 Yn ddweud, wrth gwrs, ac wrth gwrs, wrth gwrs, rwy'n gweithio i'w eistedd y Prif Weinidog o'r eich Gwyrddol Llyfrgell yn 2017. Rwy'n gweithio i'r ddweud yn gweithio i'w ddweud i phoedd eich gwaith o'r ddweud, ac mae'r ddweud i'w ddweud i gael gweithno'r gweithio'r gweithio'r ddweud, mae'n gweithio i'w ddweud i'w gweithio'r gweithio, i gael gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio, Felly, I will move to agenda item 1. The committee is invited to agree to take agenda items 4 and 7 consideration of a draft report on payments to the family of the new officers and draft letters on the EU scrutiny in private. Are we all agreed? I agree. I will move to agenda item 2. Scottish local government elections and voting. A y gallwn y gafodg y sian iaith yr edrych yn ddiogel ein llinwyr o'ch tro teimlo i ddefnyddio'r llinwyr o'r lleidgau y Llyrgrifedd ym Llyrgan Yn cyntafol, gyda unrhywae'r llinwyr o'r llinwyr o'r lleif gyda'r llinwyr, ond mor iawn o'r lleidgau y Llyrgan Yn cyntafol a'r leif, ond mor iawn o'r lleidgau y Llyrgan Yn cyffredinol, roedd y Llyrgan Yn gyffredinol, Society Scotland, the Modern Studies Association Unison Scotland, Shelter Scotland, Meacop and Enable Scotland. So this morning, can I welcome Andy O'Neill, Head of the Electoral Commission Scotland, Alan Armstrong, Executive Director Education Scotland, Mary Pitt-Cathley, convener and Chris Highcock, Secretary Electoral Management Board for Scotland, Ian Milton, Grampian Electoral Registration Officer and Chair Electoral Registration Committee, Scottish Assessors Association. Thank you, everyone, for coming along this morning. No one has indicated that they wish to make an opening statement, but there's an offer there. I don't want to make any brief comments before we move to questions. Okay, well, let's move to questions, but maybe just start by saying that the committee is really keen to work in partnership with maximising voter turnout in this maze elections. It's been a perennial problem in how we incentivise and encourage and motivate individuals to register and to vote, particularly at council elections. If people do what we can as a committee to assist in that process, and hopefully this scrutiny session will be part of that. Can we go to the first question from Alexander Stewart MSP? Thank you, Kenawina. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Many individuals see voting as a must-do, but they seem to be of an older generation, where they are highly motivated to get out, and during the referendum there was a high motivation from across the piece as well. But when it comes to local government elections, we find ourselves slipping back normally. My question is, you know, it's the perennial one about younger voters. It's how you tackle that. And is there an awareness that is provided at college, at university, at workplaces to try and encourage younger people to become much more actively involved in the voting process? I think, sorry, I think I've got the main points of your question. I think you're probably right, I think the older you are, the more likely you're going to vote, and therefore the reverse of that is the younger you are, the less likely you're going to vote. Obviously it's very important to engage people in the democratic process. We spend a lot of time doing so. How you tackle voters in terms of our job under PEPERA, the Act recess of the Commission, and also the local electoral administration in Scotland in 2011, we have a duty to make people aware of forms of government, current forms of government, and also electoral systems, and that's what we do. It's down to you guys, as politicians, to incentivise them to go and vote for you. I think in general it's a trasm to say that if people think it's important they'll vote, and that's where you get 85, 84% in the independence referendum in 2014, and the last local government election was 39.8%, and obviously people are saying that as not as important, even though, of course, it is. We make sure that people have information easily accessible and understand how to register to vote, and also how to fill in ballot papers, and that in itself helps, I think, people to turn out. I think particularly with young people, and of course in the coming election, 16 and 17 year olds will vote for the first time. We've worked with educationists and other colleagues who will presumably talk about this. We've provided resources. We're not educationalists, we have no role in formal education, but we've obviously got a lot of expertise around elections, so we worked in partnership with colleagues to my left to develop a campaign, a toolkit, ready to vote, which we used in the Scottish Parliament election. We finished up with about 78% of all high schools throughout Scotland running registration drives within the school. We've revised and I think improved the campaign for this year. It's going to talk about registration, it also talks about how to vote, but it also talks about what councils do, there are little exercises people can use in classes and in various things, and it's not just for formal education, it's for other places. Miriam? In terms of your question around colleges and universities, I think you'd extend that to schools as well and other settings. If we start on that kind of move through education, the curriculum for excellence sets out for two broad areas, a broad general education from age three to 15, and then a senior phase with qualifications mainly. There are two distinct elements in this that promote political literacy, that help the context for the kind of activities that Andy outlined, the learning materials that can be shared. For children right the way from three to 18, the Scottish pupil that we wish right the way through education, we expect them to develop four major capacities to be successful learners, confident individuals, but also effective contributors and irresponsible citizens. Within that, there's an entitlement for all young people to be learning about the skills of political literacy, how to debate, how to understand, have empathy with others, listen to decisions around about them, take part in decisions, have their own personal voice in these, and that then gives opportunity for teachers to run mock elections, to elect for prefects or young people in primary schools to take responsibilities in the playground or at lunchtime etc. So that should be embedded and is embedded right the way from three to 18. Then distinctly you have a curriculum area around about social studies, and the social studies area is set for all children between the age of three to 15, and within social studies you have very particular outcomes for children there, and that helps them again in terms of understanding their society, understanding the place and the environment and how decisions are made, economy and business in the local community and across the world. So children then will then progressively through that. In the qualification phase, the natural history, geography and modern studies all this is embedded within there. For young people who are not studying these particular subjects, then that generic involvement of young people in developing their capacities is still available in schools, and that then allows senior pupils often to help younger pupils both in primary and in secondary schools. Colleges you have your student council, who very often I know from first hand evidence that I've seen, who promote either mock elections obviously for their own thing but also when elections, big elections, national elections come along to do that as well. I expect although I don't know that universities do something similar. Yes and I think that perhaps we did step up our game a bit at the time of the referendum, planning for the referendum because that was the first time that 16 and 17 year olds had the vote, so we I think recognised as local authorities that we had a captive audience if you like, that we could reach our 15, 16 and 17 year olds fairly easily and so we were quite happy at that stage to take on the responsibility of trying to encourage them to register and then to vote and I think that whole issue of they have to understand the importance of registration before they can think about who or what they might vote. So I think it's probably fair to say that a few years ago mainly pupils would find out about democracy and voting systems through modern studies. That's significantly different these days and I think it would be seen as a whole school effort, it would be something that would be covered for all pupils, not just those who choose to take that as a subject choice and it starts very early, it starts in primary schools and it goes right through as my colleague has said in the secondary sector as well. There are particular events that help to focus everybody's attention on that so there's a registration day on the 1st of March and one of the things that I've been asking my colleagues as chief executives rather than as returning officers but as chief executives is to go back to their council and contact all of their secondary heads directly to encourage them to take part in that day on the 1st of March to encourage registration. When pupils aren't entirely focused on issues around exams for example it's a fairly helpful time to be doing something like that. Get the pupils registered, that's the most important first step towards encouraging them to actually go out and vote. I think in the written evidence that the EMB has submitted to the committee as well we give a sample of various activities that are undertaken across Scotland particularly around young people. I'd also say it's not a uniform group of people and just think of young people. There are particular initiatives for example and in Mary's council looked after children particularly hard to reach sectors of the community which need to be focused on particularly so definitely a point to some of the examples we've got there in the evidence around mock elections, around direct work with schools, around looked after children, other people that the social worker services are in touch with and the way in which the schools lists are taken by the ERO is now right heart directly. Yes absolutely, I mean Mary used the term captive audience and the reduction in the franchise age gave electoral registration officers a superb opportunity because it meant that we could actually start to engage with young citizens age 14 upwards before they moved into that slightly more mobile and dynamic stage in their life when they maybe leave their secondary education and move on into employment or other education or else take a year out or something like that. So actually capturing the captive audience while they're still in a relatively stable sort of residence situation and attending education through secondary schools was an ideal opportunity and that's one that we've not been slow to pick up on so for example registration officers will take lists from all the schools and also from colleges and universities as well of students there and we work through those to actually register to vote now members will be aware that we've got an individual electoral registration program now that means that there's identity verification now for under 16s sorry the identification relies on date of birth and national insurance number for under 16s there are no national insurance numbers so but the 2015 reduction of voting age act for Scottish elections allowed registration officers to use education records so that gave us a great opportunity to get that information in and use it so we take the school lists we check that against anybody who you know who has already registered made sure that we're not approaching people have already registered but if they haven't registered we will then write to them individually and invite them to register now not all of those students will want to register but certainly they get the opportunity to do so and they get that opportunity when they're 15 years old are there abouts and to tie in with that picking up on Mary's point about writing to the chief executives and that letter just went out at the end of the year as a heads up for the work that we're going to be doing in March registration officers are also approaching their education services and their schools to offer training for the principal teachers involved so that they can make sure the teachers have the materials and then the teachers who are experts at teaching can use that material and make sure that the message is out there encouraged by the response that received because it does show that you're focusing in and you're trying to broaden the horizons and capture that market which we all know we need to try and engage and as you said already if they are interested and if they are active they will become much more participative and that's what we want them to do so thank you convener okay thank you some supplementary something that rysle agwire thank you convener good morning panel um i welcome all the evidence that you provided on the different things that were going on and i recognise um some of the work that was done in my own area in North Ayrshire by schools and youth workers and indeed the college i just wonder if we can learn any lessons from that real proactive work and the different sort of initiatives with other communities or groups of voters that are maybe not particularly franchised i know that we've heard that folk in the private rented sector homeless people certain ethnic communities are quite hard to reach can we can we learn any lessons from the things we're doing well with young people things that we've reflected on is trying to speak to people at an appropriate time for them so as i mentioned before avoiding exam time well you can't shift the date of elections an election in may is around the time of of exams normally either for senior pupils or for university or college students but they have to get the important bits like registration out of the way first before they get busy on that because it's about relative priorities i think so it would be exactly the same for those other hard to reach groups they have to they have to make a decision for themselves that it is a priority for them with all the other issues that they may be struggling with in terms of housing or jobs or surviving financially they have to make a decision that it's important that they register and then that they make time on the day to go and vote or that they make time to get a postal vote and they have somewhere where that can go so i think just recognising that because it's a priority for us because we are steeped in it and you're you're exactly the same it's not necessarily got the similar priority for some other groups so trying to speak to them about why it's important and about how easy it can be because sometimes people have misunderstandings about how difficult it is to vote and they think it's they require ID cards or whatever you know so that there can be issues that make them disinclined to even engage in a discussion about it so it's it's for me it's about relative priorities they have to they have to think that for them that's an important thing for them to engage with i think one of the lessons as well as picking appropriate channels of communication and they won't always be the same for all these different distinct communities um we'd we work close with schools directly through teachers and through the curriculum and elsewhere that way but there's also ways of going through social media which can be appropriate to a much broader level one of the areas um it's often underrepresented is home movers or private rented sector and i know in some areas they'll work directly on websites that serve um that show rented accommodation so there'll be an advert prior to registration to say um this is the key registration dates when people looking for houses there that's a message that comes up some of the arrows will also write to home movers so when when they register a new address they'll they'll get the list of people that have moved and write directly to them yes if i may just pick up on that point i mean timing uh is a key issue now um you know we've moved from a an era when electoral registers were drawn at once a year and that was and that was that to a very dynamic situation i mean registers do change dramatically throughout the year it's online registration and people now we live in very much a sort of last minute sort of or just in time sort of existence i think quite a few of us might and certainly the elector is no different and so it's only for some hard to reach groups it's only at that point when the election is called that they start to think about wanting to vote and registering to vote um at the same time we're doing some work um for example just now we're working with Tennessee deposit scheme operators uh because they obviously um give us a a good uh hand into the private rented market uh so we're doing some research with them just now uh into whether we can use their information to actually identify potential actors because my view is uh as a registration officer that the more that we we more data that we can use to identify people who aren't registered but could be then and approach them direct the more likely we're going to have success rather than sort of the broad brush annual canvas approach so we're doing some work with Tennessee deposit scheme operators just now some research on how useful that data is to identify potential actors but we're also um looking at using their um their media with their contact with the tenant or new tenant because their contact will be when a tenant is just moved in to highlight the fact that this is how you can get registered to vote so there's a two pronged approach there and that sort of that is the line that I see registration developing and you know you want to tell me some of that I think you're right I think the lesson from the education campaign is learning to work with partners and working in an appropriate way and we spent a lot of time uh dealing with partners because well whilst we can do that kind of high level tv radio ads leaflets through your door the connections through various community groups is very successful for us and we found out over the years and we spent we spent a number of hours in the autumn of every year engaging with potential partners who we can work with in the lead up to the to the election and we go out and talk to them and find out what they want and find out how they want it because given them dusty dry information about electoral registration or how to fill in the ballot paper whatever is fine for someone like me but obviously it depends what your clients or your customers so we try and source it and write it in the right way we will in the next week produce a resources pack for these customers or our partners rather which will have kind of improper information and it will have posters and pop-up banners for websites and it will have suggested social media informatics and tweets and we'll do pr with them and we work with partners across all the sectors we work with young people, care organisations, bme, care disability, renters and movers and all all the things you can possibly probably think of and particularly things like for homeless people we've worked with shelter in the past and provided information and worked with them in a pr sense and also we work with the Scottish Association of Landlords to get into the private rented sector because the private rent sector is an area where we know lots of people aren't registered and don't take part in democracy. At the national level as well I think we recognise the strength of community learning development practitioners in engaging daily with people who are often in the margins of society so we've worked with Edinburgh University and Learning Link which is the umbrella organisation for all voluntary organisations working with adults and vulnerable adults in Scotland. We've worked with them to develop some support materials for the practitioners in their work in engaging directly with vulnerable adults and we've helped to develop materials for their national website for their hub so alongside the adult learning we've also worked with young scott and youth link from the youth sector to again mirror that kind of reach to as many young people as we can. Just thanks for those answers just briefly convener. Mr Neil the materials and the sort of packs you're talking about producing are these provided in different languages and in accessible formats and yes good okay. Small pop one are two things that Ian Milton was very interested to hear that you're talking about working with landlords that one of the key things that every registered landlord has to do is provide a tenant information pack by law or they can't be registered a landlord is the relevant voter registration forum required to be in that tenant information pack. Well the we could put a voter registration form into that information pack but we've been more inclined to give the web address gov.uk registered to vote because that's the way that many people will now interact as much the majority of people will interact but we can also provide contact details as well so that and that's what we're looking at with the tenancy deposit scheme operators of making sure that these sort of signposts are there and the question then of course is is the new tenant who's just moved into their house and very keen to get their you know their utilities sorted out and their broadband and all that are they going to see registration to vote as another important task to do or is the timing issue going to kick in and they will only turn to that when an event an electoral event is approaching. We'll take all that as a given you make some very good points Mr Milton I suppose I'm making the point that if there's a tenant information pack which will tell you where your deposits held will tell you electoral safety it will tell you gas safety it will give you an inventory of all the cup saucers of its furnished accommodation whatever in the house that one piece of paper in there that signposts people to whether it's social media or a council website that could be in the tenant information pack. Now how prescriptive is that what I mean is is it in the gift of local authorities to decide what is what obligations are on landlords to put in those packs or does it have to be described in guidance from this place? I couldn't say what the rules are for local authorities you know dictating what goes into a tenancy information pack but from a registration officer viewpoint there's no prescription as such it's a case of that we will work with as many partner bodies as we can to get that message across that that's the website to go to gov.uk register to vote and or else you're locally arrow if you if you don't have online capability that's helpful that's maybe one dose of allot also Andy you mentioned back to Ruth Leguire about the potential partners you work with and the resources that are produced the initial question from Alexander Stewart was in relation to schools and young people and the written evidence did seem to be top heavy in relation to schools and I get that and understand that and those are key partners for young people but if I was to look at the young people in my constitution that are perhaps least likely to vote or whose parents might be least likely to vote they'd also put the least likely to engage at a school level with all of that stuff as well but they are more likely to engage with the local dance class instructor and the local judo instructor and the local football coach and you can go through that list so how coordinated initiative is that across the places where young people actually want to hang out and I say this as a former teacher and actually perhaps give a credence and a validity to an adult peer who are saying to them it's really important to register to vote so what work goes on in a structured fashion with the the amazing youth groups that exist right across the country just wondering if anyone could pick up at Marybeth Cathleen. I think a lot of that would be led by colleagues in community learning and development across councils and I think they take that responsibility very seriously from what I can see and are coordinated in their own efforts in youth clubs etc to try and ensure that people have an understanding of what is required to be an active citizen so that would very much be led there but I have to say there are things that you know for example in the youth club there may not be much in the way of time to sit and actually get the red you know make your registration you might not know your national insurance number off hand whatever so one of the things that we do in many schools is actually have a desk with a with somebody from the ERO usually just outside the dinner hall which is where you capture most most pupils and that would be where they would be on a certain day or on a certain week able to actually register because it's one thing to engage them in some out-of-school sports club or whatever but actually turning that into a positive decision to register and then further down the line to vote is something that requires a wee bit you know they actually have to take some positive steps to do something they have to get their A9 number they have to complete the form so you know there's there's a it's a combination of efforts I think it's about raising awareness in some places and then actually about turning that into positive action to register and then to vote so is there a structured andi real take in a second is there I mean I agree maybe a case like schools is the most obvious place to do it you've got skilled staff you've got your client groups there you know there's lots of opportunities to work with them lots of experience and get all that it's about getting sometimes the parts that are hardest to reach even after they're registered to vote and using our youth sector out there to do some of that work is there a structured approach to that or is it an informal approach andi andi oh I don't know if you could help I mean to add to what Mary said I mean how we tackle it obviously we work with the councils as councils and provide information and such and I mentioned earlier our partnership attempts to engage with people and over the years we've worked with boys brigade we've worked with the scout movement and such like but we also work with young scott and youth link scotland and scott youth parliament and we do a lot of social media we provide information so they can use them in social media campaigns so in that sense we engage with people who may be disengaged through the through social media there's clearly tremendous work on going this is not a criticism of the existing work this is trying to give added value so that more people register and more people will maybe continue with the line of questioning when my colleagues in because I'm trying to get to a point where if you look at voter turnout so moving away slightly from young people voter turnout if you look at the 2012 elections I looked at just just for Glasgow and I could see in parts of my constituency about 27% were were voting in the in the council elections but if you were Gerskad in the scots and ellips 39% still quite a poor turnout but significantly higher than the area I represent if you look at the Scottish referendum on independence eye watering turnout levels but in East Renfrewshire and Eastern Bartonshire 91% turnouts in Glasgow 75% of course that seems fantastic for Glasgow it's way behind what those other local authorities are doing and if you look at the breakfast referendum the pattern continues so East Renfrewshire 76% Eastern Bartonshire 75% Glasgow 56.3% and what I'm driving at is extending from young people voting becomes a habit and a culture and a pattern for individuals and for families there are certain parts of the country where that happens a lot less and there's geographical inequality and I'm just wondering in terms of the work that all the partners around this table does do you drill down on that geographical inequality and do you target resources at the schools in those areas and the groups in those areas and do you set any targets to address that inequality so for example in 10 years time well we have failed well well you have failed if we haven't narrowed that inequality I'm just wondering how how we deal with that and how we tackle that as a registration officer the first step of course is you know to make sure that everybody can possibly be registered is registered and and of course the most successful you are at registering and arguably your turnout might actually go down in terms of you know how the figures look but the in terms of targeting resources at the last last year when we were looking at educational authorities and looking at schools we were signing up to the electoral commission campaign eros were feeding back information to the local schools as to whether their level of registration was high or whether it was low so we could actually step on resources in areas where there wasn't the same sort of level of response to a campaign so that was one area where resource allocation could be fine tuned. Can I just check today then the allocation of resources going forward will you will your organisation and the partner organisations use recent voter turnout and voter registration patterns to target parts of the country that need more assistance will they get additional resources? As a registration officer I'm employed by Murray Aberdeenshire in Aberdeen City so my resources are based in the north east of Scotland but what I will do is I will identify areas where my registration levels aren't as high as they should be and we'll put either extra canvas material in there or contact if it's a and if it's if it's for example one or two schools that are not maybe signing up to the electoral commission campaign then I will be aware of that and I can speak to the education service I can speak to the heads I can speak to the principal teachers and to try and redress that and to try and ensure that across the grampion areas a whole we have as high a level as registration is possible. I would like other witnesses to comment but I don't want to ask another question after this I want my colleagues to come in so I just want to make the final point and that any additional resources no harm to my colleagues that represent East Redfordshire and Easton Bartonshire of course they're calling for resources in the areas but if you're a youth worker or you're in a school or you're a stakeholder organisation in those areas and you're looking at 91% voting in the independence referendum and you're in Glasgow or other parts of western Scotland and you're getting 75% you say what's been done to address the inequality so I suppose that's the question what's been done to address the inequalities and for most of us within the system we have a geographical base as well so just like Ian I am only interested in and can only operate within my council area which is where I would be looking for evidence of a particular school not being engaged or a particular area not having an active youth sector where you know there there could be more effort made there aren't resources to pull off the shelf there's nothing that we can you know just just add to what we have so it's about allocating the resource we have as fairly as possible and trying to address any gaps and maybe the national or the organisations operate at a national level are better pleased to answer but what I could say is that there are relative priorities in each area and many many factors that make a difference to whether people choose to register and then choose to vote I mean I would imagine that in Glasgow well in fact I know that in Glasgow there was a tremendous effort made to get as many people as possible to get over perhaps a natural cynicism about the issue of registration where there were concerns as I understand that even still now about registering makes you much more likely to be chased up for debts or whatever you know so that that's a legacy issue from way back in the poll tax days but you know that had to be overcome now I know every time I go into a Glasgow City Council building I will see a sign somewhere normally next to the lift which says don't be worried about registration it's not about chasing you may you address that head on and I thought that was fantastic because it is actually going to deal with people's unspoken concerns about that and and it was a tremendous effort to get their figures up to 75% that was not as good as the knee strength ratio but for Glasgow these were really healthy figures keeping it at that level is the challenge I suppose because then we're back to well do people think the council election is as important as the independence referendum clearly not but that's not just an issue for those areas that's an issue across the country okay and you know do you want to add from a resources point of view a lot of what we do is for all voters the national tv campaign the household leaflet all that sorts of everyone gets it we can't would agree target resources to certain sectors so in terms of radioadverts we can advertise on channels which are listened to for say by bma groups by young people more as you can do that but the way we try and target resources is we provide resources to others who would then use them so we work through the partnership programme to do that rather than doing it ourselves okay Alan Armstrong yeah and just to finish off to reinforce I think that connectivity across at the national organizations there then that sharing of information is important just about where registration is picking up well where it's not and certainly chief executives would do that on a geographical basis education Scotland can also do that with the connections we have with local authorities so I think that drive to encourage everybody to to pick up that register of voting is strong across the national partner okay maybe do you want to add anything just to say I mean you know we don't just write to the head teachers about this I mean I did speak to CLD about it in my area and I did speak to social work about it because the children and family social work teams have most contact for example with looked after children and that they prioritized that and made it the focus of a couple of sessions that they had with looked after children and I was really grateful for that because there are lots of issues that they would want to be focusing on and I thought it was great that at least a couple of sessions were very specifically about trying to encourage those young people to get into the habit of registering to vote and voting that's actually helpful we'll move on from that thank you to my colleagues for their patience on this board that line of questioning Elaine Smith thank you thank you convener um yeah my colleagues have actually explored a number of the issues I was keen to explore so I think you've addressed those particularly Mr Inule um letting us know that you do engage with girls were gay boys were gay scouts guides etc because I think that's important to get outside the sort of formal school setting as well as to be in there um it was something I want to pick up specifically something Mary Pitcaithley touched on and it was about national students numbers for young people um when the national students numbers are issued is there any way of issuing voter registration papers or is it can that be done is it done I wouldn't know but I don't think so based on my own experience of a youngster receiving their national insurance number I think they only get that from whoever it is in government who issues national students numbers I think it's the DWP that issue national insurance numbers and they're issued at age I think 15 and three quarters or thereabouts and so this is a UK government responsibility as far as I understand it and the position is that we're working with the government digital service when I say we I mean electoral registration officers across not only Scotland but the rest of GB to ensure that the government digital service that we hosts the registration website is is properly signposted and we're looking at that sort of now messaging going out on national documentation across GB as a whole because Northern Ireland has dealt with slightly separately so that sort of line is being developed I can't say when and how it'll be delivered but that sort of line is definitely being developed it's just same to me that young people are quite interested in getting their national insurance numbers at that stage so it may have been something can I I suppose listening to all of the the evidence we've had previously and the evidence today the crux of the matter seems to be that people won't vote if they don't understand why it's important to them and how it affects their lives and how do you all feel about different ways of voting electronic voting how do you feel about compulsory voting I think electronic voting will be inevitable at some stage but there are so many issues around integrity and security that those need to be ironed out before everybody including the older generation perhaps would be confident with that but undoubtedly younger people are so much more used to doing everything electronically and find it quite difficult to understand why they can vote for so many things x-factor whatever but they can't vote for the local councillor using their smartphone so there will be increasing pressure from people who you know just don't don't see what the problem is and so the so the challenge for all of us and I know the electoral commission is is very heavily involved in discussing this with the speakers committee in the UK parliament and and with yourselves the challenge is about how people can become comfortable with that as a way of voting for elected representatives in a way that the you know there's there's no concerns about integrity no concerns about security now you know what happens around the world influences how we think about these sorts of things so current challenges about hacking of voting systems and counting systems do give us all some concern I think I think we'd also know that there are different ways of voting at the moment as well as turning up a polling station people can vote by post or they can appoint a proxy to vote on their behalf and there's lesson to learn from that I think about the accessibility that brings but also the integrity challenges that go along with it when that could I just raise a specific point convener rather than raising it later yes and you know I wanted to respond on some of that and then we'll think of a specific point of that to your earlier question mrs smith I mean obviously we've looked at various ways of voting over the years commission has always kind of supported a suite of mechanisms whereby you can vote to reflect modern society and people's lives and making it easier and as Chris said yeah postal voting is very popular 18% of people in Scotland are now registered to vote proxy vote unless so we are currently going through a strategic review as the commission itself and one of the things we're beginning to look at is if you did look at e voting at some point in the future what would you need to put in place to do that and I think that will will will be discussed and go on in the future but there's also other things which you could look at for instance early voting we've just went through a kind of presidential election in the United States 35 states in America vote early in several places there are polling stations open for weeks on end some just a few days before so there are things which you you have to look at in the long term and things you could actually do quite quickly which the committee could look at very quick point and it was picking up the last party question which was about compulsory voting and that would of course be a sea change in the relationship between citizen and state but as a registration officer I would see that might have a negative impact on you know my relationship we're trying to make sure that we maximise registration we might find this a larger group of the citizenship who do not want to engage to avoid potential you know fines or whatever against them. Thanks thank you very much convener I mean that's interesting and I think it is a debate we should be opening up my having and listening to your views on. I wanted to specifically ask about proxy voting because probably it's less less popular or necessary given that we now have postal voting that people can apply for if they wish rather than having specific reasons but it still does matter to some people and I think particularly perhaps to the group that Alexander Stewart mentioned at the beginning of older people who think it's a duty to vote and like to go and cast their vote at the polling station and for those people if they are taken ill and have to get an emergency proxy vote and maybe this is something for Mr Daniel's review as well I think that there I've had examples of where doctors for example are loath to sign papers which means people are being disenfranchised or they're charging at for example like the charge for a passport to give the information for people to to be able to get an emergency proxy vote because they've been taken ill and I just think that's something that needs addressed because it's quite serious if if that's the case then people are being disenfranchised because of a GP for example not not wishing to sign a form or looking for payment to sign it. I mean you're quite correct proxy voting isn't as popular I mean postal voting on demand started in 2000 since I became an ERO in 2009 the number of postal voters in Grampian has risen from 45,000 to 92,000 against an electoral 442,000 it's just over 20% proxy voting a standing list proxy voters in Grampian is currently under a thousand so it's less than 1% so proxy voting isn't as popular and one of the reasons I suppose is that you lose the secrecy element of the ballot in that you have to advise your proxy how they wish to vote on your behalf in relation to elderly people or people who may be not necessarily elderly but just can't get to the polling station and find that that happens in an emergency situation it happens after the sixth day before the election so they haven't they've missed the opportunity to apply for postal vote they've missed the opportunity to apply for a normal proxy vote and they now have to get a supported proxy vote in an emergency proxy and that has to be tested by as you say a health professional it doesn't have to be a GP there's a whole list of people who can attest an application and it can also include a care manager so if somebody's admitted at short notice to a care home and because of some disability that means that they can't go to the polling station then the care home manager is qualified to actually support the application as for the charging I can't speak about that but as a registration officer I can say that has not been raised with me by proxy voters or people wishing to vote by proxy with me in any election that I've been involved in okay and you know what you want to add to that ojin point this has come up occasional periodically our understanding is the contracts for gps and surgeries and doctors employed through health boards don't allow them to charge for signing emergency proxies so if anyone is they shouldn't be but it's it's certainly in the contract that in terms of conditions of service that they they can't do that I just wonder then if perhaps more information around that issue and to care managers etc do the people that can sign know they can sign and do they know they shouldn't be charging for it i think it's an important point may not affect a lot of people but for those it does affect it's important to them if I may just pick up a point on that the care inspectorate have included in their performance regime for care management of care establishments following discussions with registration officers and other stakeholders the requirement to support registration and participation is included in their performance standards for care managers and the other thing that I would say is that I think particularly elderly people may find themselves in a situation where they don't have a proxy who stays nearby their family have maybe moved to another part of Scotland or elsewhere in in Britain or even overseas and one thing that we're trying to promote is the fact that you can appoint a proxy a family member and that proxy can actually vote by post that isn't in an emergency situation that is in an established situation where somebody is unable to go to the polling station Andy Wightman yeah we you can take a host of water but you can't make it drink and one of our concerns obviously is turnout and we are aware that you're responsible for primarily awareness from registration etc so on the question of registration I mean any one point in time there are x number of people who are eligible to be on the electoral roll do you have any sense and you have y number who actually are do you have any sense of whether the total potential electorate is the not the proportion of the total eligible electorate that's registered is rising or not and is staying on the electoral roll longer and the the electorate certainly if I speak for grand piano the electorate in grand piano is rising year on year but that could be just moving to people there's no acid test as to you know on a particular date how many people are resident in grand piano and entitled to be registered because not everybody's entitled to be registered against what the register stands the most complete sort of audit is actually the canvas that we do in the autumn of each year and that is used to then inform national records to produce population estimates that are then compared back to registers so it's a bit of a circular route but I can say for example that we take information from three local authorities that I work with for council taxpayer information and if we check that against the register and if we find that we don't have a particular council taxpayer as registered to vote then we will approach that council taxpayer and write out to them and currently we're writing out to we've identified currently in our system about 15 000 potential electors and that's part of the churn of the system there will always be that sort of number of people who were writing out and encouraging to register to vote particularly at the end of a household canvas which has been a refresh of the householder occupancy information on our system but not necessarily household registered you want to add to that I think in general the electorate number in Scotland is rising the figures I've got from 2010 we had about 3.8 million on the register and we've currently got uh or that the Scottish Parliament election we had 4.1 million uh we had a high point of 4.2 at the Scottish independence referendum uh as to who's not on the register at any one time it's very difficult to come up with an accurate today we have that on the register in fact it's impossible to do that we think it varies around about 8 to 15% in Scotland throughout the year and it will depend on who's moved house who's died and such like and people when they tend to move house even with online registration will tend to wait till the canvas period to go back on so we used to talk about our kind of 1% irrigation of the register every month so it's quite difficult but if you if as a guestimate you can say maximum 18 15% something like that not on the register in terms of electoral registration you see as your obligation to get 100% if you can yes we're we're obliged to identify potential electors and we're obliged to engage with them so you know that's what we do whether they engage with us of course is the moot point okay and on the question of turnout i mean i realises is really strictly speaking not your responsibilities but do any of you have any observations having been engaged with the job of electoral administration on why we have a historic low now for local elections since 1974 of 39.8% academic research would suggest that it is about the extent to which voters think they're vote matters so i think that the institution they're voting for matters i think that they're vote for that institution will matter and will make a difference or i think that um the perhaps you know it's it's all pretty pointless because for example i think some of the research showed that if if local authorities had no powers to raise council tax for example then what was the point of voting for them now i don't know exactly what impact that would have on turnout but there would seem to be some suggestion that there has been some impact now we'll see if you know having having those powers restored will that make a difference to turn out in may of this year well we'll have to wait and see but there are so many factors that apply i mean you know as a returning officer i'm always incredibly aware of how much the weather can make a difference on the day you know if it's absolutely chucking it down or it's a it's a horribly cold day particularly for by elections we see that you know that that can have a huge impact just on on the turnout for the 80% that aren't entitled or or haven't chosen to vote by post so there's all sorts of things and you know the the um the responsibility that um prospective candidates and candidates have to engage with the electorate you know the number of times i hear people saying and it's very anecdotal now but the number of times i hear people saying maybe you're the same i never even got a leaflet this time round so why should i bother you know so there is a there's a huge um there's a really interesting research to be done i'm sure about why people decide on the day not to bother voting and why in converse they do go out and vote question of views on on on voter turnout in the pattern in recent years he's right i think there's huge numbers of reasons why people don't engage one of which is doesn't matter obviously in the independence referendum everyone felt it did and some people don't think it does in local government elections tight elections always create higher turnout as you probably know because you're old politicians so there are a number of places red scotland which are going to be very hotly contested so hopefully that will help i think from the commission's point of view i think also there is a barrier to lack of knowledge of what happens in the polling place literally the process of voting that can stop people voting and particularly with stv uh how to vote is very important and we're spending a lot of time ensuring that people understand how to rank their choices if you look at the academic studies back in er s did some studies in 2007 20% of the electorate only expressed a single preference that now that went down to 13% in 2012 from a study which john curtis did now obviously we also see because we're in the count centres and and you yourselves as well a lot of single xs on bala papers that is presumably people not understanding that you use numbers and you can rank more than one preference so that's why we think in the coming months how to vote is important because if you if you understand how to vote and how to vote with confidence that's a barrier which will is gone and that might engage you with the system and you might vote okay um Graham Simpson it kind of follows on from that um we've we've taken evidence and mary pickately you you touched on this that if people feel there's little point in voting in in council elections they won't vote um but you mary know very well how important councils are and the range of jobs that they do um is there any sort of general education going out to voters who are not just young people but voters in general uh about the importance of councils and why it's important to vote in those elections i mean i can point to the the work that cosla is doing just to raise awareness of what councils do and the importance of councils and their place in the in the governance of scotland and i think some of that work is really very impressive and hopefully will will will bear fruit and individual councils will engage with their local media about what it is you know they do and what the issues are and why some of these issues are you know very very important to individuals and to communities so um it's a combination of effort of individual councils and what cosla might do and what in fact um you know media itself chooses to do to highlight some of these issues that would encourage people to to see these elections as important the electoral community in scotland comes together several times a year to plan out activities we had a seminar in glasgo last week um return officers, election registration officers all in one room they're looking at a lot of issues around the delivery elections this year i met a very very helpful presentation from the natural commission on the public awareness activity that they're undertaking that we all work in partnership with and one of the things we took away from that back to our own councils was something that commission is is planning to lead on about the on your doorstep campaign about the role of of councils as that people understand the role that councils play in their lives and to try and build on that to develop that appreciation as more as much as i think and we shared with everybody a link to the work that the improvement service and cosla have done jointly to to provide online materials some of this is targeted at helping with the induction of new councillors after the election but it's also very important i think that we use as much of that as possible to just broaden public awareness of what you know and maybe even encourage people to to stand as as a local councillor as well so you know there's a there's quite a lot of material out there we just need to make sure we use it time for a quick question it's quite a technical question this um i think ian milton you um mentioned that you cross check voter registrations with council tax records a question is this is it technically possible for somebody to be registered in two places at the same time for for example so maybe a student who might have an address with with their parents and they've moved away they've gone to a different council area um or somebody could pay council tax in two council areas is is is it technically possible it might not be legal but can it be done yes it's it's not only possible but it is legal as well depending on the circumstances you mentioned students in particular and they are one of a fairly unique group of citizenship who are legally entitled if they are still resident at their let's call it their family home when they're not at their term time address which might be a whole of residence or something they are entitled to be registered in both locations but they're not entitled they're only entitled to vote in any one election once it's interesting though because student registration has been an issue that's cropped up with the introduction of individual electoral registration and there's been a perception that student registration or there's a lot of students who haven't registered to vote it's correct that a lot of students haven't registered to vote now it's an individual responsibility of them to do so at their term time address but when you speak to the students if you visit universities and colleges like I've done and speak to them and ask them why why aren't they registered because we can check on you know we take in their secure laptop and check there check there whether they are registered and they say I don't want to register at my term time address I'm registered at home and that's where I intend to vote either by postal or proxy or in fact just by attending and it seems to me that students in particular a large number of them I'm not saying a majority but a large number of them prefer to vote at their not at their term time address their home address but you are so there are occasions when you can have two registrations but it really your registration depends on residence you have to be resident now technically speaking if you are resident in two locations uh then there is a potential for you to be able to be registered in two locations very interesting I didn't I didn't realise that so so if you so you could have two voting papers in two different areas what what what what checks are being done to make sure you don't use them both it's a water's responsibility to not use more than one vote to not vote more than once but if we got well if we got evidence of somebody having voted twice we would pass that on to the police yes um this seems to have inspired a supplementary from from from msp's uh wrist me go ahead I suppose that the convener the question is obviously you're marking the registers in in the different places but unless somebody reported that there would be no way of knowing is that is that the what you're saying I wouldn't know if the Ruth Maguire that was on my register was the same Ruth Maguire that was on the register in Grampian for example definitely I get back okay are we leaving that line of question hanging or do you want to fall up any of it Ruth Maguire yes okay would there be any way of checking or is it a very and I think I probably know the answer to this one is it a very comfort obviously it's all done manually so it's quite a you know how would there be a way of checking mark registers which are available to view after the event so people know you live in two places and uh uh you have two votes uh I have to say it would depend on which election you were voting in in two council elections you could vote in both in the Scottish Parliament election you couldn't you'd only have to vote once and I know of at least one instance where that happens uh the I think you I don't have any you want to talk about uh when people move from one area to another there is a conversation between uh colleague Earo's so there are checks which I don't think Ian would want to go into too much uh to ensure that uh integrity issues don't arise I think you have to see as well there's very little evidence of electoral fraud taking place in Scotland and where it does it is literally individual instances there is no there's no cases of organized electoral fraud which have taken place in Scotland in the recent past yes I would just say that in the the the law in Scotland is substantive residence so uh you know you really have to be substantively resident in two locations which doesn't happen very often apart from the students and when people apply to register to vote they're required to give their former address uh and what happens then is that the ero who has the has a notice that somebody has applied to register in their area will advise the ero of the of the former area that they have applied and they should be removed from their register so it's it's quite straightforward it can take a um each register is updated on a monthly basis during the outside canvas period so uh there can be a lag of a month but we certainly make sure that we're advised of any um you know registrations that have happened with people moving in and out of area and there is an awful lot of churning registers as I said it's a very dynamic situation these days do any of our msp calls to explore this wish to add anything further at this point there's a couple of brief supplementaries before we close the evidence session the first one I'm indulging is for myself I wanted to mention marked up registers it was back to my initial question about about targeting um we know which households vote which households don't vote politicians frequently use a marked up register for those listening that don't what don't know the marked up register as you can identify which households have voted in the last five six elections in which households have never voted and politicians are fortunate and most of them will make a judgment call at the ones that are habitual non-voters probably won't vote in the following election and they may be less likely to knock at their door from a political party because even when they tell you they're likely to vote for you they probably won't vote and that's the science of politics unfortunately but the point I would make is we know which households habitually don't vote and that's their right of course but if we wanted to target the households in a positive constructive motivational way because when we check their door we just want their votes whereas you would just want them to vote irrespective of who they cast their vote for is that marked up register information ever used to target and encourage those households we've got so much information out there I'm just not sure we're actually using it to increase voter turnout does that happen I think it would be a question of resources convener I I wouldn't have the resources I mean I draw people in from across the council to work on the election but as soon as the election is over they go back to the day job I wouldn't have the resources to to carry any sort of scientific exercise of trying to identify that I haven't I haven't previously done that no sorry apologies on you it's also a somewhat of a suspicion around the voter in general people I talk to are quite wary about the existence of marked register in any case the fact that someone can follow up on whether they voted or not is something that people feel almost infringes the secrecy of the ballot not only how they voted but the fact that they voted people don't want anyone to know people expect the marked register to be kept very confidential and only used for the purposes that it's there for which is really to check that there hasn't been any fraud but there is a transparency issue there and everyone should know that everyone in scotland can can work out whether someone else voted or not it's all public information that's important to know that and and they think that the fact that they voted is somehow can lead to knowing how they voted and we got an awful lot of feedback about that after the referendum that people were nervous about the fact that people people were being told we know you voted or we know you didn't vote led them to think that actually officials and politicians also knew how they voted which is not at all the case but it there were really deep deeply felt held suspicions about that and it's something that I think we'd be very wary about so I would I would find it difficult to justify the resource to do that exercise the troll through those marked registers and then to somehow turn up at their door and say we know you haven't been voting why have you not been voting here you know it would be it would be potentially I'm not suggesting that would necessarily be how the information is used but we all we can all identify huge swathes of wards where even there's huge turnouts but you know it's one part of the world the turnout could be 10 15 percent another part it could be 75 percent that information is held that's how we target more effectively to motivate turnout in different areas available from ballot box returns you know from the ballot paper accounts rather than necessarily trolling through the the marked registers so we would know that you know one part of one town was had a very low turnout and we could you know we could do something about that but it's it's and do you do something about that sorry well you know there's there's I suppose we might make more effort to use posters use you know other ways of encouraging people to to vote but I mean my my experience in my areas that it's pretty even across the council area there aren't huge discrepancies or disparities or divergence but in other areas it might be more of an issue really and you know did you want to add something we don't use the mark registers to inform our campaign largely because the things we do we do in a national level so for instance the national leaflet it goes to all two and a half million households so you know everyone gets one irrespective of whether or not you voted or not and you're on the mark register there is also from over the years we've perceived with colleagues who work at the local level a concern that they may be perceived as being biased towards one particular party or another if they're concentrating on one area which is perceived as being ex-parties strong area as opposed to another so they're all whilst I can see where you're coming from they're all inherent dangers for officials in going down that route but that's that's very helpful final question of the session of leansmith thank you very much convener and I also think on on the issue of mark register it can sometimes be a pandora's box for politician producing some nasty surprises perhaps even fallings out I'll leave that there I wonder if I could ask Andy O'Neill specifically you mentioned Mr O'Neill the the mistakes that can happen with the ballot papers particularly I think when there's not an X in a box and it's a numerical number in way of doing things I wonder if the postal votes have less mistakes is that something that we know and also whether or not that if that's the case we'd indicate that maybe actual mock-up ballot boxes should be around the place for example in first stop shops and in schools themselves etc I wouldn't know because I don't look at the ballot papers that are sent in by postal voters we simply don't look at them they're kept face down all the time and they're not you don't do any examination of them at all and so therefore they are only looked at when they come to be open face up at the count and then we wouldn't be able to tell which were postal votes and which weren't so but we can you know we know the roughly the percentage of voters who make an error in their postal vote identifier statement and that has fallen dramatically to a very very small percentage figure and I suppose you know if people couldn't get that form right you would you would anticipate that they would they wouldn't have a problem with the ballot paper but we wouldn't be able to do any research on that because we are not able to look at the ballot papers I suppose the reason that sorry can be good and you're willing just to add to that like yeah I suppose from our perspective it's about information appropriate information to help you fill the ballot paper in when you've got it so there is good pictorial information in the postal vote packs that there's a new rule in the local government rules this time round where there has to be an information poster in the booth which we've been doing for a number of years when I was compulsory so it's about having information at the time of when you're filling in the ballot paper which in both instances we think exists and the pictorial information will change depending on what the election is so we wouldn't use the same pictorial on the ballot paper you know the single piece mailer that we use for postal ballots it would be different for this election than it was for previous elections because previously it would show somebody putting an X and now it will show somebody using numbers obviously I appreciate why we wouldn't know but it would be interesting to know whether they're not giving more time to fill them out people actually get it right and then my final point that I made about a mock-up ballot box part of the reason I asked that is it was an event at Summerleigh Heritage Park in Coatbridge recently where it was an educational event different political parties just talking about the importance of voting and there was actually a mock-up ballot box there for the young people to see where it was like to see what a paper was actually like all for ballot boxes that have been borrowed by schools you know you come to make up your ballot boxes for the particular electoral event a few weeks before there's always a message goes round to say to schools get the ballot boxes back please because they do make good use of them and you know younger children in particular use them to vote for their school captain or their prefects or whatever and we don't you know we do it quite formally in schools so that they are used to a ballot box I suppose what I'm asking is wider than skills yeah I mean I would be more than happy to accommodate any request and have done over the years for for other organisations wanting to borrow ballot boxes we lend them out all the time yeah very helpful I know we've overrun our allocated time but I wanted to allow the questions to to reach a natural conclusion this is just part of our attempts not just for me's election this year but I think some committee it may not always be this committee but one committee in this place has to keep a watching eye and voter turnout across all elections and how we can work in partnership with what is very good work that each of the organisations we have from today are doing we do want to give added value to what you're doing and assist you where we can so can I thank you for your evidence this morning and no doubt we'll we'll stay in touch with you and they'll briefly suspended till we prepare for the next set of witnesses thank you and welcome back everyone and we now continue with our evidence session and we welcome Jo Fitzpatrick minister for parliamentary business accompanied by Rodi Angus elections policy advisor Scottish Government welcome to you both thank you for coming along this morning and minister would you like to make it an opening statement thanks very much just very briefly first of all to thanks for the opportunity to come along and take part in the session as you know governments don't tend to get directly involved in promoting registration or voting us at elections as that could easily be misinterpreted as election hearing however the government does have an important role in ensuring that the right environment and structures are in place to support the activities of others and obviously I was able to listen to some of the last session where you heard from the folk at the front line the electoral commission electoral management board education scotland and electoral registration officers now those organisations undertake a wide range of activities as you've heard to encourage voter registration voter engagement and voter participation differences in voter engagement registration and turnout are I think very important it's crucial that we understand which groups are affected and in order that we can then direct support most effectively which I obviously heard was part of the questioning that you had to the previous panel as set out in the programme for government I'll be launching a consultation on electoral reform later this year putting the voters first is one of the key principles of our approach to electoral reform this inquiry is incredibly timely and as I'm sure that voter engagement will feature in that consultation and I can assure the committee that will look very carefully at the evidence that you've received at any recommendations you have and any conclusions you have when we are preparing that consultation so what thanks very much for the opportunity to be here today that's very helpful minister thank you we'll move to our opening question from Elaine Smith MSP thanks very much convener and thanks for joining us this morning minister we appreciate that you've given us a writing as well that the government doesn't have any well the government has to be basically wary about its approach to this but could I ask you generally if you have any views on how voter turnout in elections particularly local elections which tend to be rather lower could be improved I think clearly we have a team of folk who you've heard from who are working in partnership to look at those issues but I think there is a large responsibility on all of us as politicians to make the election relevant you know that the biggest reason that people will give for not voting is because you're at the same or it makes no difference if I go and I guess we all have taken off our MSP hats but I'm putting on our party hats a particular role to make sure that people understand that is not the case whether it's a local election the Scottish election UK elections referendum it actually does matter what you vote in it's our our responsibility to try and make sure people understand those differences and I think politicians in Scotland have started to look at new ways to engage with voters which well we can only hope helps improve turnout thanks minister I think we did discuss it with the last panel that if people don't know why it matters to them then you know that is the crux of it that they're not they're not particularly going to vote but what about maybe things that might have you might have an influence on like using different places to vote shopping centres or e voting these just trying to widen it out a bit in terms of locations obviously the the returning officers decide which locations are appropriate and we currently do have a quite a good mixture of of locations it's you know that I guess the local knowledge in terms of what's the best place that's going to make it most easy for people to vote you know wouldn't I don't think it'd be right for us to say you should always do it in a super shopping centre or you should always do it in a school and I think there's been a drift away from schools where possible because of the impact of elections on on the school day and sometimes it's for some people it's it's not a place that we tend to go to a school so so we do have I think more polling places which are for instance in community centres and in shopping centres not supermarkets but shopping centres where more people are able to just go into vote on the way I guess the the challenge would be would we ever be able to get to the point where people could select where they're voting so rather than saying this is your polling place saying well actually you know there's the opportunity to vote here here or here but clearly if we were going to go down that road we'd need to have absolute confidence in whatever system it was that was making sure that people weren't voting more than once it would almost certainly have to be some sort of electronic registration system and backed up and we would need to be very confident that any changes on that backside had the confidence of the electrics I think that's one of the most important things is that we can maintain the integrity of the vote and I guess that brings me on to the other forms of voting you know we've seen a massive increase over the years in postal voting and I think in the main confidence around that has improved there's still some people who just don't trust the idea of casting their vote and putting it in a postbox and we'll always want to go to the ballot station and if they can't do that to ask a proxy because they have more confidence in that system so I think it's very important we allow that. I'm open to the idea of us looking at other options whether it's e voting in terms of by email or electronic but I think we'd be some way off having the confidence in a system there is only I think one jurisdiction in the world which uses e voting exclusively which is Lithuania and their system relies on an ID card which we don't have and so on you know I think we need to make sure that any changes that we're making don't have unintended consequences going forward but you know I think we I think times move on so we should be prepared to to look at other other other things that might encourage and make it easier for people to vote and perhaps it would be possible to look at where e voting does take place I don't mean the x factor I mean political parties voting or trade unions voting so there is I suppose here we don't have to look abroad but here there is evidence to be looked at of where that kind of voting takes place you know it's not an election of government a local government but it's still it can't it's still important and it still is governed by rules so might be worth looking at that to see whether there's there's any issues what the issues are. I totally agree and we'd do that in partnership with with our partners in terms of looking at other ways forward I think Andy O'Neill mentioned that they were looking at some of these issues. Thank you, Kenny Gibson. Thanks very much. Good morning minister and it's a local government I'm wanting to focus on. I think you're absolutely right it's how important an election is perceived that is the of greatest significance in terms of deciding whether or not people vote but there are other factors of course and we saw in 2012 the first ever STV system without being linked to the Scottish Parliament election and turnout was a record low. I'm just wondering if you consider how much choice Matt has an impact on whether people have voted. I'll give you one example which I used at our own party conference. In the days of first pass the post large in my constituency would have four wards and there'd be four SNP, four Conservative and four Labour candidates possibly others as well. In the last STV election because of the safety first approach of all political parties i.e. put up the minimum number you think will get elected, the SNP put up two, Labour put up one and the Conservatives put up one. If an independent had nested they wouldn't even have been an election and so people are faced with four people being elected out of five going forward and I as the individual who moved the STV to our party policy some 20 years ago have been deeply disappointed by the fact that the original idea of STV competition between candidates of each party as well as between parties has not been realised and there's also I feel an attitude among some elected members that at the next election I only need to come forth in that word so there's not really some of the money exactly straining at the leash to represent constituencies effectively as they could and that's by no means the case for all but there are one or two and I'm hoping that vetting and the voters will sort out but there is a real issue about choice in elections and is it time again in your review to look again at the electoral system whereas it's only 106 days to the next one but is this going to be looked at the system itself? Obviously I'm a big supporter of STV, I think it's the right system but we've now had STV in for 10 years approximately since it was first introduced so I think it is appropriate that we look at how it's working in practice. It's been now two elections and you mentioned that the turnout for the 2012 election was down and while it was down maybe significantly compared to the elections which were combined if we look at the last election where local elections were held on their own it's maybe 5% down so still 10% but not quite as much as significant so I'm not sure STV has been part of why that slight reduction is more about relevance so we see that STV doesn't work perhaps for some of the more remote and island communities and that's something that we're looking at addressing within the system is how to make sorry not STV doesn't work it's the particular model of STV that was introduced back in 2006 that I think you know we need to look back at as there are changes that were made I was part of the COSLA body which was working with the Scottish Tish Executive at the time to look at you know how STV was going to be introduced and I know there was a large number of compromises which were introduced at that time so you know what was what we have as a system is maybe not what you'd envisaged 20 years ago when you persuaded the SNP party conference to adopt STV as a preferred system so I think it is appropriate that we look at that and I certainly wouldn't be minded to change the system as it says but we can look at how it works in practice and where it's working for communities and for the voters I mean obviously you know the number of candidates that will be standing in this election in Scotland of all parties will be significantly lower than it was under first place to post I mean that's absolutely accepted and it's hard to blood candidates now you know for example to get experience because there's a much higher chance of being elected simply because there are a few people standing in for the reasons I said the safety first attitude of all parties but can I can I ask about one other thing which has been a bug in their mind since the system came in and it's about the randomisation of ballot papers I don't understand why this has not been already implemented I mean I've got Alexander Stewart and James Simpson, Ruth Maguire here who've all effectively to some extent it would if they were standing in an election be the less likely to get elected all else been equal in somewhere with my surname simply because they're further down the ballot and facts have shown that 92% of words in which two or more people from the same party stand the person lower down the alphabet are disadvantaged now there are elaborate ways I try to get around that but surely it's time now as the SNP does in its own internal elections randomise surnames so that there is no advantage to Alasdair Allen for example if he was to stand against Andy Wightman I should point out minister before you answer that question that Bob Doris has failed to open minded about this it just depends on who else might be standing if possible could you try and point your answer towards that might increase voter turnout which is of course the focus of today's evidence session I think to answer Kenny's question because it's quite difficult to answer that in the terms that you're asking me to so but I think it's a fair question and it is something that we're looking at but I guess we need to because I agree that the problem exists and and while Mr Gibson said all things being equal even if things are not all equal Mr Allen might find it easier to get elected than Mr Wightman even if Wightman Mr Wightman is more popular and more people have actively voted for Mr Wightman if they're in the same party then as long as there's a percentage of people who have just voted for the party and not the person then that could mean that someone who has less personal popularity could still get elected so I think there is an issue it's an issue which Mr Doris makes the point that those folk further down the alphabet are more exercised about than those folk earlier than alphabet but it's it I think it's an issue it's not an issue we can resolve for this election because clearly if we were to make any changes to the ballot paper we'd have to be tested in some way and you know we'd have to make sure that again there was voter confidence in what comes out because what's clear is that voters understand the A, B, C, D, E to W or is that reflected in turnout convener and I mean I know our issues because people have told me this individually where certain female candidates decide whether or not to stand on their maiden name or their married name depending on what it is in terms of the alphabet. The reason is because some people are dissuaded from actually standing and again it reduces voter choice because they say well my name is you know Wilson or something I'd have to go against Mr Brown in my own party we're only putting one person up we'll put two up we'll only get a chance of getting one elected probably is it even worth my well putting my name in so all these things anything impacts on choice both of the person that goes forward for selection and election and on the ballot must clearly has some impact even if it's only Mars own turnout but certainly it certainly has an impact on the person and the quality of representative one has if one of the major criterias is your surname rather than your ability to represent the community. Obviously there's nothing in any of the regulations that stop parties doing selection processes that randomise etc so that doesn't matter for political parties and not for government but as I say it's certainly something that we are looking at and you know if we decide to go down that route in the future I'm no doubt that it'd be something the committee will want to look at if it's something that we think we can find a way forward which as I say the most important thing is that the voters continue to have confidence in the system we had an experiment in 2007 where ballot papers were changed and for the the elections if you remember we had the list and the constituency Scottish Parliament elections on the same ballot paper and you know so and the lesson from that was worth to be very careful when we when we change things and make sure that we're testing testing any changes to make sure they're understood properly. Just on Mr Gibson's point after I tried to get you back on on the focus of this morning you've raised at a point Mr Gibson in relation to the elections in May will the Scottish Government undertake to do an analysis of where there was more restricted choice and compare that turnout to where there was a more expansive choice obviously we'd have to take into account social demographic issues to to kind of widen that out is that the kind of thing that the Scottish Government would do? That's kind of thing that the Electoral Commission would do for the Scottish Government so they would always do an analysis after their local election so I can remember when I was sitting in your seat speaking with Andy Neill sitting in this seat to talk about their analysis of the last local government elections and that they are independent of course but I'm trying to work at that particular point I raise would that be for the Electoral Commission to listen and say we might want to look at that we might not want to look at that and they just do their analysis or would government of this committee suggest that to them as part of their analysis? Yeah I mean I think there's a few options around there so whether I mean clearly it's work that they would normally take on so it's perhaps best that we'll discuss that with them as to I mean I think the committee has been clear that it's a kind of analysis that you think should happen so whether it's the Electoral Commission or Spice or or ourselves that pull it together it sounds like it'd be something that'd be helpful for us to have so but again you know it might be that having the Electoral Commission behind such a document we'd give it the most veracity and the most confidence behind the refinings. We've heard earlier today that the turnout can sometimes be affected by the relevance of the election to the public at large how they feel it affects them and we've had the SDV system now for as you say 10 years but there is still some confusion about ranking and putting crosses and the number of spoiled ballot papers that then occur at these elections because of the confusion that individuals still have especially when they when they are having to choose more than one candidate on a ballot paper and choosing to put numbers or choosing to put crosses and we've seen over the last 10 years that there is still that that differentiation doesn't happen or people get confused and rank three of them by putting three crosses rather than giving them one, two and three in that process but that is creating as I say in my experience a large number of more spoiled papers being processed so there is still an education to try and manage the public at large as to how they should process that and we've heard today about how that is attempting to be looked at but in reality how can we process that if as I say we're still getting it wrong and it's still individuals are getting confused by the process well I think obviously 2007 was the first SDV election and there was a quite a high level of spoiled ballots in 2012 I think the number was drastically reduced one of the reasons for that I think is because the parliament took the decision and those of us who were here in the parliament at that time took the decision that we felt that the two elections should be separated for that reason now clearly I think at the time we all realised that that would have the knock-on effect that turnout would produce for the local election but at least people would the different systems and the different purposes of the election because one of the challenges in 2007 when the and actually 1999 as well when there was two elections together was that the local election gets swamped by by the national election and actually it doesn't do justice to our our local government colleagues and so I think the separation was for good reasons and it gives us an additional challenge about how to drive up turnout and one of the it means that voters effectively have an election almost every year so there's the risk of voter fatigue as well but I think that's that's worth it in terms of making sure that the local election gets its proper place and proper focus on on the issues that are in related to local elections but I think we need to keep trying hard I think one of the things that parties could do is to stop sometimes when I'm particularly in by elections you see it when there's only one candidate and parties think well it's easier just to tell our our voters to put an X and just tell them to put a one and then if we all do that then people will get more in the habit but we certainly saw a reduction in the spoil spoil ballots in 2012 and I guess I hope that that will the work that the commission are doing that will happen again going forward. Thank you convener. Andy Whightman. Thank you convener, thank you minister for coming. I just want to ask you about the the work that the joint law commissions did on electoral law and published during report earlier, not earlier this year in February last year to create an argument for creating a single UK framework for electoral law and then allow devolved administrations to adapt as they saw fit but to bring more coherence to the some 17 major statutes and 30 sets of regulations that currently exist. At the time Lord Pentland who was chair of the law commission said that he looked forward to discussing this further with the Scottish Government. Have you had subsequent discussions since February and what are your broad views on the joint law commission's recommendations? Yeah and of course how does that work for a turnout minister? Yes clearly we want to make the system as straightforward for our EROs returning officers and electric as possible and of course candidates in elections and so streamlining in the face of it sounds good but of course we've we're just about to receive these new powers so you know with those powers my view is that we should where possible make sure procedures in Scotland are consistent and you know I'm absolutely happy to work with partners in other parts of the UK to see where what is best practice and you know best practice in Wales or England works for us as well as best practice then then I think we'll end up having one system but I am keen to make sure those decisions are made in relation to the powers that we're about to get are made by this Parliament going forward so absolutely that is the intent of the law commission's review but I was just asking specifically have you had any discussions with the Scottish Government with the law commission's Scottish law commission about their recommendations? I haven't personally had any discussions with the law commission but there have been discussions at official level. Okay thanks and in terms of your point that you made about creating harmony within Scotland with the new powers presumably that's going to be the focus of the electoral bill you talked about earlier. Apologise for interrupting you minister but I'll frame it in the way you want. No just how on a second this is for MSP's as much as it is for yourself minister we've got council elections in May this year historically council elections turnout are absolutely appalling and the clock is ticking on that now the work of this committee and the stakeholder organisations we had in the witness session before in yourself minister may make half a point or one point of a turnout difference we've no idea if it'll make a blind bit of difference but that is the purpose of this evidence session to see some of that out so with that in mind minister could you respond to that question? So one of the things that we are trying to do is to say that you know if there's rules in relation to postal votes for instance or proxy votes then there's no reason they should be different for the Scottish Parliament election than they are for local council elections and so we would have that same system same rules and I would hope that by having that commonality across elections that would then make it more straightforward for voters to cast a vote and hopefully that would help turnout as well so I think we're trying to make a framework that certainly prior to in the past it's been quite cluttered and there's been different regulations and different rules quite very technical stuff which have been different for every different election and changing and in the future I once the powers do come to the Scottish Parliament I would hope that if we have an order in relation to postal votes then that order would relate to all elections which this Parliament has responsibility for so we don't need to do a local election in the Scottish Parliament election order in relation to postal or proxy votes for instance so that technical stuff if we can streamline that then hopefully that will make the elections more accessible and make a very small impact on turnout. Yes I've hopefully a big impact on turnout in the medium and long term I take the convener's point that obviously we need to do what we can initially but I raised the question because we don't want to be returning to this every election you know a year before and just saying what can we do. I take my point my point as that's the agenda item we're asking questions to the minister on that's the point I'm making. Okay any more questions? Okay gdem Simpson. Thanks minister so you mentioned you're going to go out to consultation on electoral reform. Can you tell us what that consultation might include and let's bear in mind what the convener has just said? So I certainly expect turnout to be part of that and we will as I said in my opening remarks look at not just any conclusions and recommendations that you come to as a committee about the evidence that you took as well because I think both sessions have been very helpful I've managed to watch most of the last session and I watched the session with the stakeholders and I thought you got some really good evidence here which we will consider in terms of the types of things that we could include in the consultation. We are speaking to the main stakeholders to try and make sure that we are including everything that should be in that consultation whether that be in relation to wider matters or specifically about how we drive up turnout and registration. All right he obviously don't quite want to give the game away yet I understand that. Sorry to be clear there is genuinely still a significant opportunity for us to feed more stuff into the consultation to make sure that the consultation covers the areas that it should do and that the work that this committee has been doing will be able to be fed into that because I know that this inquiry and other inquiries you're doing we will look at very closely. So this committee could perhaps suggest areas that you might want to look at? Well we will certainly look at the things the inquiries that you've been carrying out and the work that you've carried out, the evidence sessions that you've taken on this evidence and there's other areas as well and we'll obviously look at that going forward. Okay that's fine. Can I ask with the convener's permission what your view is on voter ID, voters having to produce ID when they go to vote? I'd be very concerned about anything that we did that might seem to be detrimental to certain sections of society being able to cast their vote. I understand that the UK Government will be carrying out a pilot at the English UK elections and of course we'll look at that closely. I'm not sure there's huge evidence of significant voter fraud in Scotland and I would be very concerned about doing anything that might even unintentionally make it more difficult for certain sections of society to cast their vote. It's always easy for folk who've got passports and driving licences to prove who they are but I'd think I'd be concerned about putting an additional barrier in place but clearly the UK Government are proposing to do pilots during the English local government elections this year. No, I think it's two years time. I think it's appropriate that we look at that and see how that's actually worked but I think we need to be very careful of unintended consequences. Thank you, good morning. I'm interested to hear the minister's comments and reflections on the public awareness campaigns that we heard details of earlier. Also in our written evidence, which you may have seen, we got quite detailed feedback on what's happening in schools and colleges. Just to hear your comments on that and if you think that any of those approaches could be extended to increased turnout in other hard-to-reach communities or sections of our society that aren't turning out to vote. I think we certainly heard from the last panel the enthusiasm that there is by all the stakeholders to first of all drive up voter registration to get registration to areas where the registration has been lower and then to encourage turnout. I think we as a government didn't support the early introduction of the independent voter registration system. We felt that that was rushed but nonetheless I know that our EROs across Scotland have worked really hard to take that on board and to drive up turnout. We heard that the turnout at the Scottish Parliament elections was almost as high at the election as it was in the independence referendum which was obviously the high water. I don't know about other areas but certainly in Dundee people were queuing up in that referendum to register for the very first time so that you could see in that referendum there were people being engaged in the electoral system that had never been there before. At the Scottish Parliament election the individual voter registration was almost that high by the time the election came so I think we're seeing a shift of the high water used to be in October, December when the household register had been done that was the highest the register would be and it would fall off as its accuracy through the year went down and I think now it looks like the high water is at the election so it's really important we make sure that the systems we have in place particularly the online systems are working properly. To make sure people can use that. Some of the interesting things in terms of reaching the different areas, I know there's a lot of work with youth Scotland and youth link to try and get to particularly young people who have for whatever reason not managed to engage at school although the evidence we're hearing is that EROs are finding it easier to engage with young people who are still at school because they're 16, 17 is a higher percentage still at school so therefore that's an easier process than it was when they were trying to engage for the first time at 18 to 24 so I think we need to continue to look at all the options but I think there's good examples from particularly the work around youth and the work that's going on with some of the other minorities to try and make sure that we are getting people registered and then making sure we understand the barriers to why they're not able to vote or I'm sorry. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Can I be asked minister, the last evidence session we hear from the Electoral Commission, we hear from Education Scotland, from the Electoral Management Board for Scotland and from Ian Milton who's in ERO and chair of the Electoral Registration Committee of the Scottish Assess, Scottish Assess Association. Do any of those groups have a statutory duty to increase turnout? I'm not referring to make sure people can easily register to vote and that they understand the votes and that the process and the mechanics and the structures are all in place and that it's not understandable. Will any of them have a statutory duty to increase voter turnout? Well, the AMB statutory duty is about making sure the assisting local authorities to do all that work so I guess they are for local elections so they probably got the closest to that statutory duty but clearly a lot of the functions are carried out by the Electoral Commission. There's no statutory duty, the AMB doesn't have any statutory duty in terms of other elections in Scotland so they don't have a statutory role for Scottish Parliament elections, for instance, they still carry out that role and I guess one of the things we need to look at is whether they should have that statutory role for other elections. They have a power to direct in local elections which they don't have for Scottish Parliament elections now as it turns out that's generally okay I think because the ERO and returning officer community work pretty well across Scotland but as it stands there is no statutory duty for elections other than local elections. Okay and is that a statutory duty to increase turnout or a statutory duty in relation to the mechanics? So it's about promoting elections rather than increasing turnout it's about you can see that how the things are interlinked so the overall responsibility is I guess shared by the partners that you just had. I mean I guess the organisation which does most in terms of promoting turnout is the Electoral Commission I think in terms of their advertising work but they do that also in partnership with the Electoral Management Board. Okay that's helpful. I used figures in the last evidence session to illustrate a point for example in council elections and I picked one of the words in my own constituency that was a 27% turnout compared to one in a neighbouring constituency that was a 39% turnout so that I feel like an inequality of turnout from two words relatively close within each other that's within Glasgow but if you look at the wonderful turnouts at the independence referendum campaign 91% in East Renfrewshire, Easton Bartonshire, Glasgow very high but 75% or something like that in Glasgow still way behind other local authority areas does any group body or organisation have a responsibility to address those inequalities? Well I think we all have a responsibility and that I think includes us as politicians. Minister absolutely is a moral responsibility, ethical responsibility but as a statutory body or public body or organisation out with politicians where we all have our own self-interest in relation to it does any one body have a duty in relation to that? I don't think there would be a specific duty there but you know I think it's something that the challenge is that we need to fully understand why that is and I think that's part of the challenge. A duty to increase turnout actually could have adverse consequences because one of the ways to increase turnout would be to knock anybody off the register that didn't vote at the last election it would increase your turnout but it would mean less people are registered. As you increase the size of the register unless you actually get more voters out to vote turnout will fall. I agree with all those comments Mr Angus however my concern it's a giant concern is that yes politicians have got these responsibilities we see a disparity across the country there's social economic reasons for much of that I get all that as well I'm just wondering whether I look at Education Scotland or if I look at the electoral commission or I look at the electoral management board for Scotland I want to know separate from us politicians who want the votes to win the elections who set targets and outcomes that we can then scrutinise to see how effective were they during those jobs and who has that duty and what consideration would you give to maybe putting a more with respect to independence of course a more formal structure in place to scrutinising some of that work. I think that scrutinising is always possible and you know I think your suggestion of there being some sort of analysis of the outcome of the next kind of elections is probably would be helpful to us understanding I think there might be a challenge if we were to you know our registration officers just want to get everybody on the register and so to set you know and and they appear to be doing a really good job a new system was brought in place at much faster speed than we or or they had asked for we'd asked for more time in terms of transition particularly because of the particular election timetables in Scotland we didn't get that and you know I think they rose to the challenge and we can see that that we're getting more people registered and I guess it's difficult as we heard in the last evidence session to know you know what what is the actual number of folk who should be registered for for different elections who are not yet registered and so we should be always trying to drive that up and you know I think we always have to look at what work the Electoral Commission are doing in order to drive up turnout and if there are ideas about how that can be done better I'm sure the Electoral Commission would be keen to hear that I'm not sure saying if you don't get a turnout of X then that's somehow you failed is going to be helpful to be honest I'm not sure that that's why I said these things are hugely challenging and we're just having early discussions about what something going forward might look like and these things in the world to do is to pick 20,000 reasons why something can't happen rather look at how we can make something happen final question from myself would be given the disparity of turnout and we haven't mentioned that the individual groups I'm talking about I'm conscious of that but given the disparity of turnout across Scotland depending in each local area would you expect Electoral Commission or Education Scotland or Electoral Registration Officers or Electoral Management Board for Scotland to target existing resources more at areas with poorer turnout to address such inequalities or existing resources are obviously tight is there a case for additional resource specifically to target areas with poorer electoral registration or poorer voter turnout because if we're really serious at tackling this I mean I've sat on this committee predecessor committee in 2007 we looked at the fallout from previous elections we talk about it a lot I'm just not sure how we actually map out what real achievement looks like so the Electoral Commission in terms of the the programme that they've they've got going forward to increased turnout and registration for the local elections they are working with a number of partners particularly where where there are groups where we know that historically there are challenges so they are working with the NUS for instance they're working with students young people homeless groups and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities so they're working with all those partner organisations to make sure we can get to places that maybe the the mainstream media advertising or booklet through the door doesn't work so it's about using the resources better to target the right people the resource that the government has allocated to the Electoral Commission for this election in terms of these tasks is £1.6 million just over £1.6 million pounds so it's quite a significant sum of money and obviously they're looking at how they can use that best across the piece but they I know are specifically looking at those areas where they are harder to to reach in lower historic turnouts I think we heard some of that earlier on that that's helpful minister Elaine Smith thanks very much convener can I just ask about the franchise minister it always intrigued me that Jenny Lee who was an MP when she was in her early 20s but the franchise was 30 so she couldn't actually vote for herself but it seems to be different in this election so that it's been extended for this common election to 16 and 17 year olds but they can't actually go forward as candidates as I understand I wonder if you presumably going to be looking at the franchise from here on in would you be looking at that so obviously the decision to extend the vote to all elections which this Parliament has control over was taken in the last Parliament so the franchise for voting is 16 for the Scottish Parliament election and local elections and I think that is now universally agreed to be the correct and I think it's something we should look at is the age of standing should that be differentiated or not I mean it currently is and it'd be interesting to hear arguments as to whether it should be or shouldn't be I've certainly heard the case put to me by young people for why they quite like the idea that they get to vote for a couple years and then they get to stands and I've also heard other young people who say no I have something that I think I can put to the electorate and I should be allowed to put that to and it's up to the electorate then to say if you're too young or not and to make the decision as to whether irrespective of age that the person is the best best candidate so there are clearly arguments so it's something we have to consider whether it would be included in the consultation or the bill that you bring forward I'm not at this stage certain one of the things that we have to be careful of is the the regulations in terms of the new powers coming to Scotland would require any changes to the franchise and would require a super majority so you would take a bill which potentially is mainly dealing with issues technical issues tidying up proving that the electoral system that doesn't require a super majority and adding something which would make the whole bill require a super majority and so it you know that's something we have to consider and the parliament hasn't yet come to a view as to what the processes are around super majority so but I think it's a reasonable thing for us to consider and I just wonder in terms of the forthcoming election that may be even just talking about it at the moment we'd help to raise a way in this we'd help to focus on the the importance of local elections and representation and what the councils do for people I mean alternatively to get to our night maybe we could start a rumour that only those that are voted on the match register will get their bins collected in future actually it's a serious point I mean it's a serious point minister that I think maybe people aren't aware there is a match register we had a bit of that discussion earlier as well I hear a secret of some nodding his head when that suggestion was made so I'm not sure what will be in the conservative manifesto going forward and made do you want to follow up with any of that minister no I think it's it's all good stuff for for discussion I think is the other papers like to come in for additional questions well can I thank you for for giving evidence evidence and just just note that we are very interested in the forthcoming elections bill and what may or may not be in that and well of course as my colleagues did try to tease out today go way beyond voter turnout and I suspect that we'll discuss in private reflections in the evidence session I think there's maybe a feeling that one committee in the Scottish Parliament irrespective of the elections issue or the tier of government the elections are at should be focused and responsible for making sure that there is good management right across the board and I'm sure this committee would like to follow through in that irrespective of what elections were we're talking about given the consistency learning from best practice from elsewhere so we're focused in me this year but it's an on-going work of this committee to work with government and the stakeholders we heard from earlier and we're keen to do that so can I thank you again for giving evidence this morning and we'll suspend briefly until we arrange to the next agenda item thank you okay welcome back and we now move to agenda item three the committee will consider three negative instruments listed on the agenda ssis 2016 forward slash 402 2016 forward slash 411 and 2016 forward slash 421 these instruments are laid under the negative procedure which means that their provisions will come into force unless the Parliament votes on a motion to annul the instruments I confirm the committee that no motion to annul has been laid for any of the instruments I can invite members to make any comments they may have on the instruments before us no one has indicated they want to make any comments in relation to that so given that fact can I invite members to agree that it does not this committee does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to these instruments are we agreed okay thank you for that and with that we do now move into private session as we move to agenda item four thank you