Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-272)
MR RON
GOULD, CM AND
MR MICHAEL
BODA
15 JANUARY 2008
Q260 Mr Devine: You talk about the
importance of appointing a chief returning officer for Scotland.
If you were in Scotland recently you would have heard the political
debate between the councils and the Scottish Government on basically
you cannot tell us what to do, we are 32 individual councils.
I just wondered how you see this job working on a practical basis.
I am not saying I disagree with that, but who is the council accountable
to, how does that individual actually influence individual councils
who have the right to say "Stay off our patch"?
Mr Gould: I will give you a very
general answer. First of all we suggested that as long as the
jurisdiction is split for local elections and parliamentary elections,
the selection of the chief returning officer would be joint between
the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government and they would
make a joint decision as to the individual. Obviously, the responsibility
of that individual would be to manage whichever election or elections
arose at any particular time and legislation would be required,
obviously. That individual would then be responsible for establishing
the ground rules for every returning officer in every council
at the baseline, and over and above that the local returning officer
would have the responsibility for adapting that legislation or
those rules to that local area. On top of that, as I see it, it
should be understood that the local councils would continue to
supply the resources at election time to the returning officer
so that there would be no change to the present practice where
returning officers carry that out. The whole objective of this
would be to ensure that the standards of application of the elections
and the management of the elections were equal in terms of dealing
with the voters and treating the voters across Scotland, so that
there would not be as much variation as there is now on the decision-making
process and the consultation process would be much clearer as
well as to when there were problems and how to resolve them, whether
it was with a supplier for example, if we look at DRS, so that
rather than having to deal with 32 contracts they would have one
contract which would be done with the chief returning officer,
the chief returning officer doing this of course in consultation
with the other 32.
Mr Boda: This actually leads to
the question that Ms Clark brought up earlier, how can you facilitate
the work of the returning officers, and that has a lot to do with
the fact that they need better coordination. As you have a more
complex electoral process, which clearly is happening in the Scottish
context, the returning officer will require better coordination.
Standards are important, consistency is important and that is
why we put forward the argument for a chief returning officer
in this context as well.
Q261 Mr Wallace: I am just trying
to find out, in the talk about combining the administration of
those elections in the sense that one single body should be responsible
for administrating both, what pitfalls do you anticipate in doing
that or do you think that is just a pretty straightforward thing,
that the legislation comes through and it just gets done and it
should be done by the Scottish Executive rather than the Scotland
Office; do you think that is the best body to do it or do you
think the Scotland Office should just take responsibility for
administering both?
Mr Gould: As I see it the management
of the election most effectively can be done by an individual
or a small office that has the managerial responsibility related
to the returning officers in Scotland. That individual, if I can
put it this way, would be a two-headed monster as long as we have
the parliamentary responsibility here and the local elections
up there, and then you have the European elections elsewhere and
that individual would work for a different boss in effect, depending
on where the legislation lay that that person has to manage. That
is how I see it.
Q262 Mr Wallace: What about the anomaly
that the Electoral Commission oversees Scottish Parliament elections,
but probably the only election in the United Kingdom that is not
overseen by the Electoral Commission is the Scottish local government
election. Do you think the Electoral Commission should have a
role in overseeing the Scottish local government election?
Mr Gould: We see the role of the
Electoral Commission to be somewhat different than it is now.
We see them first of all as a watchdog for local elections and
for Scottish parliamentary elections in terms of ensuring that
the fundamental standards are carried out and to look at the weaknesses
and the problems that might arise during the election and do an
audit after each of the elections to guide the returning officer,
the chief returning officer and the returning officers for the
future. The Electoral Commission also, because of the fact that
they would be in the role of establishing standards which they
then would measure, would provide guidance and assistance but
not operational roles. For example, as we see it they would not
carry out the voter information process; they may provide some
guidance, they may provide samples of posters, they may provide
samples of the booklet on what constitutes a valid and invalid
ballot, but the chief returning officer would then carry that
out through the process and, depending on which jurisdiction he
or she was working for, that jurisdiction would fund any costs
involved in carrying out the voter registration or what have you.
Q263 Mr Wallace: Why do you think
that the Electoral Commission should not be involved in the public
education, what is wrong with them doing that as well?
Mr Gould: The problem with the
Electoral Commission sitting in London being involved in voter
education is that first of all they are not close to the scene,
they then become operational and they get into the conflict situation
that they are into here. They had to go out and ask me to do an
independent study because they played a role and they are in a
conflict situation. The second element as I see it is that the
Electoral Commission cannot react as quickly as those on the ground,
so that in the last analysis there was a need for information
officers in this particular situation in this election. The Commission
was involved but it had to be done locally and so the selection
of information officers was not standardised, it was all over
the map, the quality was all over the map. It was a great idea
and it was very useful in many instances, but this is where I
see that with a chief returning officer that can be implemented,
regularised and coordinated in a much better fashion than having
a body in London that is geared for the umbrella approach homing
in on local problems.
Q264 Mr Davidson: Can I just follow
this up? You have mentioned a couple of times a body in London,
we do actually have UK elections which are United Kingdom-wide
and we do have European elections which are United Kingdom-wide.
I am not convinced that the idea of voting and participating in
democracy and so on can be separated off into local government
or the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly, it seems to
me to be something generic and that therefore there is some degree
of sense about having the thrust and the divide and the direction
in favour of democracy and in favour of participation being UK-wide
while implementation and fine-tuning and so on can take place
at a local level, it is the difference between your policy and
administration. But I am also unclear about what role there is
for the Electoral Commission if we have a chief registration officer
and officers who officialise because if the chief registration
officer is taking, as it were, guidance about your voter education
projects and so on should be run centrally and he or she is implementing
them, the Electoral Commission runs the risk of just getting in
the way, does it not, because you would have these registration
officers up and down the country and individual local authorities
implementing all these things, following through voter education,
following through the proper conduct of elections—I cannot
see that there is a separate role. There are two things, therefore,
one about wanting to have the UK drive towards democracy—since
local government by and large does not vary all that much it would
be applying across the board—and also where the Electoral
Commission fits into this. Can you clarify these points for me?
Mr Gould: By the way, I should
mention that obviously the Electoral Commission is also located
in Edinburgh, Scotland, it is not only in London, but the point
here is to try to bring together two things: one is the responsibility
and accountability for ensuring that the elections are managed
and run consistently across Scotland, the other is to carry out
certain processes where the manager is not a specialist and needs
guidance and support such as voter education, and I would see
the specialists being in the Electoral Commission for things like
voter education, for the designation of voting standards.
Q265 Mr Davidson: Surely you have
said already that you wanted to have the professionalisation of
returning officers. If you are talking about a think tank that
provides ideas and so on, fine, but the Electoral Commission at
the moment would make a virtue of not knowing anything about elections
in a sense because none of them have ever stood for anything,
they just simply interfere and do not necessarily add value to
that, do they?
Mr Gould: When I talk about professionalisation
it is in the management of the elections. The whole area for example
of voter education, voter standards and so on is one which is
applied and is developed in another area as we see it, and is
monitored. Michael, you are an expert on this, you might want
to pick up from there.
Mr Boda: I do think it is important
to distinguish between three areas which we have focused on in
the report as it relates to Scotland. One is the administration
of the elections, the other is establishing standards for an electoral
process and then there is the other watchdog or the auditing function.
We are not arguing in any way that there would not be room for
the Electoral Commission and that they would be falling over another
institution; they are extremely important institutions and, frankly,
are quite unique in the context of other electoral commissions
around the world in the fact that they have a particular watchdog
function and auditing function that is extremely important. Their
job partially is to look at how an election was administered and
to offer comment on it for improvement for the next process. As
Ron has mentioned, the particular problem in this context was
that there was some involvement—they do not administer the
elections in Scotland but there was some involvement in the administration
of the elections—and as a result we were required to come
in and do an independent audit on the election. So the point is
that if they focused more on the standards and on the watchdog
function there is an important difference.
Q266 Mr Davidson: I understand that,
but if you have a situation where you have elections for Westminster
every four years and one of the main functions of this body is
to audit those elections, they then find things for themselves
to do between times. Work expands to fill the space available
but can we not just look at, for example, the National Audit Office
or the Scottish or Welsh equivalents as being the auditors of
the elections rather than being the people who are created as
a separate structure because I am always a bit wary about creating
new quangos with new functions all the time because they then
just find things for them to do, interfere more and do not necessarily
add to the general merit of human life. Does that seem fair?
Mr Gould: Keeping in mind that
we dealt only with the Scottish elections and our focus was on
Scotland, when you look at the UK as a whole and the role of the
Electoral Commission it is in a position to provide all of these
functions across the UK. As I say, we are just talking about Scotland
but they can be the specialists in certain areas, they can be
developing the standard for all of the UK which would apply to
Scotland obviously as well as elsewhere and you would be measuring
how well those standards are achieved in the specialist areas
of elections and election management and what have you. This is
where we see that their role would complement the management role
and support it and give it more strength and more specialist advice
and guidance, otherwise you would have to build an empire in Scotland
to do the same thing that is being done in Wales.
Q267 Mr Davidson: Could the registration
officers or the new electoral officers be free to ignore advice
from the Electoral Commission? The other issue here is about responsibility;
would these people be free to ignore it and say, no, on balance
the decision is right? It is a question of accountability; who
is going to be accountable because I am worried again that you
are going to have 95 different organisations expressing views.
Mr Boda: If there was a chief
returning officer they would be free to ignore the advice of the
Electoral Commission, but keeping in mind that the Electoral Commission's
function is to fully audit them after the fact and recommend improvements,
I see it as much more of a co-operative effort than antagonistic
in the way that you say, but they do have an opportunity to comment
and to make public how an electoral process went.
Mr Gould: And they would report
to Parliament on the quality and what happened in the elections,
it would not be the chief returning officer doing it.
Q268 Mr MacNeil: The final point
is to do with your letter of clarification and when that was given.
What was the process or the reasoning for writing that letter
after the report, was it purely from the political department,
or was it from any stimulus from within the UK, and had anybody
contacted you at all?
Mr Gould: I am sorry, I missed
that.
Q269 Mr MacNeil: The clarification
letter that you wrote, were you prompted by anybody or was it
purely due to the media hoo-hah?
Mr Gould: No, I was not prompted
by anybody. I looked at this and said "Oh my God, we have
done al this work and look where it is going, it is going in reverse
instead of putting it in gear" and I really hoped that I
could get it back on the rails or at least do my best to focus
it in the direction that we had hoped the report would go.
Q270 Mr Davidson: These questions
are always very helpful actually when people get a result they
did not look for. Do you think there is a need for an overhaul
of primary electoral legislation in the UK to ensure that it is
fit for purpose?
Mr Gould: I think we are pretty
categorical in the report that electoral legislation in the UK,
the UK being the founder of democracy and developing legislation
that has developed over hundreds of years, needs to be brought
together into one place and to also bring it into the 21st century.
For example, one of the problems in this election was that the
electoral legislation really did not recognise technology in terms
of some of the provisions, so hopefully the progress that was
made before the Scottish elections and in consolidating some of
the legislation will continue to be pursued.
Q271 Chairman: Mr Gould, in conclusion
we are looking for some magic solutions to avoid the problems
of the 2007 elections. If you were given the choice to introduce
one significant reform to deal with all these issues, what would
that be?
Mr Gould: I would say that what
I would have suggested has already been done, and that is the
Scotland Office could put out the consultation document. For me
it is so important to get input into the recommendations and then
to give the tools to you, the legislators, to decide which of
those recommendations and options make sense in terms of the Scottish
Parliamentary elections and Scotland as a whole.
Q272 Chairman: Thank you. Can I thank
the witnesses for their attendance; before I declare the meeting
closed would you like to say anything in conclusion, perhaps an
area that we have not covered during our questions?
Mr Gould: You have been pretty
exhaustive. Certainly let me say that in my view this session
has made it worth coming from Ottawa to this weather, even though
I am leaving snow in Ottawa.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Gould
and Mr Boda, for your attendance.
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