 The next item of business is a statement by Richard Lochhead on the new common agricultural policy. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement, and there should therefore be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Richard Lochhead, cabinet secretary, 15 minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Today I am announcing decisions on how we will implement the new common agricultural policy from 2015. I will outline the key decisions on how we will implement pillar 1 of the policy. That is set to deliver £2.8 billion in direct support to our farmers and crofters between 2015 and 2020. We are also publishing today more details of the rural development programme, which is worth £1.3 billion over the same period that will be submitted to Europe. My objective is to ensure that those investments support food production, a rural economy and their spectacular environment. The men and women who deliver those benefits must be supported and rewarded for doing so in all parts of Scotland—island, mainland, lowland and upland. We know that support is vital. Total income from farming in Scotland last year was £829 million, including £583 million in farm payments. It is vital that we get those decisions right within the rules, of course. We now face difficult decisions on how to implement a policy that we all want to underpin productive farming but, of course, limits on how we can support that in terms of how support is linked to production. Of course, we have a policy that largely decides on a European basis that needs to be moulded as far as possible to Scotland's diverse circumstances. It has been a long rocky road getting to where we are today, but it is now decision time and it is time for clarity. The new cap is far from perfect and has not delivered the simplification that we promised, but at least it is far better than what was originally feared. At the start of the negotiations, people thought that the cap budget would be cut by around perhaps 30 per cent. That, thankfully, did not materialise. Thankfully, the UK Government failed to abolish her phase-out direct payments on which her industry relies. Scotland has been left at the bottom of the table in payments per hectare, which is the formula used by Europe to give out the member-state allocations. We have been left with the lowest level in both pillars of the policy. To add insult to injury, when Europe gave the UK over 200 million euros in convergence money because of Scotland's low payments, the Westminster Government spread it across the whole of the UK. Other Governments got uplifts in both pillars and are now deciding how to invest those uplifts. Today, I am having to deal with budget cuts and mandatory deductions as well. This all coincides with the biggest-ever redistribution of cap support in Scotland. Ten years ago, Europe committed to replacing virtually all activity-based supports with area payments. The Scottish Administration at that time decided to put off the difficult choices for a later date by adopting the historic-based approach. Today, further delay is not an option. Europe moved away from activity-based support because of overproduction, but in Scotland we have 85 per cent of our land class's less favoured area, so the risk-facing us is actually the opposite. It is land abandonment and the loss of activity. The Government has worked tirelessly with stakeholders and left no stone unturned to find the right solutions for Scotland. I am under no illusions that the package that I am announcing today will not please everyone. Some farmers who were disadvantaged under the old cap will finally move towards a level playing field. Others will see their payments go down. I have looked at every opportunity to mitigate the impact on genuine farmers. Overall, this is the best possible package that I am presenting today for the cap in Scotland for the period of 2015 to 2020. Given the major redistribution of support, the speed of transition therefore is vitally important. New entrants have lobbied for the pillar 1 changes to be implemented in one step. Farmers who payments will go down significantly have argued for time to adapt. I feel that it is my duty to look at the impact in Scottish agriculture as a whole. I believe that an overnight transition would pose a real risk to not just primary production but thousands of downstream jobs in the livestock sector in particular. Given the level of reduction that many intensive farmers face, convergence will therefore be achieved over the 2015 to 2019 scheme years. However, we have negotiated the ability to put those disadvantaged under the old cap straight on to the regional average through the national reserve. I accept that the national reserve therefore needs to be substantially bigger than the standard 3 per cent as a quid pro quo. I believe that stakeholders support that. Encouraging the next generation who have been frozen out the cap up to now is very important to me. That is why pillar 2 support will be expanded into a new entrance package. Start-up grants will be the most generous allowed at €70,000 plus capital grants. The pillar 2 advisory service will include specific provision for new entrants. Importantly, in pillar 1, we secured the ability to repeat the national reserve in future years so future new entrants are not excluded. A big priority is to ensure that support targets active farmers, be they new entrants or be them long-established businesses. We will make every effort to target every public pound at genuine activity to target those who wear dirty wellies and not comfy slippers. This package does tackle slipper farming. Under the Scottish Clause that has been negotiated, land with no farming activity on it will get no pillar 1 payments. I have also instructed my officials to add sporting estates whose principal activities are not farming to what is known as the negative list, whereby claimants are excluded unless they can prove that they are a genuine farm business. Those measures will ensure no payment on land with no farming activity and that currently is estimated at 600,000 hectares in terms of what is included in the current cap. I will also limit entitlements to the area that claims in 2013 to prevent tenancies being manipulated in particular for unfair gain by others. At the other end of the spectrum, the challenge, of course, is how to reward the most active farms, especially in the livestock sector, where production per hectare can vary so much. Moving away from historic-based payments does, of course, help, because historic payments by definition do not represent today's activity. There is broad consensus now in splitting Scotland into payment regions based on land quality and on targeting couple support at 8 per cent on the beef sector. There remains broad consensus to treat better land in a single region, at around perhaps €200 to €220 per hectare, including greening, depending on the number of hectares declared. However, there have been calls to improve the way rough grazing is dealt with to avoid overcompensation for the least active. We have a new weapon now in our armory, extra couple support. Month after month, throughout the past few years, I have battled the UK Government that originally wanted zero couple support before finally moving to 5 per cent, but Europe finally agreed 13 per cent for some countries of their budget being used for couple support, but 8 per cent for the UK. Now, following discussions with Thill and Patterson, the sector of state in Defra and Commissioner Trollers in Europe, we have finally secured clearance and principle to go up to 13 per cent of the Scottish pot being used for couple schemes, putting Scotland on a level playing field. We have also had a second breakthrough on regionalisation. We have identified a way to split the rough grazing that is deliverable because it uses existing land classifications that will be fixed at the outset. With those new flexibilities, we will address the rough justice in the rough grazing. Rough grazing on the non-LFA and in the LFAS grazing categories BC and D will be one payment region with a rate of around €35 per hectare, including greening, and in the poorest rough grazing in the LFAS category A there will be a separate region at around €10 per hectare, including greening. In this third region, I propose to introduce couple support for sheep at the equivalent around €25 per year. That is now subject to agreement with the rest of the UK, and we will work with stakeholders on how to implement that scheme to minimise the burden of inspections. On land, with the greatest risk of inactivity, payments and stocking levels will therefore be closely linked. One further related issue is the issue of huge individual payments. The top five recipients in Scotland in the current cap receive between them alone over £7.5 million. The changes set out will in any case reduce that by nearly two thirds or perhaps even more if they do not meet the activity tests. However, most farmers that I speak to in the general public think that there should be an upper limit. Partway through the transition, we will introduce a cap on basic payments at around £400,000 per year after labour costs have been deducted. For the vast majority, that will have no impact, but it is a very important safeguard and fixes the principle that unlimited individual payments simply cannot be tolerated. What I have just announced is a five-pronged assault on inactivity—the Scottish Clause, the negative list, the third region, more couple support and capping. The linked activity is especially important for the beef sector. Productive beef farms were high recipients under the current, the old system. Their long production cycle means that it is hard to change quickly, with implications for upstream and downstream businesses. However, beef is the engine room of Scottish farming, worth more than £2 billion to our economy. The gradual transition that I have laid out will help. Having fought hard for couple support, I propose to retain 8 per cent of the pot for coupling for beef across Scotland using 75 per cent beef genetics for those to define the recipients. However, I am changing the payment profile with a double rate in the first 10 calves and then a flat rate thereafter. Subject to the necessary approvals, I also propose to introduce a couple payment top-up on Scotland's islands at around €65 per calf, recognising the extra challenges and distance to the market, our beef producers' experience on Scotland's islands. Compared with today, a 100 cow beef herd will get over 50 per cent more of couple support under those proposals. However, there are limits to what we can do in pillar 1, so we must look to pillar 2. I have therefore decided to introduce in the rural development programme an ambitious beef 2020 package. My aim is to help the sector with this through the transition that lies ahead, but also to encourage transformation at the same time. It is about transition and transformation. Before deciding on the detailed shape of the package that I will deliver through pillar 2, I will want to digest next week's recommendations, which I am going to receive from the chair of QMS Jim McLaren and his beef 2020 group. However, I can confirm today that we will be making available £45 million of new money over three years for what will be a crucial and unprecedented investment in Scotland's fantastic beef sector. Through this unprecedented scheme, producers will be financially supported in issues such as genetics, performance generally and reducing the carbon footprint of the industry. The beef package will be a good example of a win-win in terms of outcomes for both economics and Scotland's environment at the same time. The cap must support productive farming, but it must also protect biodiversity and reduce agricultural carbon footprint and conserve our landscapes. In pillar 2, despite the budget situation, I have already increased the agri-environment budget by over £10 million per year, but the new cap was also greening in pillar 1. The challenge here was how to deliver environmental benefit without a disproportionate hit on farming operations. For the three crop rule, we negotiated substantial improvements, but there is still an issue for specialist barley producers. With stakeholders, we have identified an alternative approach based on winter cover that gives equally good environmental outcomes without affecting production. That will have to be approved by Europe and the approval procedure is not yet known, but we will put it forward. There are intentions to implement that change as soon as we can and in 2015 if possible. I always said that there should be more climate change in the cap package as well, and I am using pillar 2 to fund carbon audits for Scotland's farms. We have also looked at options under the permanent grassland measure in pillar 1. Subject to commission approval, farmers covered by the permanent grassland measure will need to have a fertiliser plan. In later years, we may also ask for that to include soil analysis as well. That is a modest, light-touch requirement that many farmers do anyway to deliver the win-win of reduced carbon footprint and improve profitability at the same time. The final greening measure concerns ecologically focused areas. We have to decide what features to count against 5 per cent EFA requirements. I want to give farmers credit for the features that they already have, but there is a balance that has to be struck. Counting every tree would create a mapping nightmare for farmers and run the risk of EU penalties. After detailed work with stakeholders, I have decided to go as far as I can and to include as EFA the following, buffer strips, fallow, field margins, including hedges and ditches, catch and cover crops and nitrogen fiction crops, albeit subject to management conditions, to make sure that we help by diversity while allowing for crop production. We will continue to work with stakeholders on those details, including the use of optional waiting factors and coefficients. I have also decided to strengthen the rules and buffer strips under the good condition element of cross-compliance rules. So Scotland is a really good story to tell. Our food production has got fantastic international reputation as clean and green, but we have to stay ahead of our competitors and I will be bringing the industry together shortly to see how we can take that agenda forward. I have explained how the new cap package will impact in some particular sectors with Scottish agriculture, but in designing the package I have balanced the impacts across farming as a whole. For example, those latest changes to improve targeting for beef and sheep have no real impact on the dairy or arable sectors that will also benefit from the five-year transition. Sectors that have been frozen out in the past, such as deer farmers, will also be eligible for the first time. The move to area-based payments is positive for crofters and for the Highlands and Islands. In response to the consultation exercise, I am reinstating a separate capital grant scheme for crofters with its own budget. The wider rural development programme supports rural communities, forestry, the environment, food and drink, small businesses and, of course, the £459 million ELFAS budget to help to maintain and underpin our more fragile communities. However well we have put the package together, there is always the risk of unforeseen circumstances. Despite the EU's rhetoric about simplification, this is the most complex cap ever. Under EU rules, some of the decisions that I am announcing today can be revisited each year, such as in couple support, but others can only be reviewed once or not at all, and that does not seem sensible. Therefore I will be calling on a mid-term cap health check of the new policy. In conclusion, it would be naive to pretend the new cap, as decided by Europe, is perfect for Scotland. And there are important details, of course, that still have to be worked up with their stakeholders. The package requires clearances and approvals both from the UK Government and Brussels. If we look at the new policy, no doubt the magnifying glass will find lots of anomalies. But I believe that the Government has exploited the positive aspects of what is an offer and what is secured through tough negotiations, and we will minimise those anomalies, giving us the best possible package in the circumstances. Despite the constraints in EU rules, the outrageous budget position that we find ourselves in, and often turbulent market conditions, we are confident that this package reflects Scotland's priorities and lays the foundations for a successful Scottish agricultural industry for many, many years to come. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 30 minutes for the questions, after which we will move on to next item of business. It would be helpful if members who wish to ask a question of the cabinet secretary were to press a request to speak but now, and I call Clare Baker. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance copy of the statement, although we are all working to very short timescales this afternoon. We have a lengthy statement accompanied by some briefing papers, and we all need time to analyse the impact of these decisions. I would urge the Government to make time for a fuller debate on this announcement. We should not forget the principles of cap reform, ensuring the best use of public money to support public benefit, and reducing the environmental impact of agriculture, while also rewarding investment in delivering environmental benefit and good land stewardship. Scotland chose to delay the shift from historic to area payments, and I suspect that Opposition supported that. We are now at the stage where the decisions have to be made. In many ways, the debate has been dominated by those who currently receive support. What the impact is on them is about change, not the status quo, and I will support measures that aim to achieve that. I welcome the measures to tackle slipper farming. I am also pleased that supporting estates have been moved to the negative list, as well as the decision to limit entitlements to 2013. The set decisions were always going to be challenging, and I appreciate how difficult it is to get the balance right, but the cabinet secretary recognised there were calls for a quicker transaction. There are concerns that 2019 is at the top end of a transaction period. Even taking into account the new entrance measures, I am sure that there will be some who are disappointed by not having a shorter timescale. Can I ask what the level of the national reserve will be and if he is confident that the demand can be met from that? I also have some concerns around the pillar 2 support. The statement is very focused on agriculture. However, yesterday's emissions statistic showed a real need for an environmental focus in pillar 2. Pillar 2 is also vital to support rural communities in the broadest sense. When I argued for a higher transfer between pillar 1 and pillar 2, I said that a lot of that money was going back to farmers, and today's statement has emphasised that. What does that mean for other demands on pillar 2, which the cabinet secretary himself addressed, such as forestry, food and drink and the environment? I understand that the new measures for the beef sector are also about supporting transition, but is there a timescale attached to those measures? Will the £45 million come out of the pillar 2 resources? Finally, the cap on payments is welcome at a level of £400,000 after labour costs. That is pretty generous. Can the cabinet secretary say a bit more about why he decided on that level? The cabinet secretary raised a number of issues. First, there is the big issue of the pace of transition. As Clare Baker can imagine, my shoes are not very popular just now because everyone has been telling me that they do not want to stand in them because I have had some tough decisions to take over issues such as the pace of transition. Many new entrants have wanted an overnight transition, but given the shockwaves that could potentially be sent throughout the whole of our livestock sector in Scotland and the downstream industries by an overnight transition, where many intensive livestock farms have faced substantial reductions overnight, I chose to use the duration of the next cap for the transition. In the knowledge that new entrants will be, from day 1, put on to your regional average in terms of their basic payments. In terms of the couple support and other payments, they will be in exactly the same level playing field with other farmers in Scotland from day 1 as well. Clare Baker is right. We have to look at the national reserve in terms of how many new entrants would be included in that and how far back we go to define new entrants. 3 per cent is the figure at the moment that I have just said in my statement that we will have to substantially increase that. As a quid pro quo, if there is going to be a slower transition for the rest of the industry, we want to maximise the benefits for new entrants through maximising the national reserve. We do not quite know where that figure will take us, but I have got agreement from senior stakeholders and it is certainly the Government's view that it will increase from 3 per cent substantially to cater for that point. In terms of the environment, I should point out, given that Clare Baker mentioned the beef scheme in pillar 2 that, firstly, that is new money for the beef scheme in pillar 2. It will be for over three years, so it is £15 million a year for the first three years of the new policy, and that will have an environmental dimension to it as well. Over and above that, in pillar 2, we are putting extra resource in for agri-environment schemes, which were announced as part of the consultation process, so I have already announced that, and extra substantial resource for restoring petalins in Scotland, which is a very important measure, and we previously announced that in terms of additional resource compared to the previous rural development programme. I am confident that not only are we going to have a fairer policy in Scotland, not only are we going to target activity and productivity, it is also going to be a greener policy, not just because of measures taken by Brussels, but also because of measures decided here in Scotland and the budget decisions that we have taken in pillar 2. The final point was about the level of capping. As I explained, I think that it is a key principle that we should build into the new policy, which is that there is a cap beyond which basic payments should not go. Clearly, as we go through the transition from historic payments to area payments over the next five years, those with the largest amounts of land will gain the most, and therefore we should cap where that should go. As I have said, it will not immediately impact on many farmers in Scotland, especially in terms of where the payments for activity lie, but there are other measures in the cap that are mandatory in terms of the 5 per cent of regressivity, as it is known in European language, where automatically big payments will have a 5 per cent cut in any case, notwithstanding the cap that Scotland will put in place for payments. For that reason, I think that it is a fairer policy overall. I thank the cabinet secretary for his advance copy of his statement. I think that its contents will probably stop Jim Walker calling for Mr Lockhead's head on a plate, although I think that Brian Pack may now be going to take up that call. Can I just briefly begin by correcting some of the comment that the cabinet secretary has made in relation to the role of both the UK Government and previous Administrations in all of this? Of course, I have said it hundreds of times before, we would all have liked to have had the full convergence uplift, but I just want to put that in its true context, because if we had received it, it would have amounted to a 4.1 per cent increase in the total amount of cap support. That would have been welcome, but it would never have solved all of the problems that the cabinet secretary has faced. On the extra coupling issue, I reject any notion that the UK Government was reticent in bringing this forward. Indeed, I would argue strongly that it fought for it in Europe and has delivered it. Lastly, the decision of the previous Administrations to stick with historic payments that has been so disparaged within this statement was unanimously backed within this chamber. If I recall rightly, just as enthusiastically, the cabinet secretary has everyone else, so I think that there is a degree of crocodile tears on that one. The cabinet secretary has announced several measures involving new money, quite substantial amounts of it. Can I ask where that money is to come from? If the transition is to be gradual, shouldn't the introduction of capping follow the same model? Lastly, the fact is that vast amounts of money are going to be taken out of the most productive areas of Scotland, particularly in the beef sector. Would he ensure that other cabinet colleagues do everything that they can within their portfolios to help mitigate against the serious economic impact of that as those measures begin to bite? I remind Alex Ferguson that I have been negotiating with the UK team for the past few years and have been there witnessing the UK ministers seeking the phasing out of all pillar 1 over the course of this current policy, which should have left our farmers in Scotland with zero pillar 1 support by 2019, as opposed to the nearly £1.5 billion that we are discussing today. I think that the convergence uplift is a very important principle in that the money was given to the UK because of Scotland's low payments. Irrespective of whether it was £1 or £190 million that it did concern, the principle is that that was Scotland's money and it should have come to Scotland's farmers. In terms of Alex Ferguson's reference to my disparaging comments about decisions back in 2003-2005, I was simply making the point that it is very difficult to implement an area-based system in Scottish circumstances. Therefore, that was a very difficult decision to take back then. For understandable reasons, because it was an option of not to do that, the decision was taken not to go down area payments. However, we supported that position back then and I am not arguing with that. I am simply saying that it is because it was so difficult to implement an area-based scheme in Scotland given our circumstances and there was an alternative available, that is why a decision was taken. However, today we have no option, we have to go down the road to area payments. In terms of the economic impact in the most productive areas of Scotland, I have tried to lay out in the most reasonable terms in my opening statement how we have gone to great lengths and great expense in terms of the pillar 2 injection to try to mitigate as far as possible with the tools that we have available the impact on our most intensive livestock farms that play such a crucial role in producing food for our tables. Of course, it is not a uniform situation. Some recipients had perhaps de-stocked over the last few years and therefore should not be getting the same payments, but other farmers are still intensive farmers and deserve appropriate support for their activity. I recognise that this is a very important statement and it is also very complex, but I have a large number of members who wish to ask a question. If at all possible I would like the question brief and the answer brief too. I welcome the reference here as decided to be 2013 as opposed to 2015 to prevent tenancies being manipulated for unfair gain by landlords. Can the cabinet secretary expand on the overall measures to encourage active farming and crofting despite the UK brokered rock bottom settlement that cannot be unaffected by the UK's rebate that bedivels a fair settlement for Scottish farmers? As Rob Gibson says, because we have such an unfair budget in terms of Scotland's overall share of the cap budget, it is really important that we are as smart as possible with the resources that we have available in Scotland to support food production and environmental protection. That is why we have put the five pronged assaults into place on inactivity in Scotland so that we direct what funds we have available towards active farming. That applies to both the crofting counties and the rest of agriculture in this country. That is the right thing to do and it is supported by the people of Scotland, every public pound, to support genuine farmers. Is the cabinet secretary confident that the whole new cap takes into account robustly enough biodiversity, climate change and water quality for the public good? Yesterday, my colleague Cara Hilton expressed concern to the minister, Paul Wheelhouse, about the 11.2 per cent greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. While I welcome the farm carbon audit in pillar 2, can the cabinet secretary give more detail about how agricultural emissions will be tackled and whether regulation might be needed in this context? I can just say that it is a very important issue and I did lay out my statement some action that we are taking in terms of reducing the carbon footprint of Scottish agriculture, which is a win-win because we save a huge amount of money on farm for each farming business that takes appropriate action. There are around 10 green gains in the policy that we are announcing today. Many of them relate to reducing carbon footprint. I think that Scotland today sent a very clear message. We are a clean green country and in terms of the international marketplace, our food is going to be produced more sustainably than ever before and certainly more sustainably than many other areas of Europe and the world. I thank the cabinet secretary for an advanced copy of his statement and I also thank him for the courteous discussions that he has had on a cross-party basis on this CAP regime. I give a broad welcome for the transition support for the payment regions and for the island cattle payment, which will be particularly important for Orkney, if I may say so. The cabinet secretary will share my concern over the decline in cattle and sheep numbers, beef cattle down by 13 per cent, breeding sheep by 17 per cent since 2004. Does he believe that the measures that he has announced today will reverse that decline? Does the complexity of the new CAP that he has announced today, and indeed offered his concerns about today, mean more on sheep support, mean more farm inspections, sheep counted and other cross-compliance measures? Is he able, on the payment regions, to state what the definitions are for the LFA grazing categories A, B, C and D, which would be of course of help now to farms and crofters trying to work out what those measures mean? Clearly, a key objective of the policy announcement today is to support livestock production in Scotland, in particular, given that the new system of area payments has a huge impact on intensive farming in this country, be that in Shetland or Orkney or anywhere else in the country. Therefore, I think that it's the right thing to do to support livestock production in terms of cattle and sheep in particular. In terms of the complexity, as I said, because we're tailoring a European policy to Scottish circumstances, that brings some complexity with it. We were very careful about the third region option to ensure that it is implementable, otherwise backfire. That was concerns expressed by Brian Pack, as referred to by Alex Ferguson, and that's why we're using these fixed grazing categories under the LFA's classifications to deliver the third region scheme. In terms of inspections and bureaucratic burden, we will work very closely with stakeholders to ensure that we are acting within the rules, but making sure that bureaucracy is proportionate. Angus MacDonald, followed by David Stewart. I welcome the cabinet secretary's confirmation that there will be a sheep-coupled support scheme following an extensive negotiation on the issue with the UK Government. Despite the mixed signals coming from the sheep sector on coupling, can the cabinet secretary confirm that, when the voluntary coupled support will be reviewed in 2016-17? Can he also confirm that the eligibility condition for coupled support will require that farmers will have to identify and register animals as per the requirements of regulation through the sheep EID scheme? First, there are mixed views in the sheep sector in terms of the coupled schemes, because the driving thrust of our policies to target activity in genuine farming, and we have limited tools available, one of which is the coupled support. I have taken the decision that it is the right thing to do to utilise that, but it is being utilised in a limited fashion in terms of one of the three payment regions. Therefore, not all sheep producers in Scotland will be part of the sheep coupled scheme. It will be those in certain categories of land. Therefore, it will be a modest scheme for those people who happen to be in those parts of the country. Many sheep farmers will not be part of the sheep scheme. In terms of the bureaucracy, I have already indicated that we will try to keep that to a minimum, but we have to act within the rules. Many sheep farmers have spoken to have said that that is their price worth paying, and we should have the coupled scheme because it is available to us to use. In terms of how it interacts with sheep EID schemes, the chief agricultural officer is going to work very closely with the sheep sector and understand how we can implement the regulations in a proportionate way. The cabinet secretary will be well aware that the cap regulations allow a one-off mid-term opportunity to review the flexibility between pillars. Will the cabinet secretary undertake, over the course of the new SRDP, to assess and review the outcomes that are delivered by pillar 2 spending, particularly in relationship to rural community development? I should have said in response to the last question and repeated it or reiterated it to this question. In terms of what reviews are available, we will utilise them to the full, be that for pillar 2, the rural development programme, or be that for the sheep's coupled schemes, which was the previous questions that I forgot to answer. We have the opportunity to review the coupled schemes once a year. Other parts of the new arrangements either can't be reviewed or can be reviewed mid-term if we get the agreement of the European Commission. I will certainly take up that opportunity with the rural development programme in particular. Graham Dave. I like Claudia Beamish. I welcome the cabinet secretary's announcement to bring in and fund a carbon audit scheme for all farms. I was called for by the rural affairs committee, but can I ask him how quickly this will come into operation, how he expects or hopes it might influence on farm behaviour, and whether in years to come the charting of carbon footprint reduction or otherwise might have a bearing on financial support levels if this move doesn't have the desired effect? I really feel that our farming for a better climate initiative is very successful, and that is where we have a number of farmers participating to reduce their carbon footprint and what they have found is that they make significant savings on farm from less energy use, fertiliser use or whatever options they choose. I think that it is the interests of Scottish agriculture that we roll out, and that is why I am keen to fund carbon audits. In the hope that over the next five years all farms participate because then it is a win-win situation and I am very keen to support that. It is also very important to the international marketplace that we are seeing just as green as our competitors, if not greener and more sustainable. That is the interests of Scotland in terms of our climate change targets, as well as the bottom line for farming business in this country, and I will be pursuing that with vigor. Eileen McLeod will follow by Jamie McGregor. The cabinet secretary will be aware that Dumfries and Galloway has 20 per cent of the national beef herd and is of particular importance to the region. Can the cabinet secretary offer further detail on how pillar 2 will support improving the efficiency and sustainability of the sector, particularly in Dumfries and Galloway? I think that Dumfries and Galloway will hopefully gain from some of the measures that we have decided to adopt since the consultation document was published. The importance of Dumfries and Galloway to the beef sector and the dairy sector is extremely important, and that is why we have put such a substantial resource into pillar 2 for the beef improvement package. I anticipate that Dumfries and Galloway, South West Scotland, as well as North East Scotland and many of the big beef areas of Scotland will benefit significantly from what is a £45 million investment in the future of Scotland's beef industry. Jamie McGregor will follow by Rod Campbell. The rock bottom payment of only £10 per hectare for Elfa's category A land is simply not enough. Coupled with the U-headage payment, it is still going to be met with disappointment by those who saw this as an opportunity to regenerate ill sheep farming. It is simply too low and the fairs are... Can I get a question, please, Mr McGregor? A question? Yes. Will the minister make sure that he deals with the national sheep association to ensure that the bureaucracy associated with the U scheme is minimised, given the fairs of a flood of inspections and extra cross-compliance measures? Cabinet Secretary? Yes. I will work closely with the national sheep association and other stakeholders to make sure that we can do all that we can within the law to minimise bureaucracy. I should say, of course, that Jamie McGregor is completely missing the point over the payment rates in the third region. We want to reward activity. That is why the basic area payment is as low as possible in the more rough grazing of Scotland and then the cheap couple scheme adds in the activity payment. If the outcome, for instance, was 35 euros per hectare with the sheep scheme added to the 10-euro payment, that would be the same as the better land in Scotland in terms of the other rough grazing region. So region 2 and region 3 are both aimed at supporting activity and giving the right payment to the right parts of Scotland. The only people who will lose out from what I am proposing are large landowners who are inactive. I do not know which side Jamie McGregor is on, but I think that most people in Parliament will support that we are doing the right thing with this policy. Roger Campbell, followed by Eileen Murray. Can the cabinet secretary offer further information on how the Government will ensure new entrants and prospective new entrants will be made aware of the support on offer and what impact does the Government think that those measures will have? I care very deeply and I hope that that has come across over the past few years about attracting new blood into agriculture in Scotland. It is not always the easiest thing to support because of the world in which we live and the regulations that we have to cope with. I genuinely believe that, when there are new entrants who I understand for very proper reasons, we are looking for an overnight transition, when they see what support is available for new entrants, what they will receive from day 1 under the new regime that I have outlined today, as well as other support that is available through the rural development programme, I hope that they will take comfort that there is a huge step forward for new entrants in Scotland from announcements that the Scottish Government has made today, and we will continue to work closely with them in the years ahead. We need lifeblood, we need a new generation to produce food for our tables and have the skills in this country to make sure that we can do that. Eileen Murray, followed by Dave Thompson. I note from the supporting analysis that Dumfries and Galloway will lose £18 million per annum by 2019, rather than the £22 million that we anticipated, so that is of some comfort. Nevertheless, the transition arrangements will be important to our region in enabling farmers and the businesses that depend on them to adapt. Can the cabinet secretary expand on the arrangements for the transition period? For example, will reductions be equally spaced over the period of transition, or will they have a different sort of profile? I think that knowledge of the profile will be important in terms of businesses planning to adapt over that period. In terms of the impact on Eileen Murray's constituency in the wider region in which she is based, clearly there is only so much that we can do to mitigate the impact on large historic payments moving to area payments, but as the figures outlined by Eileen Murray illustrate, we have at least mitigated as far as we can the decline of funds for that part of Scotland. In terms of how the transition we manage will clearly be a formula that manages going from historic to area over the subsequent five years, it is very difficult to predict anyone's payment because every single farm business in Scotland is so diverse and so different. Clearly each farmer will be looking at today's announcement and working out what it means for them. We will make as much guidance available as possible and as clear language as possible to help people to understand the impact in their own businesses in the weeks and months ahead. I welcome the statement from the cabinet secretary and I am pleased that the capital grant scheme is being maintained. I wonder if the cabinet secretary can give us an indication of whether the budget for that scheme is going to be maintained at previous levels or even increased possibly. I will have the all figures in relation to the rural development programme should be made available to MSPs this afternoon if you have not received them already and Dave Thompson will find that we have protected the budget for the capital grant schemes for crofters in Scotland and we have listened closely to the representations that we had about ensuring that we had a separate fund and it was not confused with the small holders in Scotland. Overall, I think that it is a very good deal for Scotland's crofters and our crofting communities play such a vital role in maintaining our environment and producing food as well and of course what we have announced today will help target support towards active crofters in particular and island crofters in even more particular so it is a win-win for many crofters in Scotland. Before I call Alison Johnson, can I ask her if Jean Akart actually wants to ask a question? Was your name appearing and disappearing from my screen? Just nod if you do want a question. It's been answered, thank you. I would like to ask the cabinet secretary what formula was used to arrive at a cap of £400,000 per year, notably higher than the £254,000 voted for by MEPs. How many farms will this cap affect and how much money this enables to be distributed among smaller and less well-off farmers? As I indicated in my statement, there are already mandatory measures about reducing payments over a certain level by 5 per cent. That is happening to all payments. In terms of the cap that I announced today is an overall cap for basic payments and I have said €500,000. Clearly, the thrust of our announcements today is to reward activity. First, looking at the experience of the current policy, those with big payments but who are inactive will be frozen out completely if they are inactive. The top 10 recipients under the new policy will be different to the top 10 recipients, for instance, under the current policy. The amounts of funds received by the public purse for the next top 10 recipients under the new policy will be a fraction of what the top 10 receive at the current time under the current policy. That is a huge step forward for fairness. We picked the cap in terms of having a safeguard in place for the transition over the next five years. As we move from historic to area, clearly those with the biggest amounts of land in Scotland, where sometimes there is less link to activity, they will not be able to go beyond that cap. The cap itself, if it is to qualify for that, still has to be active farmers. We will keep that under review, but that will come into play halfway through the transition period. John Scott has a late bid for a question. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the real losers in his proposals will be those in payment region 2 in improved hill and upland areas but still classified as B, C and D areas in the ELFAS scheme? Those are difficult choices where to draw the line between what is in each of the three payment regions. Clearly the better lands in region 1, but the region 2 and 3 are the split of the rough grazing area. It is clearly a complex and difficult decision to take. That is why we have worked very closely with stakeholders on this issue. Many of the stakeholders, not many means all of them, but many stakeholders were absolutely adamant that we had to split the rough grazing into two regions so we do not overcompensate the less active areas. The wider policy is geared towards activity. I hope that we have the balance right across all three payment regions in Scotland. Had we had a better budget from Mr Scott's Conservative colleagues in the UK Government, we would have done even bigger payments coming over the next five years. Unfortunately, we left the worst pillar 1 budget in the whole of Europe. Therefore, we have missed the opportunity to increase those payments so that the member thinks they are going to be difficult as opposed to having to reduce some of them. I thank you that I end the statement from the Cabinet Secretary on the new common agricultural policy. We are now moving to the next item of business, which is a debate on motion number 10262, in the name of Derek Mackay and local government elections, delivering improvements in participation and administration. Members who wish to take part in the debate should press a request speak button now, and I will give a few moments for members and ministers to change places. I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion in my name on the subject of Scotland's electoral future. While the business of voting and elections is a subject of keen interest to everyone in this chamber, unfortunately too many of our citizens do not share our enthusiasm. Only last month, turnout in Scotland for the elections to the European Parliament was just 33.5 per cent, and this disappointing level of participation will not have surprised anyone. It might even have exceeded some people's expectations, rather depressingly. In recent decades, the general trend has been towards a decline in voting at all elections across the UK. Turnout at the 2012 Scottish local government elections was just 39 per cent, although that was significantly better than the 31 per cent south of the border. In the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections, turnout was around 50 per cent. Although that figure appears encouraging by comparison, it still means that half of those who were registered to vote did not feel inclined to do so. Presiding Officer, this has to be a matter of concern to every one of us here, while voter apathy may be seen as embarrassing for professional politicians like ourselves. In fact, it is more serious than that. Last month saw the election to the European Parliament. A great deal has been said about the results of the election, and in particular the fact that Scotland has elected a UKIP NEP. There has been some party political debate about who is responsible for allowing UKIP to gain a foothold in Scotland. However, temporarily, one issue that may well have been a factor and which has even wider significance is that far too many of our citizens did not feel sufficiently engaged enough to vote for any party. What that means is that the 67 per cent of Scotland's registered voters who were not inclined to vote in the European elections missed the opportunity to influence who would represent them and make decisions that will affect them and their families over the next five years. Those turnout figures seem at odds with the fact that the public, as we know, are keenly interested in how the nation's affairs are run. From our regular engagement with constituents, we all know that people of Scotland care passionately about issues that affect their daily lives. They feel strongly about issues such as the standard of health care that they receive in our hospitals, the quality of education that their children receive at school, as well as every other aspect of Government policy affecting the health and wellbeing of themselves, their families and indeed their communities. There is no doubt in my mind that low turnout is not a reflection of the apathy of voters. Rather, those figures are an indication of the alienation felt by a large proportion of the electorate towards current political and electoral processes. The decline in voting is not restricted to Scotland, of course, or the rest of the UK. It is a trend that is recognised across all mature democracies. However, this Scottish Government is not prepared to accept the current democratic gap and we are now taking positive steps to address the underlying causes. On 9 April 2014, we published the consultation document Scotland's electoral future delivering improvements in participation and administration. The consultation concerns how we can improve the quality of democracy in Scotland by encouraging wider engagement and participation in elections. The document looks at both participation and also electoral processes and procedures. Some parts of the consultation, believe it or not, are undeniably technical and look at ways of improving the electoral process. If we can improve the process and even make it easier for people to vote, that might be one way of increasing the numbers of people who bother to vote. Vote counting in local government elections in Scotland is now done electronically. We readily accept this new technology and this Parliament has already recognised that the process in the last set of local elections worked fairly well. I do not think that anyone would want to see the single transferable vote process carried out with a manual count with the likely delays that there would be. Our consultation document asks people to consider if we want to go further. If electronic vote counting is acceptable, might we consider whether electronic voting would also be a desirable step forward? Or, if not, might we explore the potential for other innovations such as universal postal voting, where all voters would be issued with a ballot paper by post, which they could return by post, or indeed deliver to the polling place by hand in a traditional way? The Scottish Government is seeking the views of as wide a cross-section of the nation as possible following the consultation closing date on 11 July. We will publish an analysis of responses in the autumn with proposals for action following on from that. In addition to the written consultation, we are also undertaking some direct stakeholder engagement. I have established a group comprising representatives from key sectors, including electoral professionals, the third sector, youth organisations and political parties. That group met for the first time on 28 May, and I intend to convene another meeting in the near future to consider the follow-up to the consultation. My aim is to get the perspective of a wide range of communities of interest from across Scotland and a cross-party consensus as well. We will explore the issues that deter people from voting and consider how that can best be tackled. Ultimately, we will look to build a pathway towards greater and more meaningful democratic engagement. Will the range of political groups represented here today may differ on many things? I am confident that we are united in our desire for Scotland to have a more vibrant and actively engaged electorate. In seeking to encourage debate this afternoon, I would ask members to consider the following. Young people have lower than average turnout rates. People from ethnic minorities are also less likely to be registered to vote than their counterparts. Research has shown a definite correlation between areas of multiple deprivation and low voter turnout. How can we engage more effectively with those particular groups? Part of the answer may lie in focusing on why so many people are disinclined to vote. Apathy derives from people's sense that their vote won't make a difference and how can we convince them otherwise? Part of that problem would appear to lie in a certain lack in faith and political parties. Although we in this chamber may find it hard to believe, clearly some of our citizens are not entirely impressed by their political representatives. Some voters think that politicians and parties are all the same and are unconvinced by our ability to bring about real change. Who is responsible? Is low voter participation the fault of our electoral systems and those who administer them? Do we need to introduce new, more up-to-date methods of voting more in tune with the 21st century? Is it the fault of our political parties? Are we not communicating directly with voters to help people to understand what they are voting for and how their vote will make a difference? There is also not a role for schools in helping to ensure that young people fully understand the democratic process. I have asked a number of questions in the consultation and the cross-party panel this afternoon. I am looking forward to hearing the thoughts and ideas of other members as we take this work forward. I feel that this is an issue in which the Parliament can work together to focus on that way forward. In any event, I will conclude by reiterating that the Scottish Government is fully committed to examining all those policy and process issues, which have, of course— John Mason. I note what he said about introducing new methods of voting, but I also note in the consultation paper that it refers to multiple voting methods. Some people like the traditional way of voting of going and filling in a ballot paper, so we take that on board and accept that that is a desire of some people. John Mason poses a very good question. Many people enjoy the custom of going to the polling station and casting their vote in the traditional way. Even as we are exploring the potential of a pilot for all postal voting, that is why we propose that, even in that scenario, you can vote by post but also potentially go to the polling station as you would normally would to cast that ballot in the traditional form. We are very mindful of not losing those people who have voted consistently and hold by the traditions that are in place. I am also very mindful that, when asked in a previous study why some people are motivated to vote, the top answer came out as it was their duty to vote. That must remain a consideration in the work that we do as well. The afternoon is not intended to spark a party political debate over who's fault it is, but it is a way forward to encourage more people to vote to engage in the democratic process and not just from election to election, but between those elections as well. I am sure that the debate that will have in Parliament this afternoon will stimulate that dynamic discussion to help me to take forward the necessary proposals to address participation in the nation's elections. I now call on Sarah Boyart to speak to and move amendment 10262.2, Ms Boyart, up to eight minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I very much agree with much of what Derek Mackay said in his opening remarks. I think that that point is up to all of us across the chamber to talk not just with each other but actually to key stakeholders. As importantly, to people who do not normally vote, we need to make sure that, in some way, their voices are part of our discussion. I agree that it is shocking that, at the last local government elections, we had less than four in ten people turned out to vote. That simply is not good enough. If it was just the local government elections, we could say, let's just fix that, but we know just a few weeks ago that we had an equally low turnout for the European elections. The reason that I wanted to put in my amendment something about not just the technicalities but the politics, was that I know on the night of the elections in the Lothian Count, looking at the different boxes and we weren't able to look too closely at them, but it was very obvious that there were some areas that had incredibly low turnout, below 20 per cent and yet there were others that were up to 50 per cent. Social class wasn't a whole explanation, but it was part of that explanation. I wanted to put that on the agenda. It's an ad amendment because it adds to the minister's motion. We are in the middle of the consultation period by the Scottish Government, so I want to focus on both the technical side in terms of the mechanics and the changes that we could make now, and secondly, the point that I think the minister spent much of his time on, looking about how we connect and reconnect people to the political process, which I think is the bigger challenge and it's one that we all have to be involved in. I think that in terms of the mechanics, I'm very grateful to the work that Ann McTaggart and John Wilson did as part of the local government committee's effort in this respect, because I think they examined many of the clear options that are available. I think that looking at how we ensure that people are eligible to vote, looking at how they find it easier to vote, looking at how we address the fact that far too many people are not even registered to vote. I think that it might be useful to get some analysis and I wonder if the minister would be able to do that, to pull together some of the analysis behind this. There has been work done, IPPR, electoral reform society, academics, just even dipping a toe into the debate. There is clearly a lot of work out there. Some of it is UK-wide, some of it is in other countries, particularly other Western democracies, where researchers have looked at this, but I think that there's a bit more work that we could do just to look at some of the insights and the best practice that have been suggested. At the starting point, making it easier to register, because there are far too few people on the register who should be on the register, what more can we do there to support alternatives? One suggestion that Ann McTaggart and John Wilson refer to in their report is an issue about continuous registration and the experience in Northern Ireland. It's been suggested by others about the idea of using day-to-day contact with local government or with other state institutions to have wider availability of forms, to use post offices, government offices, schools, universities, a whole range of organisations for whom it would not be breaking the bureaucratic back to have a set of forms that people could fill in and hand in. Or if you're registering for council tax, a whole set of ways that we could potentially get people on to the register. Voting is a democratic right, it's a fundamental democratic right, but we need to do more to enable people to exercise that right. So eligibility to vote, registration on the day for those who've missed out, I was thinking about it in terms of a lot of my work locally is with people who are homeless, people who move houses a lot, they are actually the people most likely to miss out on the regular registration points that come through the door. So there's been some research in the US that said that significantly increased turnout. Would that be practical for us? What would be the downside? It certainly benefits in terms of people who are the most dispossessed that would give them at least the chance to vote. Secondly, making it easier to actually cast your vote. Now the electronic machine would have massive advantages on the night where you could press the button and hey presto suddenly we know what the count was. It would remove a huge amount of transparency and the capacity to double check and we would have to rely pretty much entirely on machines. I have a natural reservation about that. I don't know if it's a more a 20th century, rather than a 21st century person, but I think the issue of probity and accountability and security is something that should actually be something that we're all interested in and just share mistakes of programme. So I have reservations about that, but I am very attracted to thinking about some of the 21st century solutions that were suggested by electoral reform society. I think we should at least look at what the practicalities would be, whether it's voting online, voting by phone or smart phone. Again, there are potentially cyber issues and I think that was mentioned in terms of finance that's been in the news over the last 24 hours. Although we need to look at it, I think there are potentially some big challenges there. The thing that really struck me, though, in reading the report by Ann McTaggart and John Wilson, was the issue of universal postal voting. I was instructed by my team to get on the postal vote a few elections ago. They were worried that I just wouldn't get round to voting on the day. When you actually talk to people, there is a real issue about having to vote on the day and the research that's been done and the pilots that's been done in England, Wales and in Scotland show that there's a really significant uplift in voting around the level of about 20 per cent if people have the opportunity which is sent through their door automatically for a postal vote. As John Mason said, it wouldn't necessarily stop handing that vote in because that feels like you really have voted. For a lot of people, that could be quite a game changer. It would make them aware that the election was taking place. Again, there are always checks and balances, but I wonder if that's something that we should look at really seriously. In the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales, there was a four times higher turnout for those who were involved in universal postal voting. In the Scottish local authorities, I've tried it again significantly higher, so I think that in the spirit of cross-party consensus we'd be prepared to look at those kind of issues and see what the real choices might be. I don't think that there are technical fixes, but I think that we have to look at what could be improved in terms of practical measures that would help. We owe that to people who haven't voted thus far and we owe it to democracy to try and improve it. Even in the Scottish Parliament in 2003, we dropped below 50 per cent, so there is something about voting more easy, making people more aware about the system but also making them want to vote. I think that that is absolutely crucial. My amendment focuses on what makes people want to vote. It highlights underrepresentation, particularly of young people and of people from low income backgrounds and from areas of multiple deprivation. That's not exclusively the only groups that don't vote. I think that the low registration amongst ethnic minority communities needs to be addressed, as does the significant under-voting by students in local elections. On one level, you can understand why people don't vote in terms of the disconnect, but if we think about the services provided by our local authorities, they affect absolutely everybody. I think that we really need to get that message across. If we take young people for example, what more can we do in terms of awareness? I'd be interested in looking back to the Scottish Parliament's work, outreach work over the last 15 years. There is a whole cohort that we could study. Has that actually made a difference? I will not be alone at having done endless school meetings and endless meetings in this Parliament. Have we made a difference? The issue about social disadvantage, I'll come back to that at more length in my closing remarks. I'm very grateful to getting the eight minutes, Presiding Officer. I move the amendment in my name and look forward to this afternoon's debate. With the latest turnout and participation figures for elections to local government, it is clear that action is really needed. However, I was interested in the comments of the Electoral Reform Society in the run-up to today's debate on the Government's consultation. Indeed, I agree with its central argument that a sense of this consultation is conflating two separate issues. The first is the broad, ongoing discussion about the future shape of local democracy, at the centre of which is increasing community participation and shifting decision making to local level. How do we improve engagement with communities? How do we bring them to the decision making process? Fundamental questions, which I think we're all trying to answer. Accordingly, one would hope that if we're successful in this regard and are able to rejuvenate local governments and democracy, then a marker of our success would surely be increased voter turnout and participation. Or putting it more succinctly, this consultation should not be seen in isolation, but it is part of a larger process for reform. In this regard, I have some sympathy for Sarah Boyack's amendment, although I must say that this process of centralisation did not magically appear in 2007. When we consider local government ring fencing, it is clear that the tendency to wrestle power away from local authority was as much in evidence before under the old regime as it is now. John Mason. I wonder if we would accept that it is also a question of power going down beyond local government and that sometimes local communities are at a lower level than local government necessarily is. Yes, I would accept that. It has to go right down to the bottom. We've had a top-down approach rather than a bottom-up approach. I was also saying, I think, a need for discussion and debate on these broad issues, the pace of this consultation would be to focus on the administration of the voting process. However, I happen to think that there is an elephant in the room. It is surely worth considering whether the very system that we use to elect our councillors has any effect, positive or negative, on turnout. It's a system, rather, I'm talking about, more broadly, or any effect on the wider participation in community engagement with the councils. I accept that this specific consultation is not the mechanism for addressing the issue, but I do think that it's time to look at the impact of the single transferable vote system on local government and their elections. Indeed, as matters stand, when we have single transferable vote, we are considering not what we were voting for, why we vote, but not how we vote. It makes no sense for me for us to exclude this from the general discussion on the future of local governments in Scotland. In fact, in some respects, this is actually an ideal time to consider this issue. Given that we've now had two elections under STV, with one of those as a standalone, I think we should assess the impact it has on participation. When the local government-scotland bill was debated, its proponents told us that it would strengthen democracy, increase choice and reinvigorate local government. I have to ask whether this has actually delivered all it's meant to, or rather have we been left with a system that was simply as complicated as a result of compromise between two systems. I don't also think the way forward is to have compulsory voting. In Belgium and Australia and where we had it, there is a very high percentage of spot ballots, which I suppose is one way of protesting, but it serves absolutely no purpose as we have here. Talking of a duty to vote, when we look at the countries who voted for the first time, there's always a very, very high turnout, and this is because it's their duty to vote. I mean, I just wonder if we haven't got too many elections. How many times have we all been told on the doorstep by many people all over the country, politely? I've been told, go and see a taxi dermist, even in deepest Renfrewshire. I think that's because it's really because people just are not focused on the whole process. Coming back to the consultation, my feeling is that it serves to remove barriers to participation from the mechanics of the voting process. As I discussed earlier, there's a bigger task of getting people interested and involved. We've actually probably got to go from the bottom up. We've got to get people engaged and make it as straightforward as possible for them to vote and also to register to vote, as Sarah and my colleague says. I was also grateful to my colleagues again on the local government committee Ann, Ann McTaggart and John Wilson, who undertook to investigate this area last year on the committee's behalf. It's not an easy task, but while making the process easier, we must also ensure that the integrity of the process is maintained, and whilst we don't, by and large, have any great problem with electoral fraud, I think we should always be vigilant. It's also worth bearing in mind what we're aiming to achieve and what can be achieved. We're aiming to achieve a higher turnout and greater participation of people in the electoral process. Of course, there are countries such as North Korea where you have 100 per cent turnout, but regardless of recent comparisons, I'm sure that that's not the Scottish Government's aim to replicate their efforts, even if it is granted independence. Of course, there is a proportion of people on the electoral register who, for one reason or another, should not be there. Indeed, when I spoke to the Electoral Commission, they said that it was previously suggested that there are only 85.5 per cent of the records on the electoral register are accurate, for many, many reasons, most of them genuine. Presiding Officer, I welcome the consultation, although I think that it is part of a wider effort, and there are many other factors that must be considered if we have to breathe life back into our local democracy. Thank you very much. We now move to open debate. Four minute speeches are there by Colin, Kevin Stewart, to be followed by Alex Rowley. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Mr Buchanan has already mentioned the work that John Wilson and Anne McTaggart have done on behalf of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, and I won't go over in any depth the work that they have carried out, because I know that they will have a fair amount to say on the subject. I am pleased that the Local Government and Regeneration Committee took the option to look at voting, and beyond that, in terms of our current workload, I hope that we will see increased participation coming from, for example, the community empowerment bill, which I think is extremely important in getting people to participate locally. A number of colleagues, Mark McDonald, Anne McTaggart and I, recently undertake a visit to Germany, Denmark and Sweden, a whistle-stop tour. One of the things that I can never get over is the fact that when we talked to local politicians in these countries about participation and community engagement, they found it very difficult to get what we were on about in time. That is the kind of attitude that we need. It is not to say that everything in the garden is rosy in those places, because they are seeing turnout reducing too, but their turnout rates are still much higher than they are here, particularly for local government elections. Although there were great concerns in Germany about putting the local government and European elections together, there was a bit of a fear that the local government turnout would actually reduce. Interesting, I have to say, Presiding Officer, I have not checked those results and turnouts at something that I should probably do. One of the things that I think is absolutely vital is to leave no stone unturned in terms of trying to ease the process of folk being able to vote. I have believed for a very long time that 16 and 17-year-olds should be given the right to vote. I am glad that that is happening in the referendum. I believe that that should happen in every election, because I think that there is sometimes a disconnect. Ms Boyack was talking about going into schools and talking to kids there. A lot of the time, younger kids are particularly enthusiastic about the entire process, particularly if you have a wee vote while you are there. I think that something happens at a certain point. I do think that if we allowed 16 and 17-year-olds to vote at every election, we could keep folk engaged a bit longer. I do not really have time, Mr Buchanan, I am really sorry. The universal postal voting pilot is an immensely good idea. We should be looking online, telephone and app voting. Mr Buchanan talked about integrity, and we have to make sure that folk trust the system. I do think that sometimes folk are a bit suspicious about new voting methods. Every single thing that we put in place is robust, because what we do not want to see is a situation like the Robin Williams film Man of the Year, where Tom Dobbs is a comedian, is elected president of the United States because of faulty, delicoy voting machines. I think that we have got to test, we have got to make sure that things are absolutely robust, but we have got to do it because I really do think that we have got to increase participation. I would say that there is a very modest amount of time available for interventions, but it is only a small amount. Alex Rowley is followed by John Mason. I am reminded that it was Billy Connally that said, do not vote, you will encourage them. This morning, at the local government committee, I mentioned to the minister that in Orkney and Shetland, for example, local government elections, voting was a bit higher than it was in the mainland, and they do not have political parties. For me, that is the starting point, is that all political parties, political groups, need to take some kind of responsibility for how people actually feel. I accept that Tavis is obviously elected in Shetland, but generally in local government they are independence. I think that political parties need to accept some kind of responsibility, the way that we campaign, the way that we organise, the way that we tend to avoid answering questions directly, and the way that we tend to campaign against each other. The council tax is a classic of that, and moment by election I was forever being accused of the same things that I had not said about council tax. Really all we do is turn the public off. Fundamentally, a key issue is political parties themselves, I would suggest. The public have had enough of us, and we really need to reform how we go about doing our business. If you look at the evidence for the local government committees, while looking at the issue, it was Professor James Mitchell that said, when we look at turnout and participation in elections for different levels of government across liberal democracies, we find that turnout is far higher in elections for levels of government that have more power. Again, that is an area that we need to look at. Local government, social work and education will take up between 60% to 76%, 80% of the budget. You take some of the other statutory services around that. When we talk about devolving into communities, we are at the margins of local government budgets. We need to look at that. We need to look at an honest discussion about how local government is funded. I did at the local government committee this morning. I ask the minister if he would accept that once we get past the referendum, regardless of the outcome of the referendum, perhaps we can then get everyone in the chamber to start to come together and have a serious debate and a serious discussion about what local government looks like and more crucially how local government is funded. There is major pressures on a game without getting into a debate in terms of local government finance and the amount of funds that they have actually got. We know from demographics, we know from the number of young people that are coming into the care of local authorities, the demands on local government services are grown and grown. Regardless of the political colour or the government in this place or any other place for that matter, we need to have a serious, grown-up discussion with local government and with local communities about how local government is funded. I do hope that once we get past that referendum, I accept that it would be difficult to get it before then, but once we get past the referendum, we actually can start to have that discussion. I agree that we need to look at all those other technical issues about improving voting. There is something more fundamental at the heart of the issue of why people are not voting. I am supporting the motion put forward, the amendment put forward by Sarah Boyack. Again, I am sure that many people in here that are campaigning will have saw for themselves when you go out and we are an electoral register and you start to knock up in areas. If you go into areas where there is higher deprivation, you actually find that there are a lot of streets where there are just house after house after household where they are not an electoral register. Again, I think that that is why it is right to flag that point. I hope that the minister will take that on board and we can have consensus at the end of this debate today. In conclusion, yes, all those other things that have been talked about we should look at, but much more fundamentally in that, let's look at ourselves, let's look at political parties and let's look at how we finance local government. John Mason, to be followed by Tavis Scott. While the consultation looks at different methods of voting, I do again want to underline the point that was made in paragraph 212, where it says that the Electoral Commission has previously recommended that a new model of multiple voting methods should be developed. That certainly should include the traditional method of physically voting on a piece of paper in a polling place. I am happy that there will be additions to that and alternatives as we already have some. I think that improvements could be made, especially to the location of polling places and so I would like to focus on polling places in the short time available. We have a number of issues in my own constituency and I have raised some of those with Glasgow City Council and have seen some movement, but on the whole the council has been unresponsive. Firstly, on the location of polling places, one of my wards is Calton, which is a very mixed area. We have a lot of new housing, mainly flats around High Street, Glasgow Cross and Andrews in the Square, which some members may be familiar with, yet there is no polling place at all in that area. Residents who live there tend to look to the merchant city and the city centre for work and leisure opportunities. I do not look further east into traditional Calton, but they are expected to vote at a polling place, which is over 4,000 electors in the one building, which is located outside their area. Over time, attitudes may change and I would like to think that they would change and people are more relaxed about going to different parts of the city, but the current reality is that we are expecting voters there to vote in an area that they are not familiar with and may not feel comfortable in. I do accept that compared to rural areas, the actual distances in miles within the city are not so great. However, there is an issue in Glasgow, and I suspect in other cities, where people may be reluctant to travel to certain areas, either because they are unfamiliar with them or whatever, and we do want to make it as easy as possible for people to get to the ballot box. That is not just about staffing and resources, and that is an additional polling place that could not be found where I consider it is needed. The contrast with that is in Berlanark, where I stay myself. There are two primary schools just literally across the road from each other, and one of them has a community centre attached to it. Logically, I would have thought that the community centre would have been the place for everybody to vote, but no. The two schools are completely closed and each of the two schools across the road from each other are polling places, and there there are fewer than 3,000, in fact 2,819 electors at the last count, and with our 17 per cent turnout, 476 people between them at the European elections. The fact that they are not using a community centre seemed to me the obvious place to look at. Looking at the wider issue of polling places, there clearly is resistance from parents to schools and nurseries being closed, and related to that is the fact that we expect people to go into often quite a large and maybe not very welcoming building, which is completely quiet on polling day, apart from the few people who are actually going in to vote. Frankly, I do not find that, and I think that a lot of people do not find that a very attractive setting. A comparison that I would draw is with people visiting libraries, which has also been a problem over the years, and to be fair to Glasgow Life, they have made inroads in this by changing the locations of libraries, which now often share a swimming pool or a cafe and where there is IT available, and there is a lot of things to draw people into the building where the library actually is. That may not be possible for legal reasons at the moment, but I think that we should be thinking about moving that, instead of bringing the people to where the ballot boxes are, let's take the ballot boxes to where the people are. Could we do some in shopping centres, in supermarkets, in coffee shops? What about giving people a voucher to have a decent coffee if they voted, rather than finding them, which is maybe the negative way of doing it? On Labour's amendment, I would say again that empowering local government and local communities is not the same thing, and I think that we need to move power down to the local communities. I know Colin Tavish Scott to be followed by John Bull. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Has there any help to John Mason in the recent European elections? We didn't use any schools at all. I take Mr Mason's point absolutely about parents being darned and odd when their kids aren't at school, and we've used now for some elections community halls and other facilities and so on and so forth. I do take his point, so I wasn't quite sure about his point about buying everyone a cup of coffee before they voted. There used to be some law about treating in the past. I don't know if that one's still on the statute book, and I'm sure he wasn't suggesting that, but I take his point. I have to say to Alex Rowley that I hate to tell him this, but I was a Liberal Democrat when I was elected to Shetland Islands Council, but he's absolutely right. There are no political candidates or rather political councillors in my part of the world, nor there in Orkney, but it's a judgment call, isn't it? Because, just as Alex Rowley and indeed the Minister represented their parties with great distinction at local government level, they probably knew what they were going to achieve when they were taking through policies in their councils. I'd have to say at times with my own council at home they don't necessarily know what's going to happen at the start of a full council meeting, whether it's on the school estate or whether it's on funding for elderly people or whatever. I guess these are the choices we have, but it did strike me that when he was making those observations, one of the other aspects to it is encouraging younger people to stand, not just to vote, but to stand for election. I mean, look at the youthful Mr Mackay here. He was a young man when he was first elected. I was 27 when I was first elected to Shetland Islands Council. I dare say I was 20 years younger than anyone else in the chamber, and that was a shocking indictment, I think, of our ability to attract a younger generation into stand and to take their role in that sense. I absolutely take the Minister's point in his introduction about Europe and what that meant. I think we were very different where we not in terms of how those European elections worked out, because at least we kept our debate about the rights and wrongs of some of those big issues, whereas some of the parties that were elected across Europe had some pretty unpleasant sides to them. Indeed, when I look at Greece, I think there's some trouble at store in terms of how that will come. The only thing I would observe—maybe I could observe this to all of my political colleagues across the parties—is that the only party that really made Europe the big issue was the party got hammered in those elections, so it doesn't have to automatically follow that if you take on the issue that is being debated in that election, it does you any good whatsoever. I tried to think that that was for other and different reasons, rather than because it should have been about Europe. I do agree that the importance of this debate is to concentrate on what we could do to engage and encourage more people to vote at a local level, and many good ideas have been made so far. Can I give the Minister maybe three brief examples that I think are worth considering? The first one is again on John Mason's point about not just local elections but local communities. The Land Reform Review Group was published just the other week, and they did set out a path for how local communities can have more control over their areas. That's a very different approach to the one that we've maybe seen in recent times that Cameron Buchanan referred to, and it certainly is a party that favours radical land reform and took the Land Reform Act through the first Parliament of this institution after 1999. I think the review group's work is important, and we in this Parliament have that opportunity to help create strong and engaged local communities. The other two examples that I might give to the Minister would be firstly local income tax. I know that it's something that he and I probably share, although he's probably not allowed to at the moment, but hopefully, as Alec Riley rightly said, when we get past the referendum, whatever result it comes to, we might get back into the real proper debate about how we fund our local councils because they don't have financial accountability. They didn't have a lot in truth in 1999. I'm not arguing for a minute that the situation was perfect in 1999. As Sarah Boyack and I, who shared a lot of ministerial time together, will remember a lot of those debates, but we didn't make, frankly, any much progress in that time. However, it's got worse since then. I don't expect, of course, to have it my turn to grieve me on this, but please, I'm not making a political point. I'm just observing, in a practical sense, the councillors that I elect at home in my part of the world, and I have less financial accountability than they've ever had before. For those of us who do come from a local government background, I think we all want to see that reversed on that change, so maybe we can genuinely have that debate in the future. The final point is just on that on centralisation. I do think that it's important also to try and make some progress to rebalance where the power sits. I think that's a very live agenda for all of us. I'd like to see our councils with more responsibility, but I do think that that goes hand in hand with the financial accountability, which I suspect we all crave. I welcome today's debate as it deals with many of the issues that the Local Government and Regeneration Committee examined as part of a short inquiry into the 2012 Scottish Local Government elections, with Anne McTaggart myself acting as reporters for the inquiry. I'd like to say this opportunity to thank those organisations and individuals who provided evidence during that investigation that allowed us to draw up a report. We made a number of recommendations to the Scottish Government for change and, more importantly, improvement in the election process. It supports advances in the voting methods that the minister has outlined today, while recognising the need for thorough security to be in place in the election process. The 2012 local government elections, as previously mentioned, recorded a voter turnout figure of 39.8 per cent. That was the lowest voter turnout since unitary authorities were created, but the first decoupled elections since 1995. The committee endorsed the electoral commission's position that discussions should take place between local authorities, political parties and electoral management board for Scotland regarding local restrictions on the display of election posters. In evidence, we heard that there may be issues about the lack of publicity around the election day, particularly in relation to the banning of electoral material on lampposts and other billboards. Furthermore, the electoral commission has commissioned research on the issue of an alternative voting day. For example, it has been suggested that the alternative day may be on a Saturday. Research conducted by ICM on behalf of the electoral commission highlights the many reasons for people voting, and with 24 per cent of those stating that the lack of time and or too busy to vote found to be topping that particular poll. At the 2012 Scottish local government election, there was also 16,742 postal votes were rejected. With that accounting for 4 per cent of the total return, the high rejection of postal votes is clearly a matter of concern. Voters were not notified that their ballot papers had been rejected. This matter needs to be addressed as a priority, especially in respect to ensuring best practice in terms of the verification of the ballot papers. When talking about engaging with the wider public, there are good examples currently being applied in written evidence to the inquiry. Dr James Gilmour from the Electoral Reform Society made reference to the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland visiting secondary schools to get pupils to register on the electoral role, something that has been mentioned previously in this debate, but something that maybe should be taken forward to ensure that we get young people on the electoral role. There are significant aspects when it comes to voting itself, and in particular the ordering of the ballot papers. There was considerable evidence of alphabetical voting, with around 60 per cent of voters giving their first preference to the candidate higher up the paper in the 2007 local government elections, as identified by Curtis and Marsh in their report in 2008. The report from the committee recommended that some form of ordering should be looked at in time for the next 2017 Scottish local government elections. I would cite Ron Goul's suggestion that ordering for each word should be determined by a ballot of all candidates. I always find the publication of Scottish council elections results and statistics by Boshel, Denver and Stevens, published by the University of Scotland and the Commonwealth. statistics by Boshel, Denver and Stevens, published by the University of Lincoln in 2012, offers useful analysis and context in terms of the turnout. There are a number of other issues that we should be aware of when we are discussing local government elections and should be taking forward. I welcome the work being done by the Scottish Government in terms of its consultation. Clearly, we have to get the message right to the electorate. We have to make sure that all the systems that can be put in place are utilised to maximise the vote, whether that be in local government elections, Scottish Government elections or any other elections that may be held within Scotland. So we have to look to the future and find systems that actively engage with voters to make sure that they turn out. I am keen to contribute to the debate on the subject of local government elections, delivering improvements in participation and administration, given my position as a member of the local government and regeneration committee and my previous role as a Glasgow city councillor and, in general, having a huge interest in encouraging people to vote. From my own experience, I too recognise the pattern of chronic disengagement between communities and their local representatives. I am deeply concerned by the 20 per cent fall in turnout for local government elections since 1999, and I fear that that could be a continuing trend if we do not take action to address the problems that we face now. It has been well documented that a turnout is low, as we have experienced in the recent years, and it has potential to lead to a democratic deficit of local government in Scotland. The result of that is an absence of democratic accountability and a weak mandate for local councillors to assume any form of control over the decision-making process. The only way around the depressing lack of engagement in local government is to hand over real power and influence to authority areas across the country. If people understand that their local council has the ability and, crucially, the resources to bring about change to their community, they will understand the value of their vote. What is needed is a radical approach that provides for local government in Scotland and affords opportunities for community development and the empowerment of ordinary people in the decision-making process. Local government should be an outward looking and seek to engage with communities at every stage of its process. I firmly believe that a system should be put in place that establishes a clearer distinction between the roles of central and local government in determining council budgets. That will allow a fairer budget settlement for local authorities, while also making it far clearer to ordinary electors what the role of each local government actually does. It is only when people know who they are voting for and what they are voting for and why they can communicate the value of the local government elections and the impact that it has on their communities. Another issue that I believe requires urgent attention is the participation of women as council candidates. We know that, less than one in four councillors are women—a figure lower than that for both MSPs and MPs—it is for all political parties and local governments to reverse that trend. We must ensure that we have a system of local government that truly reflects the diversity of the people that it claims to represent. We have seen the decline in turnout in voter participation in local government, a growing gender gap in local elections and an unassessed inequality in voting for younger and economically disadvantaged citizens, as previously mentioned by my colleague Sarah Boyack. We must work together to address each of those points in order to improve the participation in elections and the administration of local government. We should move towards increasing voter turnout by enfranchising 16 and 17-year-olds and allowing for better public access and information. We should also seriously consider the introduction of alternative voting methods, including proxy voting, postal voting, electronic machine voting, online voting and telephone voting, to facilitate the accessibility of elections. Through those proposals, we may be able to achieve a greater efficiency, transparency and accountability in Scottish local government. I will now call on Mark McDonald to be followed by Cara Hilton. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I take on board the point about ensuring that we can get people registered to vote, and I think that that is absolutely critical. One of the things that I would say as well is that we need to ensure that electoral registers are kept up-to-date. One of the things that I encountered recently in the Dunfermlym by-election was when I would knock on doors and find that there were people on the electoral register at an address who I was told had not lived at that address for between five to eight years, yet their name was still listed against an address. It is good to get people on to the register, but we have to ensure that when they are no longer resident in an area, we can get those names taken off the register, because again that will impact on issues such as turnout and participation. I think that the discussion around voting methods is an important one. I think that there is a very good example that can be used to highlight the impact that alternative voting methods can have, and that is if we look at the situation in the city of Aberdeen in 2012, where on 1 March 2012 the city held a city-wide referendum on the proposals for regeneration of union terrace gardens. I do not want to open up the debate again around the merits or demerits of that proposal, because that has passed. However, if we look at how that was conducted, it was done by an all-postal ballot but also augmented by phone and online voting. What you saw was more than 86,000 votes being cast in that referendum, a turnout of some 52 per cent. Fast forward just a couple of months later to the local government election and you see a 33.7 per cent turnout for the local government election just a short space of time later. What that tells me is that, by providing an all-postal ballot and augmenting it with online and phone voting, you boosted the voter turnout, albeit that it was on a single issue, but nonetheless I think that there is merit in looking at whether that is something that could be replicated, because it did result in a differential turnout in that referendum as compared against the election day itself. I note that the electoral commission conducted a survey in which 52 per cent of those questions that I had not voted said that it was due to circumstances preventing them from doing so. The constituency that I represent and that my colleague Kevin Stewart represents, and I suspect that Tavish Scott and other members, has a high proportion of offshore workers, for example, people who often find themselves rotated on to the rigs during the period of an election. For them, postal voting is important, proxy voting is important, but for many of them it is the requirement to actually take on that postal vote or that proxy vote. I found myself having to chase people to get them signed up to a postal vote or to a proxy vote in order that their vote can be counted at an election. Moving to something along the lines of universal postal voting or even online voting as well, where they could cast their vote from the offshore rig rather than having to be resident at their address, would allow for those people to participate more readily in the election. I noted the report that Crawford Langley, who was the returning officer for the referendum on Union Teres Gardens and is somebody who I think it would be of benefit to the minister to seek advice from in respect of what he is proposing. When it came to the issues around potential for voter fraud or potential for multiple casting of votes, he identified out of those more than 86,000 votes a total of 74 cases where somebody had voted both electronically and by post, a tiny minority of individuals who had done so. In many cases, people had written on their ballot that they were simply posting the ballot having voted online because they wanted to be secure in the knowledge that their vote was being counted. I think that the issue around the potential for fraud in those circumstances, and let us not forget that the current system allows anybody to walk into a polling station and claim to be Betty Smith of number five and simply cast the vote on that person's behalf without needing to produce identification, so there is already the opportunity there where people to exploit it for voter fraud to take place. I agree entirely with what Tavish Scott said around encouraging more young people to stand, and I would reflect my own experience having been elected to Aberdeen City Council at the tender age of 26. By no means the youngest councillor at the time, we had a councillor elected at the age of 18 who became the deputy provost of the city. It was the reaction to that that caused me great concern and suggested to me that young people might find themselves put off politics. We were castigated as being kids, we were castigated as not being mature enough to make decisions on behalf of the people. If we want young people to get involved in politics, to stand for politics, we have to make them feel that they are going to be valued when they stand and participate, and I think that we have to look very carefully at how these sort of things are reacted to by not just the media but also by political parties in their responses to those things. I think that there has been a lot of constructive input so far today. Many thanks. I now call Cara Hilton to be followed by Colin Beattie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The outcome of council of local elections shape our lives in many ways from how our local schools are organised to when our bins are collected, yet increasingly more people are opting not to take part in our local democracy. The 20 per cent drop-in turnout that colleagues have talked about in the local elections since 1999 is a huge concern, and it is absolutely vital that measures are put in place to halt and reverse that decline. Both Derek Mackay and Sarah Boyack have already highlighted the fact that participation is falling fast amongst the young and the poorest voters, and that is a huge concern. It is not just a concern with local elections, it is an issue with all elections, and it is an issue that we are only going to address with radical solutions. We have all knocked indoors and being told that I never vote because politics does not affect me, or I do not know anything about politics, but that is not just about voter apathy. Many people have just got such busy lives that they are not able to get to the polling station on election day. As John Mason highlighted, many of the polling stations are just in the wrong place, and we have got to do a lot more to make voting as easy and as accessible as possible. Moving to universal postal voting and same-day registration may help, but there are lots of other avenues that we can go down. Sometimes it is hard for many voters to tell that there is an election on, and I think that this is especially the case in the European elections. There are quite a few doors that I knocked on on election day. They did no idea that there was even an election on that day. The fact that election posters and lamp posts had banned in many areas may be a bonus for party workers, but it is certainly not a bonus when it comes to raising awareness of elections. With many of us targeting core voters and swing voters, less time is now spent in persuading, they are reluctant or cynical to get out to vote. I welcome the electoral commission's recommendations. It would take the discussions to take place and how better to publicise the 2017 council elections, and I hope that those can be progressed. In respect of young voters, it is absolutely vital that politics and elections play a much bigger part in the school curriculum. I know that this has been proposed by the local government and regeneration committee, and I hope that more work will be done by the Scottish Government to make that a reality. The IPPR report, Divided Democracies, suggests making voting compulsory for first-time voters. That is an issue that a colleague across the chamber mentioned. They argue that if young people vote in their first election, they are more likely to vote throughout their lives, and if more young people vote, then their voices will be less difficult for politicians to ignore. That is also an issue that we need to explore. Like everyone here in the chamber, I spend a lot of time visiting schools and speaking to school children about democracy and the work of our Parliament. I am hopeful that, when it is time to turn to vote, we see change. The young people, as I speak to them, are certainly very informed and interested in politics. Most of the young people I am speaking to in the doorstep about the referendum are really excited about being able to cast their vote for the first time on 18 September. It is a lot easier to enthuse votes in an election that has the power to change lives radically for better or for worse. It is a lot harder to get people to the polls when many people see councils as just being about bins and streetlights rather than having the power to shape and change their local communities. It does not help, too, that many councillors simply do not look anything like the communities that they represent, and MacTarget has already highlighted that. While progress has been made, the fact is that women and young people in particular remain seriously underrepresented in local councils across Scotland, and all political parties need to take action to address the issue, which is simply unhealthy for democracy. Three out of four of our local councillors are men, and the image of pale, male and stale may be a bit of a generalisation, but, often, it is the reality—not no offence, Richard Lyle. A recent report by Asda Mums Index found that only 2 per cent of mums feel politically represented. That is just not good for democracy. Whether it is on the council, whether it is here at Holyrood, whether it is at Westminster, our electorate centres need to better reflect the communities that they serve. To conclude, we often hear the SNP members say that one of the bonuses of independence is that we will get the government that we vote for. The reality is that, in many elections, the majority do not vote at all. We spend a huge amount of time in this chamber debating whether we should be part of the UK, but we do not spend enough time looking at where the power should lie here in Scotland. While I welcome the report here today, I hope that it can lead to change. I think that we also need to renew our local democracy and be more ambitious about the power that is put back into our local communities and into the hands of our local people. Up until the uncoupling of the Scottish Parliament and council vote for the 2011 and 2012 elections, turnout for local elections was relatively high. While the decoupling of those elections was necessary in the wake of the many serious failings that haunted the 2007 election, only 39.1% turned out to vote in the 2012 election, a drop of 13.7% on 2007. Indeed, in the previous three elections, voter turnout was slightly lower in the council elections than the holiday elections. I am not entirely sure whether there is such a difference between parliamentary and local authority elections, and perhaps it shows a mistaken lack of belief in the relevance of local government. However, we must work towards a solution to ensure legitimate authority. There is a famous saying that if you do not vote, you cannot complain about what you get, although indeed people will anyway. The problem is that a lack of turnout results in a certain lack of legitimacy for any council or government. One very important part of this consultation is the proposal to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. My firm belief is that if you are old enough to work pay tax, get married and join the army, then surely you are old enough to make a reason and decision on your country's future. At that age, young people will have a vested interest in the outcome and what it will mean for their education or employment prospects. I understand the argument that there are some immature teenagers who would not necessarily take this responsibility seriously. However, I think that these teenagers would most likely form part of the electorate that frankly do not turn out. However, I still think that that is a real shame and I do believe that the solution is to have more interaction with students both in and out of school. By being more proactive, we can reach them with more information and hopefully increase the level of interest in local and national politics, which might provide a sustainable boost to turn out at elections. Perhaps we can enthuse and inspire future generations to participate in politics. There is, however, a key barrier to part of this idea in that schools have quite correctly strict guidelines on access and impartiality. How we reasonably manage that is a challenge. The consultation also looks at alternative voting, methods for local council elections and provides four very interesting proposals, including universal postal voting, telephone voting, online voting and electronic machine voting. Those are all interesting suggestions and have their good and bad points. Universal postal voting is particularly interesting because it removes the argument that people did not know about the election and people can do it from the comfort of their own homes. However, there are two significant problems with it. Firstly, there is an issue of our security in terms of how confident it could be that each vote was cast by the registered voter that it was intended for. Secondly, would voters mistakenly bin the forms or put it off and just forget about it? I do acknowledge that postal voters are more likely to vote, as shown in 2010's general election, which saw 83 per cent of postal votes returned. Compared with 63 per cent of those who could only vote at the polling station. However, it could be argued that those registered for a postal vote were more likely to vote because they had gone to the trouble to arrange it. Electronic machine voting does not do much for turnout, but it provides faster results and arguably could reduce the number of spoiled ballots. However, given the failed use of electronic counting machines in 2007, I would be cautious about the use of machines that may suffer from unforeseen system errors and lead to invalidating an election. I believe that the future may be online and telephone voting, although at the moment there are concerns of the security of these methods, especially online. The increasing threat of cyberterrorism and malware is becoming ever more present, and that does represent a massive problem. Overall, social media has truly re-energised politics. Social media has brought politicians to the people, and perhaps we need to bring the election to them as well. Perhaps we should become the world's first-ever pilot of hashtag voting. In conclusion, I am in favour of extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, but we need to engage with them more to ensure that they are adequately informed when they come to vote. The key idea that we should be focusing on is to make registration of voting more accessible by taking polling day to the people. Many thanks. I now call Margaret McDougall to be followed by Richard Lyle. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Local Government elections are vital, and this Parliament must do everything it can to improve not only on the way in which those elections are run, but also to increase participation within those elections. The 2007 elections were met by scandal when both the Scottish Parliament and local government elections had a much higher rejected ballot paper count than was expected. For example, in 2003, only 0.77 per cent of local government ballot papers were rejected, and in 2007, that increased to 1.83 per cent. That was also the first election that the single transferable vote was used at local government elections. Further issues with electronic counting led to the Scottish Parliament and local government elections being decoupled. However, in the 2012 elections, the rejected ballot paper number was still 1.71 per cent, which shows that there are still issues with the SDV system and voters' understanding of it. Decoupling of the elections has also led to a dramatic fall in participation. In 2007, turnout was 52.8 per cent, while in 2012 it fell to 39.8 per cent. That means that 6.2 per cent of those registered to vote did not feel that it was important enough to turn up. That should be of concern to all of us. In the Labour Party, we strongly believe in initiatives to increase citizen participation on local issues. Ultimately, the best way to achieve that is by re-empowering local government. Throughout the SNP's time in government, we have seen massive centralisation of local government. Instead of empowering citizens, power has been taken away, local democracy is decreasing and local people feel disconnected from the process. Throughout our devolution commission, we have argued for our radical agenda for local government and community re-empowerment, including, but not limited to, an adjustment of powers and responsibilities to suit local circumstances, fixing the broken system of local government finance and allowing authorities more scope to influence economic development. By moving power further down the chain, empowering local people and local government, we can better target the disconnect that is felt at local levels. However, we must also work to make sure that voting systems move through the times and that citizenship education is made part of the curriculum through personal and social education in schools. Although I hear that it can be, it is not currently required as part of the curriculum for excellence. In terms of modernising the voting system, we have a range of options available to us, such as online voting, telephone voting, universal postal votes or even mandatory voting. I am not suggesting that we move wholesale to one system or another, but to look into whether more systems could be utilised in conjunction with traditional polling places to make voting more flexible and accessible. Although there are security issues associated with some of those methods, many people are happy to use online banking systems, so I would imagine that they would also find voting online acceptable. There is no quick fix to the issues that are presented here today, but I would like to see this Government making a start to increasing participation by re-empowering local government and local communities, ensuring that citizenship education is a requirement of the curriculum for excellence, and setting up a programme to try on new systems of voting so that we can have truly representative results in future elections. Mr Paterson, I would be grateful if you would refrain from turning your back in the chair and chatting while other members are speaking. I now call Richard Lyle. I first stood in a local government election in 1974 in the Orbison bell cell, eventually being elected in 1976, winning 10 local council elections in a row, most under the old system. In 1976 when I was first elected over 3,000 people, two thirds of the electorate voted in my Orbison local ward. That number has been falling steadily ever since. In the most recent local elections in 2012, the bell cell ward had a percentage poll of only 36.36 per cent. 36 years on, voting has fallen by nearly a half. Northlatch and Council had a turnout of only 37.7 per cent, and Scotland as a whole had a turnout of over 39 per cent. Granted, there may have been extended circumstances for that particular turnout as it was the first council election devolved from the Scottish Parliament elections, but it does not change the fact that something must be done to improve those figures and to re-engage the public. It must be remembered that elections are for the people, not for politicians. Elections are the cornerstone of our democracy. It is clear that with a low turnout for the recent European elections, but with a projected turnout of 80 per cent for the upcoming referendum, the people of Scotland are clearly happy to vote for something that they see as important. It is now important that I would suggest that keeping the interest, engagement and enthusiasm that the current referendum debate has produced to ensure that it is capitalised on and not lost after 18 September. I am not the most techy savvy person, however it is clear to me that electoral process has not kept up with technology developments over recent times. Does my belief that technology must be embraced in elections, allowing people to vote via text, email or via the internet, by means of an election app or even a mobile phone election app or even when shopping? Obviously, we already allowed postal voting. The postal voting application in North Lanarkshire has risen from 2,000 to over 10,000 in the last number of years. The application for a postal vote has changed over the years. You do not need a doctor's line or you do not need a signature to confirm your unwell to vote at polling stations. You now fill in a simple application form, date it, sign it and put down on the elections that you want to have the postal vote for. I therefore see a few difficulties in implementing safeguards to allow an electronic type of voting, which will help to encourage many people to vote even from their armchairs. Many young people now vote for their hit tune in the top 100 every Sunday by downloading their favourite tune. Why not allow them to download their favourite political party at election time? Are all political parties scared of losing control of the way that people vote? All political parties do not like to control voting intentions by various means—polls, canvassing, target leafletting and doorstep canvassing—to get their vote out. Wherever possible, young people should be encouraged to engage in the political process, which has already been done to a great extent in the independence referendum on 18 September by allowing 16-17-year-olds to vote. I am encouraged that the Scottish Government is seeking to use it on the extension of the vote to this age group. Technology alone will not solve this problem. As studies have shown, internet voting simply means that those who have voted anyway vote by a different method. In this day and age, I find it hard to believe that it is not possible for a member of the public to turn up at a polling station, legally register and vote all at the same time. This is a system that has been implemented in some areas in America. The evidence from this suggests that the same day registration increased voting turnout significantly. Ordnodd people have many things going on in their lives. They are not politicians, they are not committed to the political process as we are. We must bring the old saying back, power to the people. I welcome, as should all parties of the Scottish Government's consultation document, Scotland's electoral future, delivering improvements and its commitment to improve the quality of democracy. With the consultations, it is important that everyone supports what is being done. That brings us to closing speeches. As I am sure that members will know, all members who participated in the debate should be back in the chamber for closing speeches. Cameron Buchanan, five minutes. I was just going to say that this afternoon has been on the whole quite constructive, and we are all in agreement that we must make it easier to participate in our local government elections. Many members have focused on specific areas—European elections, polling places, electoral register and online voting. John Wilson raised the matter of postal voting. There are a number of examples of pilots where that has been run rather successfully, but in my opinion the forms are too complicated and it shows that there is a disturbing amount of spoiled ballots for postal votes, which should not really happen. We must simplify those. We should also bear in mind that there is a marked difference between a pilot and a full-scale roll-out. We should be aware of the potential difficulties of carrying out such a poll on such a large scale. As I referenced in my opening remarks, we must ensure that there are robust procedures in place to protect the integrity of the vote so that security is protected. We must be confident that people are able to exercise their right to vote free from coercion. A lot of people actually like going to the polls to vote, and I totally agree with my colleagues in the community that we have to find voting places that are voter-friendly, without necessarily giving them a cup of coffee to bribe them for their vote. However, I think that this is very important. In Edinburgh, there are many schools there that are not used and are unfriendly places, cold and miserable in winter, which puts people off voting. Libraries next door are not used. I spoke to somebody about that and they said that it is because they cannot get people to man the no janitors and they cannot get people to man them. We need to get more friendly places and be prepared to think about this as to why we have different voting places or unfriendly voting places. I also think that if we make any changes, these cannot come to any way of compromises that we change our vote. The other aspect of which many of you have touched upon is ensuring that voters understand the system of voting and what it is that they are voting for and the responsibilities of local government, which they do not always understand. We all know when we go on the doorsteps whatever the elections they talk about. It is not necessarily part of the local election, they talk about Europe. If it is Europe, they talk about local stuff. I think we have to try and engage them about this. Also, perhaps it is my opinion, but I think I am very much in favour of getting 16, 70-year-olds being allowed to vote and we should encourage this. This is after all they can do everything else that my colleagues have said there. They should be allowed to vote in all elections. I really do think that we should get that done. I am not sure that my party necessarily agrees with all that. However, that is what I can say here and I cannot be corrected. I actually think that it is right. After all, it has proved now that the most enthusiasm that comes from this has been with the young people when you get out there. They are very keen to see it. You go and see these people in council of states and everything and they are just not engaged. The younger people seem to think that it is going to be relevant and that it is novel for them to be fair. I am all in favour of that. When one considers the key aspects of the new curriculum for excellence, it is in developing responsible citizens, then democratic participation should surely play a large part of our children's education. As Sarah said, when we go to schools, they are the ones who are really engaged, particularly when we have these schools meetings here that are 10, 11 or 12-year-olds. They are really keen to know what is happening and even in a non-political way. So, I think that this is important. I noticed with interest the comments of Dumfries and Galloway council in which it stated that the education system could help embed the importance of voting from an early age. I think that this is key here. When one considers the aspect of the curriculum for excellence, we have got to really move beyond the perfunctory voter information campaign drives and dry leaflets. Look how we meaningfully understand from the young age that schools must consider the role they play in that process. I think that we make the stuff too dry and too complicated. As I said in my opening remarks, this consultation is part of a wider process. A Sarah Boyack's amendment is quite correct, and I will definitely be voting for it, in that we are to gently re-engage the public with local government and we must make it relevant. But this consultation is about what we can do to improve the process of voting and make it easier for those who already want to take part. I think that there has also been an important message in today's debate in which there are no quick fixes here at all. It is interesting to note that in Belgium, where there was compulsory voting, as I said earlier, the turnout was 89 per cent, but it dropped for the European elections and that is because people did not think that it was relevant. They just spoiled their ballot or they went into the polling station and either tore it up or just wrote rubbish on it like we get here. I try to persuade people that when you spoil your ballot paper, it is a complete waste. Nobody pays attention to it. They think that they are making their protest vote. Do we put those protests aside? No, we do not. They just go straight into a bucket in there. We have to persuade people that there is no point in going to vote for a spoiled ballot. I think that there is a good deal of work to be done to engage the public in this and it may take quite a bit of time to get the public to bear fruit on this, but it is important that we do all that we possibly can to make the system easier whilst preserving the integrity of our local government voting. Also, fraud is very, very important. We all know—we go to some of these houses where they say, I will fill in the ballot paper for you. It is about six people and it is all filled in. I think that that is part of the problem. We will never get round that, but I think that we have to try and—I do not think that this online voting thing is really going to—it should vote, but it should work, but I cannot see it really working, I must say at the moment. I think that the traditional people want that. They want the postal vote. They do not want too many complicated types of voting that failed in 2007, where we had three different types of voting. There were masses of spot papers and none of them was a total disaster whenever it was. If you must come to a close, please. I am just about to close now. Thank you very much indeed. But I do think that we have really got to—that is enough. I do think that we have actually got to preserve our integrity for the vote. Anyway, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think that this has been a really good debate this afternoon because we have been able to draw on the experience of people as former councillors, political activists and probably members of local community groups. It has been a good debate. There are lots and lots of practical ways that we could improve the voting process, the mechanics of voting. I think that the ministers, hopefully by the end of his consultation, will have quite a raft of suggestions as to ways where there is probably going to be a degree of cross-party agreement. The only caveat is probably that you have the most enthusiastic people in the Parliament engaged in this debate, whether all of our parties will sign up as enthusiastically may be another matter. Let us be the people that try to persuade our parties that we need to change, because I think that that has to be part of the backdrop to this debate. There are all sorts of issues about making it easier and things like much more publicity. The posters issue, I know locally that some of my party were overjoyed when posters were banned. Others of us just thought that that is really going to draw attention away from the day and people will not know it is voting day. Publicity is absolutely crucial. It might be posters, it might be the media, it might be local government itself, it might be what we do in the political parties, but we need to lift awareness about voting. I think that, particularly for young people, some very sensible suggestions are made. I think that when you think about it, the role of local government is absolutely fundamental to young people's lives. Schools, the quality of education, local buses, support for young carers, libraries, sports facilities, housing, licensing policy, community safety—lots of the nuts and bolts of what local authorities do in terms of service provision—have a massive effect on young people's lives. Maybe we need to do more to draw that out. I think that we need a cultural shift, and that is partly what I am alluding to in my amendment. It is partly about re-empowering local government. It is also about making the connection with local communities. There have been lots of initiatives in local council levels. I have been to quite a few meetings of youth councils, but they seem to wax and wane over the years. If you have a champion at the council level who is interested in that, they will promote it. We have the Scottish Youth Parliament. What lessons can we learn from their work in involving young people and having us shadowed? I have certainly met my youth parliamentarians over the years. They bring in energy, a perspective and a freshness about youth politics. We need to tap into that. We also need to tap into our own youth organisations in our own political parties. We need to do everything that we can to encourage our young people to stand for election, whether to fight a seat that is winnable or whether to fight the cause. It is important to give young people that experience and give them their responsibility and profile, and to trust young people to get involved. That goes for both our youth and our student movements. There are particular challenges in getting our young student movements involved, but we need to do more to make that work. I think that this has got to be about making local government more accessible and more empowered to take decisions closer to people and to actually make the connections. You could say that establishing the Scottish Parliament with a more proportional voting system was designed to do that, and yet, in our own votes, we struggle to get much above 50 per cent. It is a major challenge. Empowerment is part of it. There is a wider debate that we may have about this, but there is more that we could do. We need to focus on, politically, what we can all do in our different parties. There is a strong message that came from the electoral reform research, which focused on the point that was made particularly well by Cara Hylton about the large numbers of people who actively choose not to vote. It is not just that they are not aware of it. They actively choose not to vote. They do not trust us as politicians at whatever level of elected representation. They do not trust our parties, and we have to re-engage with them as political parties. At the local level, that is something that we all need to do. We need to make sure that we get more effective engagement. We need to look at the best practice to make politics more relevant. There is something about us not just focusing on involving people at election time, although that is crucial, but it has to be between elections. It was one of the things that I was keen to promote in the review of the Labour Party, which we conducted after 2011. We had lots of ideas because we had to go back to first principles and say, how do we do this? It has certainly focused our interests on representational politics in terms of having more women, as Anne McTaggart mentioned, in terms of more young people and people from ethnic minority communities. There is a lot more that we could all do as political parties to make those connections. I think that we need to do it. If we do not, people will not be connected and they will not see the relevance of voting. I think that the points that were made by Tavish Scott and by Alec Rowley about local government finance need to be addressed by all of us. It probably is in the aftermath of whatever happens in the referendum, but we need to start talking seriously about how we make local government finance work more effectively. It is unfinished business for all of us. I think that it is essential if we are to see local government empowered, not just as service providers. I think that that is where some of the tensions come about centralisation. When we have laws that we pass here because we do not want postcode lotteries, that leads to attention. We need to be upfront, we need to debate the consequences of that and still try to push power both to local authorities and to local communities. It has to be both and it has to be about a culture shift and we all have to be involved in that in the parliamentarian level and at the local community level and the council level. We all have to be part of that and there will be tensions but we need to own up to what those tensions are. Local government finance and powers for our local communities and the land reform changes and the community empowerment changes that need to come, I think that they are part of that process. It might be about co-operatives, community ownership. It is about making those connections not just in local groups but then pushing it back into mainstream politics. I want to end on a quote from the electoral reform society because it highlights the social justice perils of us not being engaged about the disconnection particularly from people from low income backgrounds. They analysed the 2010 general election and the cuts that followed that and they looked at the 2010 spending review and they showed that those who did not vote in the 2010 general election faced cuts worth 20 per cent of their annual household income compared with 12 per cent of those who did vote. In that way, they argue, unequal turnout unleashes a vicious cycle of disaffection and underrepresentation amongst those groups for which participation is falling and for whom politics seems to have less and less to say to them. That is something I think we all need to take to heart. If we look at local government expenditure, the long-term impact to the council tax freeze, we have debated that in other debates but I think go to that social justice issue of the people who vote are most likely to be represented best. We have got to address that democratic deficit. We need to make sure that we are open and we are more committed to making local elections meaningful and to local politics meaningful. It also is relevant to the Scottish elections. It is an issue across Western democracies. I hope that the minister will accept our amendment. It is promoted in good faith. We think that there are some key issues that need to be addressed in addition to the technical issues. I now call on the minister to wind up the debate that the minister has until five o'clock. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I say at the outset that this has been, I think, a very constructive and well-informed and helpful debate in taking forward that work. The Government do intend to accept and support the Labour amendment. I also like Sarah Boyack's description of those who have contributed to the debate and those who are here present. I was going to describe it as something of political anorax but I far prefer the term most enthusiastic members who can contribute to this debate than the ideas going forward. I think that the tone and the contributions of the debate will help to fuel that on-going work. Some would ask why we are embarking on this so early for the council elections that are some way away, but the Gold report taught us that we have to put those preparations in advance and to have confidence in the electoral system. We should engage first and foremost in a cross-party style with wider stakeholders and then put in place that the preparations for an election can inspire confidence because of the transparency and the preparations that have been made. We have very much learned the lessons of previous elections. I am very mindful of the local government regeneration committee's work that has helped to bring us to that point. In terms of some specific questions that were specifically raised, there will now be a new online registration process that will be quicker, convenient and more secure and I think that that will be welcomed. Another technical point was raised around rejected postal votes and, for the first time, the electoral authorities will write to those who had their postal votes rejected explaining why that was the case. It is also very welcome that people are made aware of that going forward and that will be the case for future elections as well. Sarah Boyack and other members covered very pertinent issues about geographic areas. Social class may well be an issue. I am very mindful when we move from door-to-door registration to a different process. Many thousands of people were taken off the register and that has had an impact and there is no doubt that, I think, how well-off areas are and how well-off individuals are seems to be a factor there. We need to make it easier to register and, as Mark McDonald says, to stay on the register as well and there is much work around that. Continuing with probity and security is important but also remove that mystique from the polling place. I remember a time when there was a police officer outside every polling place. There may not have been disabled access and even just at the European elections there, someone asked me, do I need my passport to vote? There is an issue about awareness and the ability and how easy it is to vote but not necessarily highlight, as maybe Mark McDonald did, how easy it is to commit personation by walking in and pretending to be someone else. There is absolutely something in raising the awareness of how easy it is to cast your vote. In terms of young people, we will engage further with Young Scott and others in the event in the SCC. It might not be as popular as the major attractions that normally attend there but it will be important to engage with young people to take forward that strand of work as well as other areas around gender because we have said, we agree, that councils and other places of decision making should more accurately represent and reflect the communities that they have to govern, making the governors more closer to the governed. There is a duty for parties to recruit more women to stand and put them up as candidates in elections as well but back to voting, it is much wider than just the administration of voting. John Mason very helpfully covered issues of convenience. Cameron Buchanan, I am sure, will welcome the electoral reform society on the stakeholder group contributing to this on-going debate where you raised a number of issues. We do believe that STV has, by proportional representation, stimulated better representation in local government but it does come with challenges as well. We do not support compulsory voting for the same reasons that you have given. It is bigger than the administration and the bureaucratic issues but they have to be addressed going forward. We will consider that good practice and continue to consult. Tavish Scott very helpfully covered issues of empowering local communities and financial accountability as well in rebalancing power. I think that, for example, the work that we have undertaken around the island areas ministerial working group will be a trailblazer and will help that agenda of the rebalancing of power. I think that we will be warmly welcomed by focusing on what we can do. I also appreciated the comment on the relatively youthful minister because I get that rest frequently as the years go on. Richard Lyle covered his election in 1976. I was not born yet, but I appreciate the contributions and how electoral. I know that he is a lobro, Presiding Officer, but I appreciated his commentary and how systems have improved over years. Excuse me minister, there are far too many conversations going on, particularly at the back of the room. Could members resume their seats? There is far too much consensus on how we conduct elections in this chamber, Presiding Officer. That is to be welcomed. John Wilson helped to point out a number of recommendations from the local government regeneration committee that the Government has been able to take forward, some of which I have identified. I am sure that it is not out of personal interest that Mr Wilson has mentioned the ordering of ballot papers. I am sure that, along with many colleagues, I welcome the announcement that the minister has made today. Is it possible for you to put all those announcements together into one package so that we can disseminate that information across our connections and networks? Yes, of course. I am happy to do that to update the local government regeneration committee as we continue the process of engagement and consultation. What we have already committed to and what we will continue to do is to look at the ordering of ballot papers and the question of randomisation as well. I thought that Anne McTaggart's contribution was helpful, but I would not agree with much of the points around finance and budget settlement, but I am absolutely correct on questions of turnout and encouraging more women to participate in becoming candidates. Mark McDonald made a very helpful point and intervention, pointing out that in Aberdeen City Council put aside the issue, but in the referendum, which was an all-postal ballot, the turnout was 52 per cent. For the local government elections, electing those people who would actually make the decision, the turnout was not 52 per cent, but 33.7 per cent, which makes the point around alternative voting methods that there is found so much consensus that we welcome in the chamber today. In terms of Kevin Stewart, he has covered votes for 16 and 17-year-olds, and there was much consensus to our surprise across the chamber that all parties have supported votes for 16 and 17-year-olds, not just in the referendum, but for every election in Scotland. I think that that will be welcomed by 16 and 17-year-olds across Scotland. That is where the spokespeople now are. I know that Cameron Buchanan might have some explaining to do to the Conservative Party, but we welcome that conversion of the Opposition spokesperson. I think that he will need to explain to the whips later, Mr Buchanan, with 40 seconds left. In essence, there is increased confidence in new methods and different methods of voting, and we have to consider them very closely and carefully as we look at improving participation in our democracy and in elections beyond the issues of just turnout to inspire people to vote so that they have confidence in the electoral systems and that we can ensure that we have a healthy, thriving democracy that builds on the momentum on whichever side of the referendum that you stand, but it builds on the momentum that we have right now in engaging with the people of Scotland in Scotland's electoral future. That concludes the debate on local government elections, delivering improvements in participation and administration. The next item of business is consideration of business motion 10272, in the name of Jo Fitzpatrick. On behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting out a business programme, any member who wishes to speak against the most should press a request to speak but now, and I call on Jo Fitzpatrick to move motion number 10272. Thank you. No member has asked to speak against the most, therefore I am now putting the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 10272, in the name of Jo Fitzpatrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of two parliamentary bureaus. I have asked Jo Fitzpatrick to move motion number 10270 and 10271 on approval of SSIs. The question on these most will put decision time to which we now come. There are four questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that amendment number 10262.2, in the name of Sarah Boyack, which seeks to amend motion number 10262, in the name of Derek Mackay, on local government elections, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The amendment is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 10262, in the name of Derek Mackay, as amended. On local government elections, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 10270, in the name of Jo Fitzpatrick, on approval of SSI be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number10271, in the name of Jo Fitzpatrick, On approval for the SNS Yao be a great to, are we all great? The emotion is there for a great to. That concludes decision time, we now move to members' business. Members should leave the chamber, should do so quickly and quietly.