report what Mr Gould was saying. He was making a criticism
that the political classes, the political interests as a whole,
were putting their interests before the interests of the voter
or the efficient processing of an election. However, if you take
one or two particular phrases out of that report it could be seen
that Mr Gould's major criticism was against myself and the Secretary
of State for taking decisions in the interests of the Labour Party,
and that was very much the comment that came on the back of the
publication of the report, but if you actually listened to all
the interviews which he gave during the course of that day, up
to and including the interview he gave with Gordon Brewer on Newsnight
Scotland he was saying over and over again, "That
is not what I was saying", so he issued his letter of 25
October where he says quite clearly: "I did not suggest in
the report that specific actions were taken by Ministers to advance
their own party's interests but that all political parties were
concerned with the potential political advantage that could be
gained by certain decisions, such as on the question of ballot
paper design, and this delayed key decisions. When I examined
the reasons for this I concluded that, while responsibility for
taking these decisions lay with the Scotland Office and the Scottish
Executive, all political parties in Scotland were involved in
the long-running debates, contributed to the final decisions and
shared in the failure to prioritise the interests of the voter."
I did not need that clarification, it was clear to me from reading
the whole report that was what he intended to say, but what was
in his mind when he issued the letter is really something that
you need to ask him.
Q118 Chairman: Do you believe that
his report was misinterpreted by politicians or by the media?
David Cairns: I think that if
you take one or two comments out of context, and the way in which
he uses the word "partisan", which I think has a commonsense
meaning, he did not mean it in the commonsense meaning of the
word, it is perhaps understandable why people came to those conclusions.
It was also very clear, and very clear to me from the exchanges
that took place across the floor of the Chamber on the day of
the publication of the report, that the vast majority of people
who were on their high horse had not actually read the report
in its entirety, and I hope people have now had the chance to
do so and they will come to the same conclusion I came to when
I read it, and Mr Gould has clarified, which is that he did not
mean those statements to imply that ministers were taking decisions
in the interests of their particular party.
Q119 David Mundell: The Committee
is going to consider whether we call the former Secretary of State
to give evidence because I think it is very important that we
hear directly from him. He made the very big statement that that
letter "exonerated him", and in our previous evidence
from the Electoral Commission they do not think that is the case.
Hopefully we will also hear from Mr Gould. You have placed great
weight on that letter which the Electoral Commission do not seem
to place on the letter and in our previous evidence taking session
they believed the letter changed absolutely nothing, the report
is as written. Whilst it may be the case that all parties and
all stakeholders had a role in this process, ultimately you and
your then boss were responsible for it. Do you not accept that
responsibility?
David Cairns: I can do no more
than read you what Mr Gould himself has said about the report.
My view is if you read the entire report you will come to the
conclusion that Mr Gould is saying that the political parties
corporately acted in the interests of the political parties, and
that is what they do.
|
