 Rwy'n credu iawn i ddiweddorol i gynnwys, ein cyflawn ngôi gweld y Proses respectfully ar gyfer y stafell o'r Mhwyffwr Ymwylwyr Cymru yw yw 2024. Rwy'n gweithio'r oeddennod o gwyfleddau'r ysgol, iddo yn ymddangos ymwylwyr mwngiddol, edrych, oeddennod ers oedd ysgol fel ymddangos sefydliad ddwyll gwaddd ymddangos ymddangos aethanol, ond iddyn nhw'n troi frysgaf. Adder alleged three is consideration of the evidence heard on the Scottish Elections representations and reform. Our member's happy to take that consideration in private. Our next item is for the Committee indeed to start taking the evidence on the bill, and we are joined this morning by Alam Hamood al-Bashiri, the peer education vice-elegation for the Scottish Refugee Council. Alice Kinghorn Gray, who is Campaigns Fynghwylwyr Fynghwylwyr Fyrwyr Cymru yn Scotland. Rai ni'n gweld James Adams, rai'n gyfnodd Llywodraethau i'r Fynghwylwyr Fynghwylwyr Rydyn ni'n gweld gweld sy'n gweld – hynny'n gweld. Rydyn ni'n gweithio gydag ymlaen nhw, oherwydd Hannah Stevens, y dalych y ymddill yn yr ysgrifennu yn Lywodraeth, yn hynny. Rydyn ni'n gweithio i'r ddweud yma. Rwy'n gweithio i'r ddweud hynny. If people are content, I would like just to press on with the questions with the proviso that don't feel you need to answer every question, but please feel free to contribute to a question that you would like to, and I am going to turn, I think, in the first instance to Jackie Dunbar. Good morning Jackie. Good morning, and thank you, panel, for coming along today. I'd like to start off by getting your views on the proposed disqualification orders, if you don't mind. I would be very interested to hear on any thoughts you've got or, in fact, any insight you have on the level of intimidation, harassment or abuse that folk have got to endure during the election. I don't just mean candidates in this, I mean campaigners and also the very hard work in electoral staff. Could I maybe start off with Kay Sillars, who's online to get your perspective, because you've probably had to deal with it on the staffing side. Hi, morning. Thanks for inviting us. I think that's a really important issue. One of the aims behind all of this is to increase participation in our democratic processes, and if it is an unpleasant thing to participate in, whether as a candidate, as a member of staff or just a member of the public wanting to ask serious questions, then people are increasingly backing out of it. It's not for them, it's not for me. I'm not interested, you know, and I think we see that across all sorts of surveys. People just not wanting to participate in political debates in our country, and certainly no one should experience violence at work. And I mean that in the widest sense of violence, you might not physically be injured by people screaming and shouting at you, but it still has an effect on your day-to-day life and anyone who has experienced that kind of intimidation knows how your heart goes up, you panic, it sits with you for the whole day. So it's not just the event. It's going into work the next day, thinking it might happen again. So I think that, from our point of view, particularly local government staff who tend to be our members, it's really important that some serious action is taken to protect people at their work. I think that goes across some of the things we've seen to candidates and just people generally participating in our process. We would like it to be something that, with elections, be something we'd look forward to. I would like to think so that people would see themselves as empowered and willing to take part in a process. I'd be interested in what Hannah says, but I think in particular women are intimidated out of our political processes. Can I maybe ask Hannah then for her views? I should have also asked if you thought that people from minority backgrounds are affected differently or disabled people or folk who identify as women. Do you think that the level of abuse is more or about the same? I realise how bad that question sounds and I don't mean it the way it comes across. Certainly from our experience of our surveys of our members in their day to day working lives, there is a lot of abuse related to people's protected characteristics for a better expression. We've never asked that specifically around elections but we've certainly asked it around people's day to day working lives and it shows in all of that work. Can I go to Hannah, please? Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to join you today. Electa, we've been speaking to hundreds of women over the past few years about their experiences of engaging in democracy at every stage right from the very beginning of wondering what it is and how it relates to them through to getting involved, whether that's with the political party or not and choosing to follow an independent route through to candidacy and then now more recently really engaging with women once they are elected in office. We are hearing across the board what an enormous enormous problem this is and I'm really thrilled that the committee is taking this seriously and really looking at ways that this bill can continue to engage in this matter. I believe truly it's having a negative impact on our democracy and the clearer that we get and understanding of the problem at stake the more we can examine how we can work towards fixing it. Women absolutely categorically receiving greater amount of abuse and women of colour and even greater amount on top of that. It really is in the amnesty research found that abuse targeted towards female MPs that 20 minority ethnic MPs received almost half of all the abusive tweets that were put out there. So that's a social media challenge. We have to absolutely understand that those with additional positionalities are receiving increased amounts of abuse. So I'm excited that you're exploring this but we do feel that the bill at this point only looks at preventing a person from standing as a candidate if they have committed an offence. And I think there's so much more that can be done in order to continue to tackle this issue. The Joe Cox Foundation has several recommendations that I think are really relevant to this conversation. One of those is clear guidance for elected representatives on reporting abuse to police. We've had lots of conversations with women who simply don't know what their rights are in terms of reporting that abuse and how best to engage in it. And the conversation has to be around women in elected office. But I'm also really pleased that you acknowledge those that might be activists or campaigners because there are lots of misogynistic abuse happening within the culture of political parties as well, which is initially the first space that people might start to get involved in democracy. So some of the Joe Cox Foundation's recommendations are this clear guidance for elected representatives in reporting abuse. Greater financial support for elected representatives to deal with the costs associated with the personal safety and handling abuse. I think financial systems aren't yet up to speed with those additional needs. If, for example, a member is recommended to avoid using public transport for a period whilst they are on the receipt of abuse, there are increased costs that come with that. The wider points that we'll discuss later I imagine within the bill about increasing public trust and engagement in the democracy. We really believe that that wider conversation is a really important part of it as well. I think there's a deep lack of understanding what our elected representatives are doing for us. And I think the democratic education piece is a really important part that does connect to this conversation. Finally, Joe Cox also recommended the training for police and law enforcement about their responsibilities for dealing with threats against elected representatives. I know that Police Scotland have been doing some good work with COSLA to develop this and I really encourage the growth and development of that work. Okay, thank you. You actually answered my second question at the same time, so thank you very much. Is there anyone that would like to add anything? My next question was... Just before you move on to your next question, Jackie, can I come back, Hannah, about what you would like to see in the actual bill? You make reference to the Joe Cox Foundation recommendations, which the committee are aware of, and then you highlight the one about guidance, which could in fact happen notwithstanding. Are you looking for anything specifically in the bill or would a... I'm going to use this phrase and it's going to come back and haunt me. A declaration in the bill of the intentions of other legislation, statutory instruments and things to bring in the guidance. Would that go some way to reassuring you so that the intention as to the environment I think we all want can be achieved rather than specific calls in the bill in primary legislation? I'm afraid I would say I don't feel like an expert enough in the structure of bill development to determine which way that information should be best presented. But I would say that an acknowledgement of misogyny and racist misogyny within any relevant part of supporting literature around the bill I think is absolutely vital to truly articulate the reality of the situation, which is that women and minoritised women more specifically are receiving an increasingly larger amount of abuse than the men in the system. That's helpful. Thank you. Sorry, Jackie. I was just going to ask if anybody had, if there was any other things that the rest of the panel thought that we could consider implementing into the bill. I don't know if anybody has got anything else to add. I suppose specifically with regard to the sort of intimidation and harassment side of it. I suppose opening up Alan's probably the person to come to, is there anything that you would like to see specifically in the bill with regard to the situation with both the proposed changes to those who can stand, but also actually the experience that refugees have and those that have the right to vote and their interaction and the electoral process? Thank you so much, convener, and thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to come to here today and to give an evidence in your committee meeting. I am happy actually to back to you and answering this question by writing. But the things I want actually to convince about it in here, maybe you will come actually asking me about it. It is about extending the right to people with limited leave to remain to stand in the election. I am really so happy that you include this in this bill because that it was before in 2019. I myself am here to speak on behalf of the Scottish Refugee Council, but also to speak as a refugee community in here in Scotland. Sorry, I do not mean to go across, but we will very specifically come to that because I know that you have very valuable evidence on that. We are really just trying to explore it in manageable chunks and looking at the disqualification, but we absolutely will come to that. More than happy for you to write to us afterwards on this point on intimidation and things. Jackie, can I just commit to the next question? The policy memorandum of the bill includes the disqualification of MSPs and local councillors who appear on the six offenders register. It is not provided for in the bill, but the Scottish Government has said that they are going to be actively considering ahead of stage 2 of the bill. I would be interested to hear people's views on whether, if someone is on the six offenders register, should they be able to stand for or even continue to hold office, not just in the Scottish Parliament but also for local government. Kate, can I come to you first on that? Sorry, I was just going to come back in on the earlier point which was, I apologise, but it was just to say that we won't be able to administer a way out of this problem around violence and what we actually need is action around it. So, there are plenty of rules already to deal with violence and intimidation. We actually just need people who are supposed to do something about it, to actually do something about it, whether it's your manager or the police or anything like that, just to come on to sex offenders. To say it's not something widely debated in unison, we haven't had a lot of, oh my, how can we empower people on the sex offenders register to take part in our democracy. But I don't think it's something that we would want to go down the road of. Sex abuse is about violence and power. What I mean, Kate, is that currently I know that if someone is put on the register that they can actually remain as a local councillor and there's nothing that we can do to remove them from that. So, that's what I'm basically was asking, do you think there should be something in the bill that helps a process to remove that person or do you think it should just remain the same? I don't know if that's more helpful. No, I shouldn't be so sarcastic. I think that it is important that we have powers to remove people who commit that sort of offence. It is a position of power. They manage staff at a basic level and trust, but also they have access to the community and a position of respect in a community that could give them opportunities for further abuse. So, apologies for my sarcasm. No, thank you very much. Unless the panel's got anything else to add, I'm happy to hand back to you. Thank you. Ivan, can I come to you? Thank you. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. We've already briefly touched on it, Alam, but it was round about the issue of extending rights of candidacy to foreign nationals with limited right to remain. So, if you want to take the opportunity to give us your perspective on that, that would be very helpful, and then we can open out to other members of the panel. Thank you so much. And I will just repeat actually what I was saying in the beginning that I'm in here also to speak not only on behalf of the Scottish Refugee Council, but also to speak as a refugee from refugee community in here in Scotland. Because I myself, in 2019, I came here to the Parliament to speak about that when we were campaigning to give the right to voting in national and local elections for refugees and also for asylum seekers and also to give the right to stand in the election. And I'm really so happy in 2020 that I, for voting, it's been giving for refugees in here in Scotland, and I myself as a refugee, I can't vote in national and local elections in Scotland. And in 2021 when I went to cost my vote for the first time that it was one of the beautiful moment in all my life. And I'm really so glad that I choose to make Scotland my country. And now I'm really so happy that we missed the opportunity to give the right to stand in the election for the people with limited leave to remain, and that includes refugees like myself, but now this has been included in this bill. So we have an opportunity to stand this right to people with limited leave to remain in here in Scotland. But we are at the Scottish Refugee Council, we are welcoming this, but in the same time we are disappointed because this bill is not included to give the right in voting for asylum seekers. And this is something we will continue to campaign for. And we are believing in here that by giving the right, this is, it is a significant step towards inclusivity and also ensuring that everyone, regardless of their status, they have a voice in shaping the future of this country. And it doesn't matter from where these people become, what does matter that they choose to make Scotland their country and their home, and guaranteeing the right to stand in the election to people with limited leave to remain. It is a matter of fairness, equality and also democratic principles. And this is recognitions that contribution and also potential of individual who have become a part of a society, but also may still have barriers to fully participating in political process in here in Scotland. At the Scottish Refugee Council, we are understand how crucial it is. We totally fail it when the refugees were giving the right to vote in the election. What refugees have voted for the first time in the Scottish Parliamentary election in 2021, the election that you have been elected in? He said, it is a beautiful moment to vote for the first time in my life. And just imagine, there are a lot of people that are coming from the countries, these countries that doesn't have democracy countries like Scotland. And we are really, I myself also really very happy that I'm living in a democracy country. Where I can practice this right to vote for the members of the Parliament. And also, we want you to extend and give us the right to stand in the election too. Because if you are go today and walk in any street, if in Glasgow or in Edinburgh, you will say a lot of people, but these people, they are not represent in here, in the Scottish Parliament. So we are talking about some people, their voices, it's missing and also their issues, it is missing. It's very important to consider that. And it is essential to consider the voices and also perspective of all members of our society. Bowing these voices, that we know that we have previously been marginalised and also underrepresented. Is it the strength of our democracy and ensures that decisions are made with full representation of our diverse population. Furthermore, it is a step towards removing any barriers for inclusion and also strength over all political participation. And support the social and political integration for non-citizens in here in Scotland. And you know, we have one of very important policy. This policy, it is a new Scott's integration policy. And in this policy, it is state that the asylum seekers, the integrated from the day one of their arrival to here to Scotland. And it is not from the day when they are guaranteed the refugee status. And this is what I believe in. We must treat people as a human being, not treat them based on their immigration status. And this is a very important why we are in here calling to get the right to stand in the election to people with limited leave to remain. Allowing people leave in here in Scotland, but they didn't have British citizenship to stand for election. This would make the Scottish Parliament more diverse. The cost of applying for the citizenship is very expensive. Some of the people in our country, they can't over and they for the fees for the citizenship. And the proposed bill would give people with limited leave to remain, the right to stand in the Scottish election regardless of their citizenship status, and to provide them with the opportunity to contribute and participate fully in the Scottish society. And we believe that it is about promoting democratic participation and empowering those who have chosen to make Scotland their home and also addressing inequalities in here. Thank you so much. Thank you. Very helpful. And it lays out clearly the very important perspective. Is there anyone else on the panel that's got a perspective on this that you'd like to share? I'll listen to that. The other issue I was going to ask about was the issue of Joe Mandate's where MSPs can hold another office as a councillor or an MP. And just to get the panel's views on Joe Mandate's and how appropriate that is, I don't know. Alice, do you want to kick off on that? I'm happy to come in here. Is that okay with everyone? Hi, thank you. So yes, I'm Alice and just want to extend a thank you on behalf of ERS Scotland to the convening committee for having us. So on Joe Mandate's we would quite like to see legislation brought in line with the Senate where basically we don't see real reason that I think MSPs should be double-jobbing as is the other term for it. We don't see any real benefit to either the voters or our democratic institutions. So the legislation that already, Welsh legislation that exists, sets out what we agree with is quite acceptable. So if you're an MSP and you are an sitting MP, you have eight days to resign your seat in the Commons. And if you are a councillor, then you have three hundred and seventy-five days. So there's a bit of more leniency there. And also we, in the Senate, the legislative for taking a leave of absence from the Lords, we'd probably like to see an MSP resigning from the Lords. But that's, we don't, just to reiterate, we don't see why there should be, we don't see any real benefit to having two jobs as it were. So that would be our position. Great. Thank you. Anyone else got a perspective on that issue? Nope, okay. Nice and easy. Thank you. You know. Okay, I think you're done. Oh sorry, have your hand up. Sorry, all I was going to say is that I think I agree with the ERS in this much. I think it's very good or helpful for our democracy for people to have these dual mandates. The actual issue where it's created is because standing as a candidate is incredibly high risk for people. It's a huge amount of hard work and sacrifice with, so it's hard for parties to get people to do it. And I think some of the other things we're looking at round here, like making more people stand, making it easy to be a candidate, will also contribute to getting rid of the need as to why parties end up with, for example, their councillor standing as MSPs. We need to make more fundamental changes to how easy it is to be a candidate. Obviously it's always going to be high risk because it's a win-lose participation. So I can't see any harm to our democracy for changing rules in that way, but we do have to understand why we've ended up here in the first place and deal with some of that as well. Thank you. Can I just come back with regard to the standing? One of the things that has been raised with us is the fact that when an MSP is successful, obviously they have to take an oath of allegiance. And whether or not you see any potential challenges from an individual's point of view in taking that oath of allegiance, having gone through the entire election and succeeded, whether there are any perhaps any unforeseen consequences that we haven't considered yet about requiring a new MSP, particularly if they have refugee status and all of that, whether there are any unforeseen consequences that may arise from that. The world being concerning it is about, we're talking about from a wish of perspective, you will deal or you'll see actually do this. And for myself actually, I see everyone, as they told you actually, who choose actually to make Scotland their home. They must be given the same right. I myself yes, I'm a refugee and some of you maybe you will see me through this label, but I didn't see myself as a refugee. I see myself as a human being and I must be given the same equal rights like anyone who are living in this country. So why we are treating people based on their immigration status? And I think by giving this right, we also challenge the state code. We start actually to go to build a country where everyone, they have the same equal rights. This is, I know, it is idle things, but I'm hoping and I have a big belief that Scotland can do this. That's lovely. Thank you very much. Edward, I think you wanted to come in probably on the earlier point. Indeed, Camila, thank you. And I have my own views on dual mandates and whether it's possible to do the job. I find it's quite intense doing the job that I'm doing already, so I'm not sure I'd look for another job as well. We are in situations where councillors stand to become MSPs and get elected to become an MSP. And then there's because of the way the elections fall, Alice. There's about a year before the council elections. Do you think there's an argument that councillors who become MSPs should continue for that year so as not to cause an extensive cost to the taxpayers? They probably still can do that job for that short period of time if council meetings are on Mondays and Fridays. Do you have a view on that? Just to say that yes, there are those circumstances and we would agree and that's why we would advocate for that 375 days window as opposed to say the House of Commons and Hollywood. So yes, we appreciate that there are certain circumstances if you're a councillor and you're elected to Hollywood. Can I just pause one moment because where this discussion is going is not causing a problem but I think there's something that needs that Jackie would like to put on the record. Although she hasn't contributed to this part of the discussion yet. No, I haven't contributed to it but I'd like to refer members to my register of interests because I was a councillor for the first year that I was an MSP. And as Edward said, it was purely based on trying to save public money because the cost of it would have been horrendous because it was especially during Covid when the elections were so expensive. I'm certainly content that you fulfilled the responsibility and that you have that, Edward. And Comedian, you would know about the responsibilities of declarations of interests in this Parliament better than probably most other MSPs. My point then, just to take it to the next step, is that if you chose to stand for to be an MP as an MSP, your content that you would resign or your proposal would be that you resigned if you were elected to an MP that you wouldn't have to resign before. Sorry, could you repeat the point you're trying to make there? So if you were an MSP, for example, and you stood for election to become an MP, you are content that if you then became an MP that you would be given eight days to, I think, was the period that's being suggested to resign. You wouldn't have to resign before the election. We think that in line with the Welsh legislation that eight days period is satisfactory. Okay, thank you, Comedian. There are just two simple questions. Sorry to put Jackie on the spot, not. Annie, can I come to you? Thanks, convener. Good morning, panel. I'd like to move on to free mail-outs. As you'll know the issue whether to provide free mail-outs for candidates to local government was consulted on during this. As is the case that there is free mail-outs for Scottish parliamentary elections. And I'm just wondering whether you think it should have been included in the bill or it should be included in the bill. And would it support diversity in candidacy? And I think maybe I see Hannah nodding her head, so I'll go to Hannah first, please. Thank you. I think the issue of finance around candidacy is a huge one that actually hasn't had enough attention generally in academia, in policy and research. So I'm really pleased that this specific initiative has been suggested. Standing for election is incredibly expensive. And I think it's more expensive than we realise because we have candidate finance reporting, but that is just the cost of the campaign. And the vagueness around what is defined as the cost of a campaign is something that's becoming clearer to us. We now provide small grants to women who are standing for elected office to support them with the personal costs that they encounter in the lead-up to the campaign. And through that period process and through speaking to lots and lots of women about their financial needs during this time, we realise how much additional costs there are that aren't considered part of campaign finance. So any move that can be taken to level the playing field and to ensure that a wider range of candidates can consider it are to be celebrated. So we very much strongly support the free mailings as another opportunity that people can have their democratic rights and stand for election without having to rely on additional financing to support those quite simple messages that they want to get out to people. OK, I think you want to come in on this point as well. Again, to back up what Hannah said, it's high risk. It's very expensive in terms of your actual life rather than just the costs of standing for candidacy. It's already hard for people to do it on lower incomes. It's hard for people to do it who don't have the kind of flexible employers who would give you time off. It is incredibly difficult and if we want, I think we need to do more than this, but I think this is a basic step that to some extent would level the playing field. Clearly everyone in this room has stood for election and understands how hard it actually is. And we've come to a kind of time in place where it's really easy to mock politicians and laugh at them and undervalue their contribution, but actually it's a really, really tough job and getting there is even harder and we need to take some serious steps to ensure that more people have the chance to stand up and get elected. Thanks for that. Anyone else get anything to contribute? No, thanks very much. I'll move on now and this is probably a question for yourself Alice. How important do you think digital imprints are for transparency for the electorate? This is something that I have had quite a lot of discussion on, so I'm going to put you in the spot on this one, Alice. No, no, thank you. The ERS has long campaigned for digital imprints and extending it from print to the digital realm. The salience of these issues has only increased in recent years, obviously. We've seen between the 2015 and 2017 general election a doubling of the amount spent on Facebook adverts just as one example. So it is a big issue for the ERS. We would like to see, our main point is, we are concerned about the potential loophole that exists at the moment and that we would like to see a monitoring of the scheme basically. As it stands, it states that the imprint must be included as part of the material unless it is not reasonably practical to do so. If it's not reasonably practical, that's the issue there, then the imprint must be included somewhere directly accessible from the material. We would, yes, just like a very thorough monitoring to make sure that it's working as intended and that imprints are appearing on the material itself as much as possible. There's no exploitation, basically, of the loophole, so that would be our key message there. Anyone else get anything? Thank you, James. It's not so much a point or a view on whether or not that would be appropriate as an electro-immutative reform, but if that was something that was considered most to come into place, then it's just a point that I wanted to make around accessibility for blind past sight people, because if it is deemed important to be able to have an imprint so that any given voter or citizen can track where this advert is generated from or who's paying for it or what have you, which are important things in society, people are blind past sighted, obviously, unless the people putting out social media such as on Twitter or X, unless they themselves be that political party or individual candidate or whoever's the beneficiary of the reason for the imprint, unless they put out text onto their social media images, that then becomes redundant for blind past sighted people. So it's just really, if that was to be considered and looked at, I just wanted to add that in as something to consider as part of it. That's really important, I think, as well. I think Kay wanted to come in as well. I may well now have to reach out to James to make sure we are doing it properly and just to say that we're in the process of doing that for our digital interprets. It doesn't seem to be a huge cost or inconvenience. I do think it's something that is really, really important in a age of disinformation that people can track and be clear about who is participating in our democracy and what they're saying can be tracked back. I get that there are costs and all sorts of things, but it is so worth fighting for a participated democracy that is fair and open, that we have to take all that into account, but I've made a noted point round the other issues there that have been raised. Thanks very much for that. Thanks, convener. Thank you very much. Really, I suppose, I want to push this point and look at notional spend. In particular, I think probably if I can come to you first, Hannah, because obviously there's proposals to change the notional spend within the bill. It may indeed capture campaigners who previously weren't covered. I know you made mention of grants and things like that. Do you have any comments, concerns about alteration in the notional spend that either could facilitate an easier progress for what you're proposing or indeed may indeed turn into a challenge? Yes, I think it just requires a real detailed assessment of the specifics of the language, to be honest, and what we are suggesting both in terms of fundraising, because if you increase spend, then there's more opportunities for fundraising, but that means that those that don't have access to that sort of fundraising have an unequal opportunity. But similarly, we do see that there's a need to provide additional financial support to those that are candidates in order to balance out that playing field. So I think the detail in the language and how it's how what is defined as campaign expenses. As I mentioned, a whole heap of things that people, but specifically women have to spend money on as part of the campaign that would not be traditionally considered that. You know, and at this current time in our lives, you know, several women, there are local elections happening in England at the moment, and we're supporting some women who are parliamentary candidates for the upcoming general election. And you know, they're worried about the cost of living crisis. They're worried about being able to pay their electricity bills and they're taking time off work so they can join campaigns. And so we're seeing this real kind of balance that they need to earn enough in order to continue to pay for their lives. Whereas would we expect those electricity bills to be part of that campaign expenses? No, but there are a query around what is defined as that. If we're asking looking for childcare so that I can go out campaigning, are my childcare expenses considered part of that, the campaign costs? And so, and we're really seeing anecdotally, our evidence is really seeing a huge impact on candidates mental health, actually, as they're really just stressed about so many different levels of the campaign and the abuse that they're facing, and therefore also the financing of it, and whether they're reporting correctly which expenditures should be included and which shouldn't. And coming to us and we're doing our best to support them, but the language is vague. So really our ambitions here rather than being specific in terms of exactly what should be included in the bill is to really give this the attention that it deserves, which I think historically it really hasn't been given as I said academically or in the policy space to understand the realities of candidates' lives and experiences and ensure that that access to equality and we're opening the opportunities to a wider range of candidates is a key ambition as this legislation is developed. So just before I come to UK, because I know you want to come in, Hannah, you are sympathetic to the actual notional spend so that there's transparency and expenditure. Would you go so far as to say that perhaps different levels of allowed expenditure should apply to different candidates? Well, that's an interesting point that we haven't really explored, but I'd be very interested in kind of joining that conversation to see what that could look like. But yes, I would say that different individuals, if you're a single parent, you've got much completely reliant on both earning and supporting logistically your family. You have much different expenditure needs than an employed person that has a fantastically sympathetic workplace that gives them time off, paid time to join the campaign. So that's not a particular point that we've looked into, but I'd be very interested to explore what that could actually look like. And I think that balancing that's equity in terms of giving different people different opportunities in order to balance out the field. And that's certainly what we're looking for in order to diversify the candidate pool. Thank you, Kay. You wanted to come in. As a trade union, clearly we are a registered third party campaigner. We are a registered campaigner and we fully support maximum transparency. I think that our money is the cleanest money in politics. It is the most open money in politics because it's not just this legislation but an array of trade union legislation that covers what we can do and how we can participate. I think that it is important that everyone else is held to account in the same way that we are. We don't do anything that is not open. We fully supported some of the lobbying bills. In fact, I'd probably call for those to be stronger. Openness is key to our democracy, but also to people's trust in it. And we are in a position where people, I suspect that if somebody looks at this transcript, they'll be laughing at me for saying MSPs have got really tough jobs. We have very low levels of trust in our electoral politics, and part of that comes from a lack of ability to trace that money and the power that money gives you. We have to be really bold on this. Thank you. Alice, do you want to come in on the national spend? Just nodding along with Hannah and Kay there. I agree with them both, and I think that there is that balance to be struck between accessibility and transparency and the ability to, like Kay says, trace the money, especially as it is open to abuse by wealthy actors and other foreign states. It's a really, really key area in terms of our position, the arrest position, is that we'd like to change us to be brought in along the lines of the UK elections at 2022, but I just to agree with the previous two speakers also. Do you have any thoughts on different levels of expenditure to reflect the characteristics of the candidate? Similar to Hannah, we haven't actually looked at that either, and I think it is a really interesting conversation that could be had, so we'd be also interested in going into that conversation. We're appropriate, but glad that it's been brought in. Thank you. The next aspect of the Bill is in relation to proposals for pilots during elections and extending it to the Electoral Management Board, the Electoral Registration Officers to propose these pilots. Now, I've got a number of questions that I want to explore about this, possibly coming to you first, James. In relation to, are there any pilots that you would like to see being considered? Do you think extending the power to propose a pilot could go beyond the Electoral Management Board or the Registration Officers? And how do you see that being of value particularly to those members that you represent, which becomes a bit of a postcode lottery? Absolutely, chair. Essentially, there's been a ballot act that was passed in 1872, which guaranteed the right to a secret ballot. Unfortunately, even with an overhunger, there's been a ballot act that was passed in 1872, which guaranteed the right to a secret ballot. Unfortunately, even with an overhunger in over 150 years, it's still not the case that all Blin and Parcity people feel that they're able to vote in confidence and in secret. In fact, the last time we did it after each election, we always got a plethora of concerns and complaints raised with R&B. We then go and harass the politicians and the officials and so forth. It's like a big cycle that goes on. The last time in May 2022, which was R&B's turned out report, that found that only one in five Blin and Parcity people took part in that work. Only one in five felt that they were able to vote in confidence and in secret. Anecdotally, it basically means that most people trust somebody else to help them vote, be that an election official or a member of a friend. It must be possible to work out a way to try and get around that with modern technology and other methods. In saying that, we do recognise the excellent work that is getting done by the Scottish Government at the moment in trying to evaluate and work out options for accessible voting. It's not straightforward—it's easy for me to say, but it's not that straightforward, of course—but we have to be able to go and test it. There are lots of tests, and we are working, and other specialist organisations are working with the Electoral Commission, the National Management Board and the Scottish Government to try and identify ways to make voting more accessible. At some point, the bill is going to have to be bitten, and we have to go and try it in the wild in a real election. That will most likely be best placed within the context of a local council by election. There is about 13, 14 on average every year. For that to happen, by broadening out those who can suggest that or make that decision to hold it, beyond just turning off local authorities to the National Management Board and perhaps the Government itself, it just increases the likelihood that that is going to come to pass, because there can be all sorts of reasons why any given local authority doesn't want something complicated happening in their particular by-election. I've been able to broaden that out to increase the number of stakeholders who can have that discussion. We think that it would make it more likely to be able to test an accessible voting pilot once one's identified that is worth testing. Do you have confidence in that process of identifying the problem, identifying a solution and piloting it, which will obviously take a period of time, rather than solving the problem, biting the bullet and saying that this is what's going to happen? Part of the challenge is that, in Scotland, we believe it to be about 200,000, 180,000 people who are blind apart sighted have significant sight loss. It's an awful lot of people and all of them are individuals. There isn't one solution to all of them being able to vote how they would want to. It's very hard to be able to do that. What you can do is try and make it as ubiquitous as possible, try and broaden out the accessibility as much as possible, then, over time, perhaps add and utilise technology as it comes available to try and make that process accessible. Steps that can be taken to improve, for instance, the accessibility of a ballot paper, or to update the TVD device that is currently available in the UK High Court, by finding alternative ways to provide things such as that, which is what the Scottish Government is working on just now. In fact, there are some informal tests and trials this afternoon over in Falkirk. That's a really important thing to do. There is not going to be one solution. There needs to be steps towards it because, at the moment, it's not accessible. If that's one in five, people feeling confident about it can go up to one and a half in five. That is a big advance because that covers thousands of people. We know that it's a long road and we have confidence that it's getting looked at. That has been taken seriously by all the political parties and the Parliament and the Government in Scotland. An extension to the proposal to allow the Electoral Management Board to make those proposals, you are in agreement with, subject to you being able, in essence, to go to the Electoral Management Board with perhaps proposals for pilots that they should consider would be as satisfactory as we can get to at this stage? I'm absolutely confident that that would happen because we're in regular dialogue with the Electoral Management Board, the Electoral Commission, the Scottish Government and anybody else who cares to listen to us on this issue. We're open vaguely engaging. Part of the role that we play with other Scottish organisations is that we can engage blind and percite people to come to do informal tests. Obviously, in the real election, we would offer support where we could to put out communications and try to promote the fact that accessible options are available, but that would be out of our control then because it would be in the real context of a real event. I will come back to you, James, but I think Kay, you wanted to come in on the pilot schemes. I think it's really important to try some of these pilots and James has already intimated some really interesting things, but I think it's also important not to miss the point that we won't be able to administer ourselves out of this problem. Participation is particularly poor in local government elections and candidacy is low. I think that when we closed the candidates' deadline for the last local government election, some people were immediately elected on that day. That's really quite sad in an ancient democracy of ours that it's not more competitive. It is about people's feeling that they can manifest change and it is worthwhile bothering trade unionists who are much more likely to vote than the population at large. I think that that is partly because we encourage people to vote in itself, but also there are people who are used to feeling power, to making and driving change and participating in democracy in its widest sense. I think that the pilots need to be about more than just the technicalities of voting but about actual participation and power in the process. It's not no to that, it's just not in itself. I would like to completely agree with Kay's point there as well. We were quite disappointed not to see provision for an automated voter registration given that it was part of the consultation as well, so we would really like to see an amendment made which would make a pilot. I think that it would be included in the explanatory notes to the bill, which would make provision for that, because we have 19 per cent of people eligible to vote in Scotland, not on the register or incorrectly registered. It's not a panacea. We're not saying that we at the ERS are also looking at ways outside of elections as well to enhance our democratic culture. It's not just about elections but it is such a vital step that we could use this legislation to potentially really move the dial on. We know—there's a lot of research from the Electoral Commission—that how this negatively impacts protected characteristic demographics, underrepresented and under-registered demographics. We at the ERS have done our own analysis that shows that the worst affected constituencies in England and Wales are around a fifth, which is the same in Scotland. That's the worst constituencies in England and Wales. We are going to have more research on Scotland specifically when that census data comes out, which I'm happy to share with the committee. I'd also be interested to hear some initial thoughts from committee members on what they think about an ABR amendment to the bill. That's a delightful invite. However, I'm going to do the terrible thing and go, this is our evidence session and this is what we're looking for. Do you think that automatic registration needs piloting or is it something that could be achieved as a change in approach towards elections, where at a certain point, as people grow old or indeed come into the country, there is automatic registration happens? It could. It's just that this is an opportunity, I guess. There's already a roadmap in looking to Welsh legislation with the bill that's just gone through, so we just see it as a real opportunity to—it's almost there waiting where we could just apply it here as well. So, in a sense, the concept of a pilot in just a small geographic area, do you feel is necessary or do you have confidence in solutions that exist elsewhere? You've pointed to the Senate that actually could just be imported if that's what, as a Parliament, we felt was the right thing to do. Yes, I mean, we feel like a pilot would be a good first step and that's what the legislation in the Senate does as well. It's for a pilot, so they'll be bringing in pilots on this. James, I was going to come back to you on it. I hooked it under this question, but it's actually a slightly different point in the evidence that was submitted, which is about electronic polling cards. My understanding of the evidence that I've read is that that's something that you would like to make sure that in the future could be brought in. Is there a reason that we shouldn't just bring in electronic polling cards along with physical polling cards at the moment, and are there any advantages or what are the advantages to doing that? For blind person sight people touched on earlier that all individuals as well, some are much more tech savvy than others, as is the general population, but there is undoubtedly a large cohort of people who are blind person sight, if they were able to register with the local authority to be able to receive their summation to vote essentially. By email or by whatever other method, they are able to use screen readers on their phones and be able to read emails and to know about it. It just increases the likelihood that they would notice there's an election, whereas if they get someone through the post, then quite clearly there's a chance they'll miss it if not being able to read it. As to whether we just roll it out straight away, I'd be a bit more small to be conservative on that. I think that you always need to test things to make sure that it works effectively and doesn't inadvertently cause some sort of problem that she hadn't anticipated. It does seem fairly logical why couldn't you send out both, but I dare say that there will be some administrator somewhere who have good reasons why that's not as straightforward as it sounds. So at the very least a good proposal for a pilot? I would definitely have it considered as something to try and do. You could do both, couldn't you? You wouldn't risk missing somebody. You could send everybody the polling card and then also try and persuade folk to sign up to get a digital one. I don't have to be general population, because over time you could just start to remove the people who receive it digitally, they're happy with that. Over time it could just be what becomes the norm and that would save money, wouldn't it, essentially, if I had to send out the polling cards? Thank you. My sort of penultimate question really is, and I think, Kay, I'm going to come to you first because you made mention of this, but I do want to open it up to the whole panel. The Bill will give the Scottish Government power to spend money on democratic engagement in whatever way they feel has been identified. What should the priority be for that funding? Kay, you've mentioned processes, not the bill on an end, all answer to everything. What should the priorities be for that funding, Kay? I actually think that what needs to happen with the funding is it needs to go down to local areas. I think the funding itself should go to local authorities, and then local authorities should be able to decide what's best for them to start using in their communities, which then ties back to what I've said earlier, which is about that on-going process of participation and encouraging people to both vote regularly, but also more widely participate in processes, join campaigns, ask for things. If you ask and you get used to the process of asking, then you're much more likely to keep asking, even if you don't always get what you want. Again, I feel as though I'm repeating myself and I hope it makes sense. It's about localising that spend, localising the decision making and the trials to allow people to participate, and then for me, people feeling their power, beginning to feel power, beginning to participate, but either being elected, standing for the election themselves, or just asking tough questions of the people who are standing in elections. I think that this is a process that people grow into in their life. That said, I want to return to some of the points that we've made earlier. Lots of people actually do want to participate, but it's not a very pleasant process in the current circumstances. To go full circle, here I am speaking to you. I would never stand for electoral politics in this country, never in a million years. Patently, I'm well used to putting my top and swath in to conversations. Thank you for that, Kay. Hannah, what would you like to see the priorities being? I really agree with Kay's points about the localisation of the spending here. I think there's so many fantastic community grassroots organisations up and down the country that are really engaged with underrepresented, underregistered communities, and I think the opportunity for those groups to connect the work that they do with democratic engagement is absolutely vital. I'm more into that third sector space rather than local authorities as a method of distribution. To say that there is growing work in the strengthening our democracy space of third sector groups like ours and others who are interested in this, and there's a real confusion around where we sit regarding funding. Is it political work in which case so much charitable giving is then restricted if it's seen as political work? This confusion between political and democratic outside of government is an issue for those of us, like my organisation, in terms of our fundraising, where actually we would say it's not political at all, but it's about strengthening democracy. If the government is in a position to contribute to that funding pot, I think there's some really fantastic organisations out there doing really interesting work at engaging communities, and there's just a lack of funding. So we're really supportive of increased funding for democratic engagement. We've been lucky enough to receive some from the Scottish Government ourselves, and it's made an absolutely fundamental difference to the amount of work that we've been able to do, and I believe that we really contributed to the 2% increase in women that were elected in the local election in 2022, and that's directly relation to the money that we were given through the Equality and Human Rights Fund, which we're incredibly grateful for. So I think it does work, and I'd really, really champion the government to continue to grow that fund and really look at what fantastic organisations are on the ground that are able to support in the mission of improving our democracy and getting more people engaged. Excellent. Thank you very much, Hannah. Becoming a shopping list this slightly. Alan, what do you think the priority should be with funding to increase the democratic? I would agree, actually. Yeah, thank you so much, Chairman. And I would agree, actually, in here with Kay and also with Hannah, and we at the Scottish Refugee Council, we've seen during the election in 2021, and also the local election in 2022, that there are even the right to vote for refugees that's given to them. But there is still some of the refugees. They don't know that they can vote in national and local election in here. So some of the people, they come to us and they were asking us to give them some of that resource. And we work alongside the editorial commission to reduce some of the resources in multiple languages and to distribute the resources to the refugees communities that we are working with. But it is still the things that we did. It is small things because we didn't have much fund to work and also there are some of the refugees communities be back to us asking us why, because we translated that resources at the time just only to five languages. And there are some of the refugees communities they back asking us why you didn't translate it to my language too. And there are some of a lot of works we can work in here, but some many of the time, the challenge, it is the funding. So I totally agree, this is area, it can help to encourage people to participate in the democracy. And also I agree with Hannah, it is not about political things, it is about democracy. James, priority? It's quite a wide area, isn't it? So one of the things that we've been very happy about is that at the moment in the Scottish one election, there's still a fund there which allows people with disabilities to access it, to give them that additional support they might need to be able to participate in the political process. I think I'm right in saying that it includes going through the Byzantine methods of selection that different parties have, which sometimes needs a bit of support for somebody to be able to go through, and also the actual standing for election itself. And we are aware of a couple of examples of blind-parcite people who have had some resources. I think it was through Inclusion Scotland that I went through that from my collection. If you just imagine somebody's blind-parcited, if they want to go out canvassing, they need to have somebody supporting them in that, and they want to fill in the canvass sheets on an app or something, they just need that basic bit of support. The society recognises that people with disabilities need additional support in a whole range of ways through the benefits of the system, through access to work, and there are other places where it is recognised that it costs more money for somebody with a disability to participate in any given aspect of society. So we just like to see that principle extended to democracy, sort of effectively. Another thing I would say as well, and I don't know if this is a good or a bad idea, it's off the top of my head, so we'll just go with it. We're talking about communications and being able to receive information within the context of the democratic election. I mentioned another one about alt text and how blind-parcited voters who want social media, unless somebody describes what the image is, they don't get to see where it is, they don't know what it is. That also pertains to leaflets, parties leaflets and the materials that they put out. The political parties themselves can't know where a blind-parcet person might live, quite obviously, unless they happen to know that, for a fact. Nonetheless, effectively political parties should be more aware of producing things in alternative formats, not because not every single leaflet is not realistic, but certainly corporate core stuff. That might be something that an access to democracy fund might support, because understanding that political parties themselves want to target their resources at certain things. It might not be generally having lots of accessible information, but if there were some ring friends fund or some sort of money they could get, which was even across the piece, all political parties could access it if there were certain level of representation in the Parliament or what have you, that might be what they could use to get stuff accessible format, not just for blind-parcited but easy reading a whole manner of other things, just a thought. Thank you. Just before I come to you, Alice, I think Hannah, you wanted to just come back in on a point? No, not quite about this actually. That's fine, then Alice I'll come to you and then I'll come back to you Alice, anything? We would just say that the ERS is broadly in support of this, we can again look to Wales, it's in its fourth round, it's going well, so we're very much in support. A couple of points would mainly be rather than proposing suggestions, which I think colleagues here have done a good job of, it's just a point around transparency and evaluation and making sure that these things are really transparent and how are they being evaluated, we'd like to see that. Also I guess around also not getting tunnel vision on just on elections pilots but looking at between elections those years and opportunities to strengthen our democracy between elections too. Thank you. Hannah, can I come back to you? Sure, thank you. Just before we wrap up I wanted to make sure there was one key area of interest that we have that isn't directly reflected in the bill but I wanted to contribute to the conversation which is around diversity data of candidates. There is no legislation in place at all which requires us to collect the demographic data of those putting themselves forward for election. In 2022 the government did a trial, the local government can survey happened in the last council election but it had a 28% response rate so we would really advocate for that to be mandatory and to be implemented across all elections. I know the power of that is held with Westminster government around the Equalities Act in Act 106 but that is simply for parliamentary elections. So we would really be advocating for that in local council because until we have that data, until we know who's standing for elected office, we can't look at who isn't and we can't look at broadening that pool of candidates. At the moment that work is done but it's individual scanning websites and making judgments about people based on what they look like. Absolutely is not the robust way that we should be making these decisions. So I really want to advocate for the committee to explore how capturing diversity data in a mandatory way could be incorporated into the bill. Thank you Hannah. It leads me nicely to my final statement because I know as you leave today, thoughts and ideas will come to you. Please, please, there is an open invite for you to correspond with the committee both about the evidence that you've given today. Indeed Hannah has done things that haven't been covered that you would like us to consider so that we can take all of this into account. I am sadly conscious of time. Can I thank you all for your attendance and actually your contributions today which have been very thought provoking? As I say, we are open to any more that you would like to submit for our consideration and conversations will be ongoing on a number of matters. So can I thank you again and at that point can I suspend this meeting just to allow us for a changer of witnesses. Thank you. I welcome people back as we resume this meeting. Our second evidence panel consists of Professor Alistair Clark from the University of Newcastle and Professor Toby James from the University of East Anglia. Can I welcome you both to this session? I would like to kick off rather than looking at specific provisions within the bill. What are your thoughts really on the integrity of Scotland's devolved elections because obviously this bill relates to those. Is Scotland a good example around the world? I don't know who would like to kick off Alistair. Thanks for the invitation to talk to the committee this morning. I think that Scotland has been a good example within the UK and around the world. There is plenty of research that shows that electoral administration in Scotland has performed to a high level. I think that I would make a distinction between election administration on the one hand, the actual managing of the ballots, the ballot papers and so on and so forth, and broader systemic issues that occur in the political process and I think that they can impact upon the integrity of elections as well. The administrative side research, my own research and others research has shown that Scotland performs well. I don't think that there's room to rest on the laurels however with this because for instance in the registration field, I think that the electoral commission found that there was a higher proportion of major errors in the Scottish registers than there were elsewhere. Performing at a high level but there's always room for improvement. Those other more systemic issues, issues around foreign influence, cyber security, issues around disinformation, those kinds of issues, I think are probably an issue in Scottish elections as well. I see no obvious reason why Scottish elections should not be affected by those issues as well. I think that what we do about those is less easy to deal with and indeed only in some aspects does this bill actually touch on those sorts of things. I think that we need to see it in those two ways and think more broadly about some of those other aspects of election integrity as well. Thank you for the invitation to be able to speak with you about the bill today, which is a great honour. I think that the bill generally speaking will improve elections, but elections in Scotland are of a very good quality. So iCode directs something called the electoral integrity project and this facilitates the global comparison of election quality around the world based on expert opinion within each particular country. We undertook a survey of Scottish experts and the evaluation that they provided overall is of high quality elections in Scotland. Scotland ranked 25th globally. Scotland's elections are higher in quality than elections for the UK Parliament for example and pretty much on par with elections in Wales. The area of weakness is voter registration and that's because there are issues with voter registration across the UK because as it stands at the moment the whole of the UK has a single system that's changing so the major area of improvement is voter registration. I think that as the electoral commission research has shown we've got one million citizens within Scotland who are not on the electoral role or whose details are incomplete. So the major opportunity to address that is through automatic or assisted voter registration and I think that's the area where the scope for action is going forward. My other question I suppose is the looking glass one. What are the big dangers coming down the line that not just Scotland but all elections in a sense face? Are you able to, I'm going to regret this as well, are you able to rank perhaps the threats to the electoral system? I think it's difficult to rank them because some of these were kind of forecasting events that may not happen. There may be interventions that take place that prevent them from happening. My general view is that it's issues to do with disinformation, it's issues to do with intimidation, it's issues to do with people putting information online which kind of reveals how they're going to vote, which means that ballot secrecy no longer means quite what it once meant. I think all of these issues are out there and in the mix and it's not just electoral administrators that are involved in this, it's not just politicians that are involved in this but it's also private sector actors in the tech field as well. How you deal with some of these things, I think, well everybody's struggling with and I don't think anywhere has really found an answer. So for me these are the big issues, the administrative issues I think are important issues, I mean it's a massive logistical exercise organising an election. I think in Scotland the EMB is very much well on top of that and has definitely helped to improve Scottish elections but that's also something that you need to be aware of supply chains, timetables which the bill talks about and so on as well. All of those things can impact on the integrity of elections as well. So again back to those broader questions as well as the administrative questions. Toby? I would agree with that. I would also pick out misinformation or disinformation as probably the primary threat that's facing all societies and this is because I guess two things have developed. One is the move to an online environment which has become ever increasing but also some evidence of increasingly hostile overseas actors wanting to interfere in elections. Obviously states, there's evidence of that happening and so when you get high profile elections there is a danger that there is going to be an opportunity for overseas actors to want to influence those. The remedies for those problems aren't necessarily laws, I think laws can be helpful. Most of those things may play a role in terms of education, in terms of pre-bunking is often commonly used now to think about what the potential misinformation stories are that could be circulated and to get ahead of those and that could be particularly important as we go into an electoral cycle. One area where law is relevant, again, is with the Elector Register, is with the open or edited register because that allows the sale of the location of where citizens in Scotland live. That can be bought by anyone for any purpose and that allows some sort of micro targeting of individual citizens or citizens in marginal constituencies with misinformation in postal format. That's something that could be closed. Wales is looking at that and I would encourage the committee to think about ending the sale of the Elector Register within Scotland. You still are of the view that the Elector Register should be a public document and accessible. It's not to seek remuneration on its contents by selling it. There are two versions of the Elector Register, but there is one that is for electoral purposes, the full electoral register, which is used to run the election. That is needed by electoral officials. It's also needed by other public agencies for other public purposes such as the crime agencies and so on. There is a reason for making it available for credit referencing agencies because they undertake it on purpose. Making it accessible for citizens to check for quality in a limited way is important. Those are all important public reasons for electoral registers to be shared beyond those purposes. To sell the Elector Register to make it open access is not the whole register. People do have the option to opt out of that. That is particularly problematic. Closing that loophole is something that I would urge the committee to look at doing. In our previous session, we heard views about candidacy rights, particularly to foreign nationals with limited leave to remain. What are your views on that? What are the unforeseen consequences? What are the challenges? What, indeed, are the advantages? Alistair, if I can come to you first. Yes, of course. To be honest, I don't find a compelling reason for this to be opened up. I've tried to find advantages in doing so, in thinking why this is being proposed, why it's part of the bill. It looks to me like a solution in search of a problem, I'm afraid. My view with it is that it's a power that, if it's enacted, will probably be used very rarely for reasons that have given my written evidence political parties or are unlikely to select people without long links with the party and so on. The justification given in the policy memorandum I find less than compelling. Indeed, it seems to raise more problems than give actual answers. Scotland already has a very welcoming and open voting regime, which I think is good. That dealt with a very real problem around Brexit, people who lived here and so on. That dealt with a very real problem. It's been in the advance worth extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. It's got a very liberal voting regime and I think that's right. That makes Scotland a very welcoming place, but I don't really see what the compelling reason for having this is. Unfortunately, it looks like a tidying up exercise. We left this out of previous legislation, so let's add it to this one at the moment. I have tried to think of positive reasons for having this and I just keep coming up with the idea that this will be a power that will be there, sit on the statute book and really end up not being used. I think that electoral war is complex enough without causes there that are never going to be used. I think that this is probably one where there might be mixed opinion amongst academics, as countries are considering this issue in general. One argument in favour of it is consistency. As Professor Clark alluded to, these rights have been granted for the basis of being able to cast a vote, so maybe it follows also for candidates to see. I guess that it's also an argument for, is a matter of principle, is a matter of making Scotland, as it is, a strong and inclusive society. One slogan from the democratic movement that's often very widely been used and inecoed is the claim of, in a no taxation, without representation. The argument is that if citizens are living in a society, they're contributing towards a society, they're paying taxes, the decisions that a government is making affect them and their family members. For that period of time, there's a case for them to have a right to vote but also to stand as a candidate in those elections. I think that I agree that potentially there will be very few candidates for the reasons that Professor Clark set out. I think that it's more maybe a matter of principle when we are Scotland wants to take us down there. Can I ask who do you think has responsibility for ensuring a candidate can legally stand? Where does that rest? Because we've had concerns and slightly different answers. On whom should it, on who does it and on whom should it rest? It's a good question. I think that I've seen your previous evidence, returning officers, saying that we just take the forms as they are and take things on face value. I think that there should be some form of checks of that. I think that most people would be surprised that all of this is just taken on trust. Returning officers, I would imagine, would tell you that they don't have the capacity to do that. You then get into a case where it ends up being the law, that it ends up being the ultimate backstop and electoral law in this regard is Victorian in how it works, unfortunately, and would not get to a decision in time to prevent someone from standing. It would be something that happened well after the event. I suspect that the Electoral Commission wouldn't want to get involved in that kind of issue either. It's really not an easy issue to resolve. My gut feeling is that those handling the nomination process should be the ones to be doing some form of checks. That places it largely in returning officers, ballpark and their staffs in local councils, but I would imagine that that would be resisted. So, along with the challenge of capacity, they may also need the authority to be able to check that. Toby, anything you want to add to that? It has to be shared responsibility. It has to be some duty on the individual candidates. It has to be some duty on the party if they are standing on behalf of a party and their agents. On behalf of the electoral authorities, there's, on the one hand, a key role, an informational role, because it's complicated, and so they have to be conveyed clearly to anyone so that people can stand if they want to. It involves also potentially briefings for political parties. I think that as Professor Clark touched on that, the key issue then is checks. To what extent are checks viable and administratively and necessary as part of that process? Thank you. I'm going to hand you over to Jackie. The bill makes provisions for disqualification in certain circumstances. Is there a significant issue with harassment and intimidation of those involved in elections? You know, candidates, as I said earlier, staff, campaigners, here in Scotland. Do you think that the provisions on the disqualification orders, are they suitable? Do they go far enough? Professor Clark, you're looking at me so I'm going to pick a... It's difficult to get a real sense of the level of this as a problem. There are plenty of accounts saying that it is a problem. The Committee on Standards and Public Life did a report on this probably about five years or so ago now. The Electoral Commission has tried to measure it and they did try to measure it in Scotland and came up with a figure of around 40-ish per cent of that sort of candidates. I think that it was local elections in the last round in 2022 having experienced some form of intimidation. I think there's a question in my mind what form of intimidation are we talking about here. Is this stuff that's online or is this stuff that's in person? What is the actual nature of the intimidation that's taking place? That doesn't mean that it's any less serious than either of those venues but it might take different forms that people are experiencing. I think there is a problem in Scotland with this. Some representatives would talk about issues from the independent referendum going forward that they've experienced issues around this both online and in person. At the same time, it's important to make a distinction between what passes for normal political robust debate and what might be seen as intimidation. Where that line is drawn, I'm not entirely clear. There was one line in the committee in standards and public life's report on this when they wrote on it in 2017. They were calling for sanctions for this but they didn't want anything that wasn't already being made illegal when making sanctions for this. In other words, not having mission creep with this and including things that weren't already illegal. That seemed to me to be a reasonably sensible point to make. In terms of what's in the bill on this, I think that what's in the bill on this is reasonable. It's reasonable to extend this to election workers as well because I have observed elections where I have seen polling station workers in Scotland being given the thick end of someone's lip because of something or other. I think that it's reasonable to extend it to election workers as well but I think that what's in the bill on this regard is reasonable. Professor Jones, have you given to us? I think it's difficult to have, as Professor Clark is saying, full and accurate picture in terms of data. I suspect that there's very low level issues at the moment but there is potential for significant issues at a high level important electoral event in a polarised environment. That's the real potential scenario. Between us we've done various surveys over the years looking at what happens inside polling stations. Most of those have been either UK level or maybe only partially Scotland or maybe in England but I don't think there's a big difference between England and Scotland in this respect. Local elections, it tends to be that 90% of poll workers tend to report no issues at all with party agents or members of political parties but 10% do say that maybe they're not being quite where they should be or have encroached perhaps somewhere into the polling station. At the Brexit referendum we did see a little bit more of an issue there with campaign groups behaving inappropriately according to returning officers and 25% of respondents flagged that as an issue. You can see how, from a local election through to an election where the stakes are really high and things have become polarised. I think part of that is not deliberate attempts to undermine the election necessarily. People may misunderstand the electoral process. If it's a high stakes election maybe people who are not usually involved in elections suddenly become campaigners and start to get involved so knowledge is quite important there but also tensions can rise. It's something to monitor. I agree with Professor Clark that the proposed bill has an adequate and important measure to help to redress that but I think it's something to keep an eye on going forward. The Scottish Government has asked the committee to consider whether individuals who appear on the sex offenders register should be prevented from standing or holding elected office here in the Scottish Parliament or at local government level. I'd be interested to hear your view on any proposals. I think it would be one that would be worth looking at international best practice on. I think the Venice Commission for example provides a code of best practice for elections. I think following international practices and international standards would be a good way forward. The Carther Centre would also provide a compendium of electoral practices. I think that looking at what international standards are so that any international laws aren't breached would be a good way to take that forward. I think that that would be reasonable. I think that there are circumstances in which I'm thinking of surgeries and things of that sort for instance where elected representatives are in very close contact with constituents. I can see the logic of thinking in this direction. I don't have a particular problem with it. Professor James's point about thinking about international best practice in this regard is useful. I'm not sure what international best practice actually would be in this and nor am I sure there would be anything that either of these organisations have but I think it's definitely worth a look. I can see the logic and I wouldn't personally have any difficulty with this from an integrity issue. Good morning to you and thanks for coming along. I wanted to touch on firstly the issue round about the provisions in the bill on notional spending and spend limits for overseas third party campaigners to bring Scotland into line with reserved elections. I also know Professor Clark that you raised some issues about reporting periods and timing of that as well. Do you get your perspective on those issues initially? Yes. One of the big things that struck me in the bill was the acceptance that things need to be simplified, that they'll be brought together with the elections act provisions. I think that seems sensible to me given that it just adds lots and lots of additional complications if there are different regimes. Again, that got me thinking about what's not in this bill. There's a very important thing that's not in this bill, which is to do with bringing the spending regime for donations, campaign spending and so on, and Scottish Parliament elections into line with those for Westminster elections. They report during an election period weekly during a general election. It seems to me slightly odd that the Scottish Parliament is less transparent in this regard and report on a standard three month schedule, which is outwith the election cycle. We have no idea what's going on with donations spending during a Scottish Parliament election. That may well have been satisfactory back in 1999, but the Parliament has far more powers, far more at stake now in Scottish Parliament elections. My recommendation would be that the bill goes further than what's in it already and bring that part of it into line with the regime for Westminster elections to help transparency. One of the things that the policy memorandum focuses on in this regard is transparency. It seems to me odd that this is something that's not being considered in an attempt to improve transparency. In terms of notional spending and the restrictions on third party spending and so on, I think that they're fairly straightforward. I think that they're fairly sensible. Notional spending, meaning that it has to be something that the agent or the candidate is aware of, seems to me fairly sensible. Restricting the amount that third parties can spend to £700 is a way of trying to manage some of that potential foreign influence. I would note that the bill goes further in that regard than the Elections Act, however, by including unincorporated associations in the restrictions on spending. I think that that's an important step because they have been shown to be avenues for money coming into politics. That's a divergence in the bill that's actually very important. I would encourage the Scottish Government here to think about more transparency and to take action to improve that even further than we have at the moment and bring the two regimes more fully into line. The only thing I'd add is to query the spending limit of £700 for overseas-based third parties. If we're concerned about overseas influence in elections, then should that not be zero, should we not put a ban on overseas-based third parties being involved in Scottish elections? Otherwise, I agree that simplification of the bill makes sense, as Professor Clark makes the case strongly for further transparency. I think that it's important. Next, I want to touch on digital imprints and the bill's proposals in that area with the bill on provision in relation to unpaid for digital material by relevant third-party organisations. Just to get your perspective on that approach. To be honest, I don't think we know how either the previous Scottish regime for digital imprints worked, nor do I think we know how this for the elections act will actually work. I have not seen any research on either of those things, unfortunately. I think that there's one positive thing in this and one potentially negative thing in this that I would bring to the committee's attention. The positive thing is that this extends the imprint regime year round, if I understand it rightly. I think that that's an important issue, whereas the old Scottish regime was just very much during the campaign period. Extending that, I think, is an important transparency issue. The negative thing is, however, that there seems to be a loophole, to my mind at least, in the act here, because it says imprints if reasonably allowable or reasonably possible to include those imprints, and if they're not, you've got to provide a link to wherever they are. Now, what can be done about that? That seems to me to provide a loophole, because people will just say, well, it's not reasonably possible in this post or whatever it is. I think the difficulty is what's in the bill replicates the wording in the elections act, as far as I can see. So, if we're going to go down that road and replicate that, then I don't see there's much that can be done. If we want to try and tighten that loophole, then I think this is an area that there might be divergence from the elections act regime. I think imprints, however, in general in this field are a good thing, but quite how they work, they're very, very new. I'm not really aware of any research, and what measures there have been introduced in previous years to try and get a handle on online political advertising have been shown to be fairly ephemeral. For instance, Facebook had a library of political adverts at one point, which just vanished overnight. That, of course, limits transparency and underlines the problem of having those private sector actors involved here having to come up with information. I would also welcome the provisions in the bill, but, again, to echo earlier comment, it doesn't really address the main problem by itself. Problems with misinformation, for example, are very serious. They're very serious threats. The studies that exist point to the importance of supporting fact-checking mechanisms, supporting journalism, supporting deploying technological tools to detect misinformation. Those things have been shown to work for pre-bunking mechanisms. The digital imprints does help transparency, but it's still a big ocean, and I think there's more that needs to be done. Next, I wanted to touch on the profession. Do you want me to? My apologies. I just wanted to come in on that point. You say that there's not much research in relation to the digital imprints, but, in other democracies, I'm thinking of the US, the requirement for a candidate to affirm a message that's put out to the public has existed for a lot longer. Is the research there as to the effect of having that endorsement on it? Are you aware of any and is it good or is it bad? It's a very good question, and I'm not aware of any research that's been done on that. At least I've not seen any, I don't know if you have. Next, I wanted to get your perspective on the issue of postponement of elections and the provisions in the bill for that. Specific issues are about publishing a statement of reasons, any test that should be applied and that decision taken, how and who should take the decision to make sure that it's free from political influence. Have you got any perspective on that? Sure. As I've said in my written evidence, this is an area where the bill could be strengthened. The reasons given in the policy memorandum were less than convincing to my mind, I'm afraid. The process was also less than convincing. The Scottish Government is very right to be thinking about this, because Governments were very much caught in no man's land during the coronavirus pandemic and had to enact all sorts of retrospective legislation and things of that sort, so they're right to think about it. I think that what I would like to see in the bill is some form of legal test of necessity, because there doesn't seem to be that there at the moment. We're relying on the assumption that the Presiding Officer says it's necessary and that the chair of the MB and electoral commission say it's necessary. What we found, and we did worldwide research on the coronavirus pandemic, was that these issues around postponement were more likely to be successful if they were cross-party, because they would then reflect societal agreement about what had to be done. The first thing is to have a legal test of necessity. What test that might be, I'll leave to the committee in the Scottish Government, but I've suggested two ideas in my own evidence, something from the Civil Contingencies Act perhaps might be one approach, something around necessity for derogations from human rights regimes might be another way of thinking about that. If that's in there, then I think that strengthens the bill, but I also think that it needs to be strengthened by more than just consultation with the EMB and with the electoral commission. They're going to have a very, very important role in telling the Presiding Officer whether or not this is deliverable or not and election is deliverable. That should not be taken lightly, but given the time to reflect and put processes in motion, some form of cross-party committee or advisory group would be preferable in this regard, made up of senior politicians who could be nominated by party leaders or whatever may even be party leaders. To my mind, that's preferable to get agreement about what the actual necessity to do this is, because to my mind there's a danger of fairly routine but rare events being declared an emergency. I'm not saying that that would happen, but I think that there's a possibility of it happening, and that's why I think that it needs to be tightened up a bit. I think that it's vitally important that this is included in the bill. Unfortunately, unexpected events are going to only become more frequent going forward. It's important to have clear provisions. Independence is a really, really important principle, including party stakeholders. One really good example that worked well in the pandemic was in Argentina, where they had a cross-party council that pulled everyone together to make a consensual decision about whether to postpone the election or not. I think that including political parties in that is really important. Having the EMB or Electoral Commission as advisory in that scenario could be seen as potentially a little bit weak, and you can see how the presiding officer could be criticised for taking a partisan position, whether that's true or not. If we think independence is really important, arguably there's a strong case for allowing the EMB for Scotland to be the one that makes the decision rather than the presiding officer. Edward, do you want to just come in on that last point? Just on that and the mechanics of it, the unexpected happening unexpectedly. I think that if I remember rightly during Covid that they changed it so MSPs remained in post right up until the day prior to the election, so if there was a crisis we could come back and sit. So if it's going to be down to MSPs, and it happens once Parliament's been dissolved, there are no MSPs, but there are ministers and cabinet secretaries because they stay in post. So how do you get round that and do you think some thought process needs to be given to that? I'm slightly concerned that if it's allowed to sit with the Government, who are the only people who still have people in position, those of us who might have a different opinion won't be heard because we don't exist. Thank you. I think that's right. This is a conundrum without a shadow of a doubt. This is why I've suggested the cross-party group. I think I could go slightly further than I've done already. It might be possible to have some form of delegated powers or something of that sort in the event of an emergency or something of that sort, but under very tightly controlled circumstances that might enable something to be done. I keep saying something because we don't know what might happen, but I think there is a need for more thought to go into this undoubtedly. I think that the contrary however is that leaving MSPs in post until a day before I think was reasonable during the pandemic. We've got a bit of leisure of time here. I think you end up in that position where you have MSPs not on a level playing field with the other candidates. I'm sure the other candidates would complain. I can see the logic of that argument, so I think it is something that needs to be resolved. That's why I think maybe that advisory committee could have some delegated power in the event of an emergency or something. Sorry, can I push back slightly on that? I absolutely agree with MSPs remaining in post and the fact that it may give them a difficulty. Where my fear is is that if you have an advisory committee, how do you wait the votes? Because the waiting of the votes, if it's done like in the bureau, it would be purely down to the government in this situation, and if they've got an absolute majority, then the advisory committee would be a waste of time. I personally favour an outside organisation taking control. Toby, you sort of suggested that. I maybe just push you slightly to answering and then come back to Alistair. I think to have an independent body making that decision does insulate Parliament politicians in some regard. I think you still need to include politicians in that conversation because they have important views and you want to take everyone along with you. If he wants to make an external body making that decision, that would be a little bit clearer. Alistair, you're kind of nodding. I'm kind of nodding. I can see completely the logic of your argument, but that then subverts the normal role of authority. The role of authority is for politicians to take the decisions, not officials. The EMB has been a wonderful organisation for improving the quality of Scotland's elections. They've done a lot of good work, but should that be put on the shoulders of whoever the convener of the EMB happens to be, I'm not necessarily sure it should be. This is partly why I suggested the cross-party issue. I've also suggested in my written evidence that there could be a particular sort of majority limit, supermajority perhaps or something of that sort for this advisory committee to be made to prevent the circumstance that you've suggested about the Government. I think this is one that could go round and round several times. I'll probably just leave it, stop it going round and round, but just to say that I do think that actually this needs a little bit clearer thought because we are going to expect, we have to expect the unexpected and if Covid taught us nothing, it's that and some of the decisions we made in the build-up to or during Covid I think were fundamentally from democracies point of view. Annie, can I come to you? Yes, thank you convener, thank you for being here and thank you for your written submissions as well. I just would like to touch on the electoral pilots, if I may. Obviously there is provision in the bill to extend them out, which I think the majority of our witnesses agree with, that that's a good thing. We also heard in our previous evidence sessions from the electoral reform society that we think a trick has been missed when it comes to voter registration, so I wonder if you could just expand on should this be a pilot indeed and of so what approach should be taken. I'll come to Professor James first please. Yes, I think the bill is missing a trick. I think voter registration is probably the biggest issue facing Scottish elections, one of the biggest issues facing UK elections. Automatic voter registration is something which many countries around the world have now adopted, some had it from the start, but countries have had a similar system to the UK where it's been an individual responsibility. They have adopted these bolt-on ways of increasing voter registration rates because they have experienced the same problem that we have, ever declining levels of voter registration. I think that how do you make that happen? You need to give returning electoral registration officers the right to register an elector without application, where they have confidence that that person is who they are and they are eligible for the action. You need to increase the data sources that they can receive so that they can make those applications. You need to put that legal provision in first so that pilots can then be run on that basis. Inevitably, there is going to be a learning process of working out which data source is the best one, which can be used, which has the greatest impact. It's unrealistic to think that we can move to full automatic voter registration. In fact, it's just going to be adding particular groups at particular moments in time. For example, adding 16 or 15-year-olds to the electoral register when they receive the national insurance number, that's one step. Thinking about it in terms of life moments for the voter and combining voter registration with that, it could boost the quality of the electoral registers. It could save people a lot of work who are already writing to those people, asking them to register the vote and they're not doing it. There are cost savings to be made here as well. I'm not sure how you would pilot automatic voter registration. By definition, that would need to be a nationwide reform, as is happening in Wales. The idea of a pilot is to do something on a localised area to try and learn lessons from it. I'm not quite sure how that would work. Maybe some of the backroom administrative processes that might build into an automatic voter registration system could be trialled on that basis. The actual automatic registration aspect of it, I'm less sure about, but what you could do on a step to that road, is try on what's known as assisted voter registration, where you get public services, life moments for voters, things of that sort, to keep reminding electors that you have to register. It's an individual responsibility. Here's how you do it. Provide them with information and so on. I think that that would be possible to be piloted in various areas. If there's going to be anything in registration in the form of piloting, I'd send people down that avenue rather than necessarily thinking about automatic. As a stepping stone, I would assume towards a wider aim. I completely see where you're coming from. Using the life moments is an ideal way to go about it. The other challenge that we have in particular is turnout at elections, and it's particularly challenging among some groups in some areas. Is there an approach that Scotland should be considering to improve turnout at elections? It's something that all countries are dealing with. You tend to have higher turnout for the national parliament, lower turnout for the local government elections. It's a well-established effect. People think that there's more at stake in the parliamentary elections and local government rightly or wrongly. Scotland doesn't do too badly in local government elections. It's around 45 per cent or so. It's not great, but it's much better than it is in England, which is generally around the mid-30s. Scotland is not quite so bad in that regard. I think that it's a case of keep reminding people whether this be in interactions with public bodies. Remember, there's an election coming up. Indeed, I've seen some adverts around this on my way here and yesterday, which is a good thing. It's also incumbent on political parties to do mobilisation here. In this discussion, we always end up thinking about what can the electoral commission do, what can returning officers do and so on. But political parties are reluctant sometimes to understand their role in mobilising voters as well. Plenty of research evidence suggests that when parties have active local campaigns, that benefits turn out as well. I encourage parties to step up to the point in that regard. There is one thing that is well beyond the scope of this bill, but always amazes me that we don't talk about in any form when we talk about this issue. That's mandatory voting or compulsory voting, because this has been shown not just a fairly obvious way to increase turnout, but also to resolve inequalities between social groups in turnout. I've no view one way or the other of whether that mandatory voting is right or wrong, but it strikes me as odd that if we want to improve turnout and resolve inequalities between social groups, we don't even speak about it. That's for a broader conversation. It's beyond what the committee can do or discuss here. There are lots of factors that shape whether an individual votes and we can't shape them all. In terms of pilot ideas, in addition to voter registration, some of the ideas might include the use of digital poll cards. They potentially could make a difference if someone receives an email on the day of the election reminding them, a personalised email reminding them to vote. There is also a scope for introducing or piloting a vote anywhere option. It sounds easy, it's complicated. At the moment we have to vote in a particular polling station. If many countries have digital electoral registers, they are integrated, which means that you could go into any polling station and cast your vote there rather than a particular one. That would make a difference for people, but it is complicated to get to that point. You were hearing in the previous evidence that small pots of money for community groups are really important. Sometimes we have some good ideas, but people that really have really good ideas are those marginalised groups who have low voter turnout. There have been lots of youth groups, for example, who have been very, very effective at getting votes out, going into schools, doing voter engagements and voter outreach, but their funding sources are very limited and very unstable. It happens that good ideas work in a small geographical area and they have to go on to other jobs, other careers and things that Peter Ratt. The stability and learning from those pots of money is really important. In terms of pilots, it is important that there is a clear objective set out for them. It is not just doing pilots for pilot's sake, but that they are probably independently evaluated and it is not just the Government marking its own homework on this. That is really important. Too often we do not see that happening. Just to come back on the registration, we have talked about being registered. How long should you stay on the register? I think that we have moved to a system of the reformed canvas, which now works very, very well. It was not called this, but it is automatic re-registration. We talk about it sometimes as if automatic re-registration is like some fanciful idea, but we have automatic re-registration. Electoral authorities are using data to check that we have not moved. Therefore, keeping us on the register if other data sources verify that is who we are. I think that, as it should be, that system seems to be working particularly well. Edward, I was going to come to you with an indication of the time. Can I get all the easy questions? First question is for non-devolved elections, you can vote overseas. The committee would like your views on whether people should be allowed to vote in the Scottish elections from overseas. Do you have a view on that? I think that the biggest problem with voting from overseas in non-devolved elections are two things. One is the deadlines that are set for people doing this. Secondly is the mode of how it is done. It involves sending ballot papers to rare and remote places all around the world, which may or may not arrive in time to type deadlines. We hear plenty from those voters about them not getting back in time and only receiving the ballot paper after the polling day and things of that sort. There is a need for thinking about the mechanics of how that would be done if that is the case. That thinking has not been done for reserved elections, unfortunately. There is a need to think about how might those sorts of things be dealt with. There could be some form of secured online delivery of ballot papers or something of that sort. Other countries manage those things through the consulates, for instance. That would be my main issue, I think, to think about how it is done so that those votes could play a part. If it can be done, I do not really have an objection to it. The main issue is logistical. There have been some experiments around the world with online voting, but they have largely been unsuccessful in that regard. It has not been successful. Postal voting does not work because the time is available. Embassies is one way that does work, but in practice, which country do you use to open up to all embassies? In practice, you are only ever able to get a few people in practice to cast their votes. Does it matter, again, symbolically for people that still feel part of a country that probably does? One thing to throw in is to be an indefinite right to vote, or is the 15-year limit, as it was for UK parliamentary elections, a sufficient threshold? I think that that is something to consider. 15-year seems long enough, in some ways, if people already have moved a part of another society. Again, it is a matter of principle, I think. I think that it is interesting, and I think that there are people who are sent away to do things on behalf of the country's service personnel and such. We need to make sure that we get that right. I do not know why I got this one, actually. Dual mandate. Challenges and opportunities. What do you think we heard in the last panel that they were not keen on dual mandates and that if you had to resign, you could not do both? A lot of work perhaps? Do you have a view on it? My view is that they use a term in Northern Ireland on double jobbing for this, and my view is that it is probably best that it does not happen. I agree. I am definitely leaving that one there then. I would tend to agree that a job as an MSP is a full-time job, and I struggled to find time to do much else on occasions. It is a very important one for me. Graham Simpson has produced a bill on recall. The electorate must have, in my opinion, the right to recall people if they are not performing. We do it in council, so there is no reason why we should not do it in the Scottish Parliament. A slight issue for the lights of me is the regional MSP. First of all, do you think that it is right? How do you get around the problems with regional MSPs? That is more than one constituency that you would have to consult. We saw how difficult it was earlier. Last year it was, was it not, that we had a recall petition? We did, Margaret Ferrier. I think that it is reasonable to have that as a provision, but you are right about the complication of regional lists. I think that Graham Simpson's proposal for me makes sense, which, as I understand it, is that the equivalent of the constituency petition happens, but in that region. What I was not quite clear about is whether or not the limit is set at 10 per cent there, but I think that seemed to me to be a reasonable way of thinking about it. We only have limited experience with this at Westminster, and there have been in a couple of occasions complaints that it has probably not worked as well as it should have done. We are now five recall petitions, and they seem to have settled down. The reasons for calling them are to do with suspensions, criminal being convicted of a criminal offence, and there is a third one, which escapes me for the moment. There should be a fairly high bar to an MSP being recalled to begin with. I would be worried if I saw this becoming something that just became part of normal political debate in that regard. For a country to you, Toby, is the problem with the regional one, does it mean that the next person steps up on the list because it is done on a party vote share, because you cannot go back out and do the whole regional list again? I have a real concern that regional MSPs should be held to account just the same as constituent MSPs. I do not know how you do that. That is the complication. We have seen that when there have been by-elections in local government, for instance, that other parties have won the council seat under a single transferable vote. There is a different electoral system, obviously, for the regional list. To be honest, I do not really have a problem with the proposal that is in Graham Simpson's bill. Perhaps political parties should do a bit more to perhaps vector candidates and so on to begin with, and then we may not end up in those sorts of circumstances anyhow. You can try, and sometimes there is always an odd one that sneaks in. That is a really important accountability check on office holders. In an era where we have low critical engagement and distrust of public office holders across the board, to enable citizens to realise that they can bring someone back. I think that only can only be strong for democracy. Hopefully, it is impossible to measure. It encourages better conduct in office if office holders know that they are not untouchable, as it were. I would support the measure. In the hope that I am not the odd one that sneaked in, convener, back to you. Thank you very much. I wanted to just press you really about the electoral commission and in relation to the five year plan. Obviously there is a slight shift in power balance between Wales and up here about who has the final say on it. Is it really just to explore your views as to which the better route to take would be? I do not know who it is. Toby, would you like to start? Principles of independent electoral authorities are really important. It echoes back to the debate that we had earlier on about election postponement, who should not have the final word there. In many countries, the electoral authorities have much greater independence than they do in the UK. I would say that the move to a five year plan makes sense. It brings the commission's activity in line with the Scottish electoral cycle so that it makes sense. Ultimately, I would support the electoral commission having the final say in terms of if there is an issue on what they are proposing to do. I do not have a problem with the delegated committee of the Parliament having a say on this. My working assumption is that this would proceed largely by consensus to begin with. The electoral commission is a body of statute basically. It is responsible to the UK Parliament. It is now responsible to the Senate. It is responsible, obviously, to the Scottish Parliament as well. I have less concern about there being a role for the Parliament in this regard. I do share concerns about the independence of the electoral commission, but I do not think that this would be comparable with something like the strategy document that the UK Government has tried to impose on the Speaker's Committee at Westminster. My feeling by what is in the bill is that this would be a fairly iterative process between whichever committee and the commission. The commission itself generally says that it is welcoming of scrutiny. I have probably not answered the question definitively, but I can and do see perhaps a bit more of a role for the Parliament in this regard. The other point that I wanted to explore is about the legal entity that is the EMB and a proposal for body corporate. Presumably, you are reasonably relaxed given the contractual requirements that the EMB has that it has a legal entity. If that is the case, I would push down to the proposal of two deputy convener posts to, in essence, have someone else for the two separate and distinct roles and just really to collect your views on that. I think that those proposals, to my mind, are uncontroversial. I think that the electoral management board, as I have said already, has been a positive development in administering Scotland's elections. It really has brought a consistency that probably wasn't in evidence before, as we saw difficulties in 2007. Should it be a legal entity? Yes, because that should allow it to enter into contracts and things of that sort. The accounting system for local government elections is probably the major contract that is involved in Scottish elections. That would be one thing that could remove that from the government, for instance. There will no doubt be other things, economies of scale and things of that sort. In terms of deputies, I think that's entirely reasonable as well. It's proceeded largely on a volunteer basis up until now. It's a complex world, logistically. I think it's underappreciated just how complex this is. Not only is electoral law complex, but the actual producing of everything that needs to go into running an election is complex. Having two deputies makes perfect sense to me. It makes complete sense, so I would support the proposal. I think that it's quite troubling in a way that the organisation that has played such an important role in the past, which has been so important for delivering Scottish elections, is reliant on in-kind contributions from other organisations and other individuals. Putting it on to a firmer, statutory and financial basis is really, really important. The word there, complexity, is coming up a lot. There's a myriad of different organisations involved in delivering elections. It makes no sense to the voter. At some point, it might be worth thinking what is the best way to deliver elections in Scotland organisationally. The variety of organisations that we've got have come up through historical reasons, partly through different logics of devolution, of course, but in many countries there is a single electoral management body. That delivers voter elections and voter registration, and it has a clear emit, and it's clearer for voters to know where to go to if they want to raise a complaint or if they have an issue, which website they go to, where did they go through. We don't really have that anywhere in the UK. Instead, it's increasingly becoming more complex and difficult to navigate. I think that the bill is fine, the bill makes a lot of sense, but at some point maybe it's worth putting a foot on the ball and thinking what's best for Scotland. Okay, convener's last mischievous question. Elections belong to the people of Scotland, but who should oversee it, the legislature or the government? Alistair? The easy one to finish with? Absolutely. I think ultimately the legislature. The government will be involved in helping the administration of it. I think that's unavoidable, but I think it should be the legislature that has the final word. Toby? Excellent. If there's anything that you would like us to consider once you've had an opportunity to consider again what you've told us today, please feel free to write to us. I hope you wouldn't mind if we, in turn, take the opportunity if we have additional questions to come back to you. Thank you very much for your evidence today and for attending in person. Thank you. I'll now close the public part of this meeting.