Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
RT HON
DES BROWNE
MP, DAVID CAIRNS
MP AND MR
DAVID MIDDLETON
24 JUNE 2008
Q20 Mr McGovern: Possibly my colleague
Jim Devine has covered the point, but can I support what he said!
Another example of the Barnett consequential is that recently
the UK Government announced £4.5 million for funding to ensure
that two people from every senior school in England and Wales
would be able to visit the former concentration camp in Auschwitz.
I believe the Barnett consequential was £152,000 extra to
Scotland and they have refused to guarantee that it will be used
for that purpose. Does the Secretary of State not agree with me
that that is an anomaly that we should be addressing? If the Scottish
Executive is given extra moneys for a specific purpose because
of the Barnett consequential, that is exactly what it should be
used for!
Des Browne: I certainly support
supporting young people, particularly school children, to visit
Auschwitz. As a Member of Parliament I went with a group of young
people on such a visit, and I have to say I was not school age
but it had quite a significant effect on me, that experience.
I think that it is a very valuable experience for young people
to have, and it is a part of our history that we should never
forget. I would regret deeply if the resources that were available
to do that were not being used for that purpose, but that is what
political accountability is about. In my view, it would be inconsistent
with the way in which we have traditionally settled spending in
Scotland, and with devolution, for the UK government to be telling
the people with executive responsibility in Scotland how they
should spend their money; but equally well I do think there is
something to be said for the people of Scotland knowing that the
equivalent resources in other parts of the UK had been used in
a particular way and are not being used, and then you can ask
those people that are making decisions, "What priority do
you think was more important for the £150,000 or in the case
of disabled children £34 million?"
Q21 Chairman: I want to come back
to the £34 million. This is a matter of great concern to
us because this Committee conducted an inquiry into poverty in
Scotland and it was visible during our inquiry that the most disadvantaged
and vulnerable people in Scotland are—with disability who
have any member who is visible—they are three times more
likely to be caught up in a vicious poverty cycle. Unfortunately,
this money under the Barnett formula, which was supposed to be
allocated to disabled families, has not reached those families.
This question definitely disturbs us in the Committee, and many
more people in Scotland.
Des Browne: I understand that,
chairman. I understand people's disappointment, and we all know
from our own constituencies that families with disabled children
are significantly disadvantaged, and how important in particular
respite care is for those families, particularly those with the
most severely disabled. There is a deep irony in this in that
it was one of our Scottish colleagues who has a worldwide reputation
for campaigning for people with disability, who secured this additional
money after an exhaustive inquiry, which presumably was informed
by his own experience in Scotland of the way in which families
were under pressure and living in Scotland. There is a deep irony
if those resources or the equivalent of those resources are not
being devoted to the support and care of families in Scotland.
It is politics that needs to deal with that. I do not think it
is appropriate for us to reopen the devolution settlement to legislate
for directives of this nature from central government. I do not
think it would be appropriate in any event. I think devolution,
which I am a great supporter of as I think everybody knows—politics
and accountability in the normal political processes has to be
seen to work. What is important—and I take Mr Davidson's
point about this, is that it will not work unless there is transparency.
People need to know what resources could have been available to
be spent on a particular subject and that they were extra, and
I will do my best to make sure that that information is made available,
but I am not entirely sure whether I can do it in the fashion
Mr Davidson suggests. I will find out and let you know.
Q22 David Mundell: I welcome the
general tone of your answers because there is an implicit recognition
that this is not a new phenomenon because virtually from day one
Donald Dewar indicated in the Scottish Parliament that there was
no requirement for the Scottish Executive to spend money on equivalent
matters in Scotland as the money had been allocated through Barnett
consequentials. One of the best examples was when Mr McConnell
declined to use funds which the then Chancellor sent for council
tax rebate. This is not a new situation. I share your view that
it is entirely up to the Scottish Parliament how money is spent
under that settlement. It is for members of the Scottish Parliament
principally to hold them to account. Do you not think that the
main place in which this particular issue that we have just been
talking about should be raised is by the leader of the opposition
in the Scottish Parliament with the First Minister where she has
the opportunity to question him on these very issues every single
week?
Des Browne: I think you are absolutely
right that these issues should be raised in the Scottish Parliament.
Indeed, in relation to the point that Mr McGovern made to me,
my recollection is that that very issue was raised; and in fact
Wendy Alexander and the Labour Group put down a motion in the
Scottish Parliament that the money that had been the Barnett consequential
of that should be spent for exactly that purpose, that is trips
for school children to Auschwitz. It would have succeeded of course
if the Tory Party had not voted against it.
Q23 David Mundell: It would also
have succeeded, with respect, had there been a Barnett consequential.
In the way that you are going to investigate for Mr Davidson,
if you look into the fact, you will find that actually in relation
to that particular allocation, there was not a Barnett consequential.
Des Browne: In any event, I just
make the point that all parties have responsibilities, and while
history did not start a year ago, as you point out, Mr Mundell,
we all have responsibilities. I agree with you. What I am just
concerned about is that we get into a situation where things are
not done in Scotland because they are being done in England. That
worries me deeply. For example, we have seen over the last year
in England significant reductions in hospital infections. One
would have thought, if the actions that had been taken by the
Department of Health here in England that resulted clearly in
those dramatic reductions in hospital infections had been followed
in Scotland over the same time, they might have had the same effect;
but in Scotland we are seeing quite a dramatic increase, it would
appear, in hospital infections. Much more importantly, we are
seeing underlying policies that are substantially different from
what was being done in England and was clearly best practice that
revealed that there was not even the underlying necessary information
about the nature of these hospital infections. I think we need
to be very careful we do not get into a situation where we are
not doing things just because the English are doing them and denying
ourselves access to the best practice. That is fundamentally what
we are about.
Q24 Mr Davidson: Can I follow up
on two points, the first being the question of the Barnett consequential!
Looking back at the £34 million for the disabled, I am not
entirely clear how any normal person outside the ranks of the
few that understand government financial memos, would be aware
that there was a Barnett consequential of £34 million or
so for the disabled. How could that be found with ease? Was that
flagged up at any point in a way that could be identified?
Des Browne: I would not have thought
so, no. I do not think there has been a practice in the past of
flagging up Barnett consequentials. I think they emerge in the
way they have done in the past where individual Members of Parliament
have identified them or there has been a debate about them, or
there has been—maybe in the past the politics of Scotland
have been such that those who have an executive responsibility
were pleased to welcome additional spending that was given by
London to Scotland as a consequence of decisions that were made;
so the likelihood is that when Scotland was, as in this case,
given an extra £34 million then somebody would have said,
"We have got additional money and we should know about that,
and this is what we are doing to do about it." It may well
be that the current politics in Scotland is in the interests of
those who control funding not necessarily the—
Q25 Mr Davidson: That is what is
worrying me. Had the Barnett consequential disabled money not
been noticed it might not have been drawn to their attention.
I certainly would not have noticed. Would it be possible for the
Scotland Office to give us a list, looking backwards at Barnett
consequentials for the last year or so, in order to make sure
that we have not overlooked any and that the money, as with the
disabled, has not gone somewhere else if we wish to raise and
pursue that issue?
Des Browne: It should be comparatively
easy to do because—
Q26 Mr Davidson: That is a "yes"
then"! Thank you very much.
Des Browne: Chair, I am quite
happy to conduct the rest of this event on the basis that you
both answer and ask the questions, which makes life much easier
for me!
Q27 Mr Davidson: You agreed!
Des Browne: Let me just tell you
why. At the budget and in the PBR[3]
we briefed the media about Barnett consequentials. Whether they
choose to report them of course is another matter. We certainly
brief the media, so will have that information and if it is not
already available in the documents published with the budget—they
are sometimes a bit dense—then we will look them out and
make sure the Committee knows them.[4]
Q28 Mr Davidson: Following on from the
point you made, Secretary of State, you have listed examples where
best practice on for example hospital cleaning was happening in
England rather than in Scotland. Is there some facility that can
be employed to make sure this is drawn to Members' attention,
because if there is best practice in Wales or Northern Ireland
or England or Scotland indeed where it is not being exchanged,
surely we ought to be aware of that? You mentioned one that I
was not particularly aware of. It would be helpful if that were
drawn to our attention on a regular basis. Was the Scotland Office
aware of it?
Des Browne: I think it is known
publicly that MRSA infections in hospitals in England are down
in excess of 30%—I am not entirely sure what the figure
is. I know that C-difficile as it is known is going down by 23%
in English hospitals, and that has happened because of guidance
that was issued and other steps that were taken by the Department
of Health, and the process of deep cleaning—which was disparaged
to such a degree by people who did not know better.[5]
The only point I am making, from my observation of what is coming
to light in Scotland, is that these steps were not taken. I am
absolutely certain that the fact that these steps were being taken
must have been known to the family of the NHS both north and south
of the Border—that they were being taken in England. The
question, of course, that one needs to ask is why in policy terms
they were not followed in Scotland. If the consequences of not
doing that have been the sort of evidence we have seen emerging—I
have no idea whether those poor, unfortunate people who have been
infected and died would or would not have. What really disturbs
me, as a Scottish Member of Parliament, is that people were saying,
"We do not know the extent to which these infections were
present in totality in any individual hospital or health area,
whereas they do in England." That may well have been one
of the factors—and I suspect it was—for the ability
to drive these infections down.
Q29 Mr Davidson: To come back to the
point I asked: would it be possible for the Scotland Office, when
these points are drawn to your attention or you are made aware
of them, to let the Scottish Affairs Select Committee know that
there is that sort of comparison which has been made and drawn
to your attention—of which you are aware, and of which you
might not be aware—in order that we can communicate this
through our colleagues such as Angus, and in other ways, to make
these subsequent comparisons?
Des Browne: I chose that example
because I am aware of that from what is in the public domain.
I know both of these sets of facts and I just put them together.
I do not think we have a particular line of information that other
people do not have but I will look to see what we can do.[6]
Q30 David Mundell: On the whole Barnett
consequential issue, Secretary of State, there was an indication
that the Chancellor was to prepare a paper about the Barnett formula,
which you told me was for those people who were anoraks and already
knew about it. What is the current status of that paper? Will
it come in to the public domain? Will it deal with some of the
issues Mr Davidson is raising in terms of identifying issues that
have consequentials?
Des Browne: I do not think it
is intended to go into the detail of individual spending decisions,
and I have not seen a draft of it and so I do not know whether
it specifically goes on to the issue of Barnett consequential,
but I suspect it has to because it has to explain the Barnett
Formula. You asked this question I think in the last evidence
session when Kenneth Calman was here, and Jim Gallagher, the senior
official from the MoJ,[7]
told you summer time, and that is the answer I give you as well.
Q31 Chairman: What are your plans for
taking forward the recommendations of the Gould report and this
Committee's report on the 3 May 2007 elections? David, you are
very quiet!
David Cairns: The Secretary of
State has said it all so beautifully, there is very little I need
to add. As the Secretary of State said, he, in a written ministerial
statement, set out the Government's response to the issues that
Gould specifically asked us to address. This process has been
ongoing since the day we got the Gould report; the very next day
the Secretary of State made a statement to Parliament, saying
he was minded to accept five of the core recommendations of Gould,
which were: reversion to manual counts; separate ballot papers;
a six-month "no new legislation"; the lengthening of
the time between polling day and the close of nominations; and
consolidating the elections legislation into one statutory instrument.
That was on the very first day after we got the Gould report;
we were already indicating the way forward. He then set out a
number of areas where there was no evidence in the Gould report
that the voter had been consulted on some of these other important
issues. As I said, when I gave evidence to your inquiry into Gould,
at one and the same time we were criticised for not putting the
voter first; and then being asked to accept recommendations where
there was no evidence that the voter had been consulted on them.
That is why we launched a consultation process on the Web, writing
out to stakeholders—in a word, but you know what I mean.
Then I undertook a whole programme of meetings with all of the
main political parties in Scotland, with electoral administrators
and the Electoral Commission. Indeed, I appeared before your Committee
as well. When we got that information back from the parties, despite
the fact that I said to everybody I met, every political party,
every electoral administrator I met in the Electoral Commission,
"what we really need is to get beyond the usual circle and
find out what the ordinary voter thinks", it became obvious
that when we got everybody's response back, nobody had actually
asked any of the voters—none of the parties, none of the
electoral administrators or anybody else. It seemed to me that
we could not proceed on that basis alone, that we had to go further.
We then at that stage commissioned eight focus groups specifically
to look at all of these issues with ordinary voters, and that
is what was carried out. We are about to put the findings of these
focus groups into the Library of the House for the sake of completeness.
It was very important that we got beyond the usual suspects and
found out what the voters thought. Bringing all that together
in the written ministerial statement today and in our response,
which takes the written ministerial statement and amplifies it.
In essence, there was overwhelming support for the five core recommendations
I have already mentioned, so we are going to proceed with those.
There was overwhelming support, although we were not consulting
on it because it is not our decision, for decoupling the Scottish
Parliament and local government elections. That is an issue that
the Scottish Executive is currently consulting on, although I
think they are very minded to decouple and I think that is the
will of the Scottish Parliament. I am sure Mr Mundell will remind
us it was his idea first! That looks very likely to happen. Then
there is another tier of recommendations. There was no real evidence
the voters had been consulted on it. They were whether or not
to abandon the overnight count and have a next-day count; whether
to move away from alphabetised ballot papers and have randomised
ballot papers, whether to allow political parties to sloganise
on the ballot paper by putting party descriptors before their
party names. We consulted on that and on whether or not we should
have a chief returning officer and thereby effectively delegate
the conduct of elections in the sense of the administration of
elections and devolve those down. In relation to all of those,
we are not moving away from the overnight count. There was very
strong support for the overnight count—it was not unanimous,
but you will see from the focus groups it was the preferred option.
It was very much the preferred option of the political parties
as well, although the electoral administrators restated their
long-held position that they would rather have a next-day count.
We saw no evidence that the overnight count contributed in any
way at all to the problems that we experienced in May 2007, and
therefore we saw no reason to move away from the overnight count.
The focus groups and virtually everybody who responded, with one
or two exceptions, overwhelmingly opposed moving away from alphabetised
ballot papers to randomised ballot papers, so we are proposing
to stick with the alphabetised ballot papers. Again, what very
clearly came out of the focus groups and indeed virtually all
the political parties except one, surprisingly enough, was the
notion of having party descriptors ahead of the party name. Most
people thought that that was confusing and contributed to the
confusion; and therefore we are accepting both your recommendation
and Gould's recommendation in relation to that. Finally—I
am afraid it is a long answer, but it has been a long process—we
are minded to accept your recommendation made, as far as I can
see unanimously, by your Committee, that there is no case for
devolving the legislative competence for any elections to the
Scottish Parliament, so we accept your recommendation on that.
Q32 Chairman: I am glad you have
accepted our recommendation and proposal for management of elections
to the devolved administration. Do you accept that the Scotland
Office spends a lot of time in building consensus with the political
parties and during this process took bad advice and did not make
the distribution in time to prevent this disaster?
David Cairns: I think what I said
when I appeared before you and what we have said at every single
stage is that we were trying to take recommendations that were
being made to us, in this particular instance from the Arbuthnott
Commission, which commended to us having a single ballot paper,
which they thought would improve the standing of list MSPs in
a very complex electoral environment, and commended to us a particular
model. The Arbuthnott Commission was a serious group of people.
They spent a long time looking at this and they made a recommendation.
If we had not accepted the recommendation there would have been
criticism of us, so we did accept that recommendation. In order
to make it work, because it was a novelty, we undertook an enormous
amount of consultation but the fact that we were going to have
a single ballot paper was known long before the election, although
finalising the actual end design was something that, for a whole
variety of reasons that are outlined in detail in the Gould report,
came quite late in the day. That is why a very key recommendation
of Gould is not to have any novelty essentially six months before
an election. When you are dealing with fixed-term elections like
the Scottish Parliament elections it is relatively easy to do.
That is why that was one of the core recommendations the Secretary
of State accepted right from day one. We will accept that recommendation,
and that means the squeezing of decision-making to the end of
the process will not happen again.
Q33 Chairman: Obviously, you will
appreciate how disturbing it can be when a Committee member asked
Ron Gould if he believed anybody and everybody in the Scottish
Parliament deserves to be there, his answer was: "Frankly,
no." Obviously, this is very disturbing for the electorate
in Scotland.
David Cairns: It depends what
you mean by "deserves to be there". I have no reason
to question the validity of any election. It is open to any elector
to challenge any result in any constituency. There were no electoral
challenges, and I have no reason to believe that what happened
with around 4% of the ballot papers—and they were not all,
incidentally—
Q34 Chairman: I understand the spoiled
ballot papers were more than the majority of the people in those
constituencies.
David Cairns: I see no evidence
at all—and the majority of those spoiled ballot papers were
actually spoiled on the list side of it rather than the constituency
side of it. What tended to happen is that people tended to leave
the list side blank. Incidentally, in the London elections we
have just had there was a spoil rate, in the equivalence of what
we had of 4%, of 17% spoil rates for the second ballot for the
Mayor of London.
Q35 Chairman: That makes you happy
that you did well!
David Cairns: It does not make
me happy. It highlights the fact that a lot of people in London,
like myself, voted for one candidate of their choice and then
did not cast a second vote; so the spoil occurred in the second
vote for the Mayor. Stepping back from that—
Mr Devine: Thank God the press are away!
Q36 Mr Davidson: That is counted
as a spoiled paper.
David Cairns: That is exactly
right; it is counted as a spoiled paper. Even though it is a deliberate
choice, it is counted as a spoil. The point is, I do not think
there is any evidence to suggest—
Q37 Mr Davidson: The bendy buses
are still here.
David Cairns: The bendy buses
are still here, so I am regretting my vote!
Q38 Mr Davidson: Can I just say,
Chairman, how much I appreciate that Mr Cairns and Mr Browne support
continued alphabet-isation of the ballot paper! On the point about
voter registration that comes up in the report, you have not touched
on that and that is one of the areas where, clearly, there is
a great deal of anxiety that the electoral register is not up
to date and not being pursued sufficiently vigorously. It should
be a non-partisan issue and therefore to some extent it is neglected.
Can you tell us what steps have been taken to sort that out?
David Cairns: Under the current
dispensation we have given the joint valuation boards to do this
business in Scotland more directions and more powers and more
money to do this, and it is a matter of regret—and I have
said this on the floor in answer to questions—I think to
Chris Ruane—that I am very disappointed that registration
levels are not higher than they are. They should be higher than
they are. The one issue I neglected to mention in response, because
I was curtailing my otherwise very long answer, was on the issue
of the chief returning officer, because it does tie in with what
Mr Davidson was asking about. Mr Gould has got a very clear recommendation;
he wants to see a chief returning officer for Scotland. If that
is going to be meaningful in any sense, it has to be a chief returning
officer for all of the elections in Scotland—in the Scottish
Parliament elections, local council elections, the European elections
and the Westminster elections. In my view—and I speculated
on this as well when I was before your Committee of inquiry, and
I sought views on this issue—we still have a split in Scotland
that does not exist in England, between those who do the administering
of electors locally and those who do the maximising of the numbers
on the electoral register. I could see an advantage where you
had a more coherent system of a chief returning officer for everything
actually having staff throughout the local authority areas who
have responsibility for administration of the elections, and for
maximising the registration. At the moment the joint valuation
boards do other things. They are not primarily there to maximise
the electoral register. I have to say that in all the discussions
we have had there is nothing anywhere near a consensus on this
issue. The Electoral Commission is still consulting on whether
or not to have regional—which in Scotland would be a chief
returning officer in terms of Westminster elections. The Scottish
Executive has not even begun its consultation on a chief returning
officer for local government elections. Our consultation on the
chief returning officer for the Scottish Parliament elections
was inconclusive. If we are going to have one, it cannot be fragmented
and there cannot be four different people doing this job. That
would be hopeless. It has to be integrated. That is why we have
said in the written ministerial statement and in our reply to
your Committee that we want to move forward on this in partnership
with the Scottish Executive, with the Ministry of Justice and
with the Electoral Commission and the electoral administrators
themselves. All of that means that this new post will not be in
existence by 2011, very clearly. That actually then gives us a
bit of an opportunity to get it right without having to legislate
quickly in the run-up to 2011, which we do not want to do.
Q39 Mr Davidson: Was that a "yes"
then?
David Cairns: Your question did
not ask me for a "yes" or "no". It asked me
what I wanted to do to increase and maximise the register.
3 Pre-Budget Report Back
4
Ev 22 Back
5
Note by witness: The figure of a 23% decline in C-difficile
relates to the most vulnerable group aged 65 and over. Back
6
Ev 22 Back
7
Ministry of Justice Back
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