 Rwy'n creu bod yw gweld yr ydych yn gweld erbyn ei hollwch cymoeddiadol yn gŷn ond yn 2021. Fy hoffa'i swyddiadau yw yw yw'r grun sy'n meddwl hynny, nid gweithio fyddwch i'r rhwng i ffrwng yn rhywb yn dweud o'r cymau i chi'r ei ardal. Y gwybod hyn sy'n troio y cymdeithas hynny o'r Gymuned yn y wnewch yn pwyng â'i cymdeithas ymogel. Mae'r clyw o ddych chi'n edrych o'r blynyddio hynny sydd gyda'r cyfwunio ar credu y mynedig, i'n cryste i gwnio'r ffordd ac yn gwneud y byddwyr ar y gwybodol o'r ddweud. Mae'r clyw o'r byddwyr ar yr ymgol o'r llearchiol, ac mae'r report a'r pw consequ yn dda i'r rhaid o'r gweithlo sydd gristio ar y gweithio yn credu y byddwyr. Rydyn ni eisiau cans o'r gwneud hynny? Rydym ni yn eithaf. Dwy'n cread. Dr Alastair Clark, who is joining us from Newcastle University, and Pete Wildman, who is the Scottish Assessors Association, and they are joining us in person. We are quite tight for time today, and I'm just going to ask our witnesses that please feel free to answer any questions, but if you don't have a submission in respect of the question, don't feel that you have to answer in any event. Can I thank you all for joining us this morning? I'm going to hand over to Bob Doris, who has the first block of questions, questions 1 and 2 on our papers, but I know that other members may want to come in. Bob, can I hand over to you please? Thank you, Gideon. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for helping us in our scrutiny of this LCM this morning. I suppose the first thing that the committee would want to ascertain would be about the need or the necessity for voter IDs, putting the policy intent to one side. I've got strong views in relation to that being opposed to that in terms of the need to do this. I see from our papers that only 0.7 per cent of those working at polling stations believes that voter fraud or impersonations are an issue. Can I get the views from witnesses on whether there's a need or a necessity to go down the road of voter ID for UK elections? Who would like to kick off with Bob's answer? I think I'd refer the committee to the written evidence we've put in, which is, I think, the policy issue of whether there is a need or not. We've got to leave to the politicians. What we'd very much look at is, as Bob Doris has said, in terms of the scale of this, it's not a major problem that's been experienced in Scotland. Voter ID is aiming to address the issue of personation, where someone votes claiming to be somebody else. That is not a significant problem at all in Scottish elections. However, what we've also put in our written evidence is the number of practical issues that would arise from implementation. That has to be balanced here. There's a very small issue that's addressed by this. The measures that are put in place here seem out of proportion to the scale of the problem that's faced. The implications of that are practically for those of us who are responsible for delivering elections in terms of applying this at the polling places, producing the material that will be used in identifying people. It changes the nature of the voting process. If people are required to present identification, it's a different interaction between the voter and the official at the polling place, which would be quite a step change in how we operate elections in Scotland. Sorry, Bob. Louise wants to just come in before I hand back to you to come back. I just wanted to briefly mention some of the principles that the Electoral Commission is looking at this voter ID policy through. The first thing to say is that there is an inherent, if you like, risk in polling station voting in the unlike proxy and postal voting. There's no sort of verification checks, no signature checks, for example. There is a question about whether voter ID of any form will increase people's confidence in the integrity of the system. That's why one of the key principles that we're replying when we look at these plans is the principle of security. Would any introduction of ID, photographic ID, any form of ID actually improve security? I think that the assessment is actually—it would. There's two other principles that you've got to look at as well. One is how easy it is to implement and deliver. For administrators and for people in polling stations, but also for voters, can they manage to bring photo ID to voting? That's where you get to the third principle, which is accessibility. One of the things that's been talked about a lot in this debate is the UK Government's proposals for a voter card, for example. We would very much like to see some details of how that's going to work in practice, brought out now to help parliamentarians when they're actually considering the bill, because we think that that really is crucial. The accessibility point is one that really does need to be thought through very carefully, and a lot of the benefits to security and benefits to integrity of the elections will be hinged on that accessibility point. I just wanted to put that out there as what the commission is looking at very closely in this matter. Thank you, Louise. Allister wants to come in as well, Bob. Yes, indeed. Thank you very much. The study that Bob Dorris is talking about with poll workers was conducted by myself along with Professor Toby James at University of East Anglia. There's a bit more to it than Bob Dorris mentions. Absolutely right to mention that more than 99 per cent of polling station workers saw no problems with personation or fraud. Most of that research has been studies in England, but we did actually carry out some work in Scotland as well, and the results were basically the same. So we'd expect really polling station workers not to have any difficulties with this. However, there's a couple of other things that I think we should point you to as well from that research, which is that we did ask about the nature of electoral law and how easy that was to apply in polling stations to begin with. Now, this is pre-voter ID, so the question didn't refer to voter ID, but up to 19 per cent of polling station workers already found electoral law confusing in order to apply quickly when they may need to do so if challenged in a polling station. That's pre-voter ID, so introducing what are obviously fairly complex measures I think is only going to increase that number of polling station workers that think electoral law is confusing. What we found the biggest problem in polling stations to be was actually people turning up who thought they were registered but who weren't properly registered. For instance, they paid their council tax and thought there's a consequence they were registered. That seemed to be a bigger problem than anyone being worried about voter identification and personation. I apologize for cutting across witnesses. I was just conscious of time constraints. I didn't want to constrain your ability to put matters on the record. To Dr Clark, I apologise that I didn't cite more of the research, but I do want to see another part of your findings. I believe that, in some of the pilots that we conducted in England, up to 30 per cent of the voters were turned away at polling stations. In relation to the pressures put on polling staff, you already mentioned the complexity of electoral law for some polling staff about additional burdens and pressures put on polling stations if voter ID was to be brought in. If any other witnesses want to talk about additional burdens placed on electoral registration officers as well as additional challenges, that would be helpful. Thank you for that question. It will inevitably slow down the process in polling stations. It will inevitably place the presiding officer in a position where they're going to have to decide whether or not to accept a voter's identification. We don't know this from UK research, but we do know it from American research where voter ID has been introduced. When it's introduced, there's variability in how polling station staff deal with the identification. That means that some people are turned away in some locations that may not be turned away in other locations. I think that there's almost going to be an inevitable element of variability introduced into this experience for voters, unfortunately. Although I stress that's American findings, but I'd be surprised if we didn't find that afterwards. In relation to the numbers Bob Doris mentioned being turned away, I'd throw a couple of other figures in. This is from the House of Commons library based on the Government's own pilots for voter ID in 2018-19. They'd reckon that between 0.1% to 0.7% of voters actually were turned away and then didn't come back with identification. In other words, they're non-returners between 0.1% and 0.7%. In an average general election constituency, 0.1% equals 73 voters. 0.7 equals about 500 or so voters. Commons library estimated that that was between 46,000 to 324,000 people who may not return to vote if they were initially turned away. There are various estimates. It's very difficult to know what will happen in the general election for the simple reason that we've not tried this before, but that's based on the UK Government's own figures from the pilot. It's a significant new duty. Picking up on Louise's point about accessibility, we're going to need to make sure that people are able to access the voter ID, be able to apply for it. It will require, in certain cases, approval of documentary evidence. We know from when we can't verify people's identity in the normal registration process and we ask for documentary evidence. The people don't always supply it. We get low response rates when we go to documentary evidence. The other concern that was picked up by Alistair was the fact that, in Scotland, this is going to likely to be coming in on a UK general. It can happen at quite short notice, particularly with the repeal of the Fixed Term Parliament Act, is making sure that the public understands what they have to do and what timescales they have to do it in. In my own area, we don't actually know for certain how many people are going to apply for it. The estimate is about 2 per cent of the electorate. Even in my own area, that's still between 4,000 and 5,000 people applying and potentially applying in a short period of time. It's making sure that we can turn it around, we can get the voter ID to them and that we're not disenfranchising somebody through the process. We will need to scale up our resources, we'll need to make sure that it's as successful as possible. I think that it is a significant event and an unknown burden, if you like, at an election time. Just to come in on that point on resources, has any estimate been made about what that will be or is it still at the stage of simply because of the numbers, it will be an extensive resource requirement? We're still at the stage, we don't know the full detail. You've got a high level indication of what the voter ID process will be like in the bill, but the secondary legislation and the detail come there. I think that the other challenge is to make sure that people don't apply for it. We've already got voter ID, they may not realise that the ID they've got is valid and they think that they need voter ID. I think that resourcing will come when we've got a better idea of the actual detail. A slight follow-up on that because there seems to be silence and certainly what I've read that the provision of a specific identity document from somebody out with the quite substantial list that's being expected to be used. Is there an intention for that to stand for just a single election or have you seen anything that says that that document would cover potentially a number of elections? I think that will come out in the secondary legislation. Bob, do you want to come back or I was going to open it up because I know that this is the crucial question for a lot of committee members? It's a very brief question, it's only to Dr Clark. You mentioned the 30 per cent turn-away rate for one of the pilots in England. Can I just ask whether there was any evidence of conflict between those turned away and those having to manage the integrity of the electoral system at polling stations during those pilots? I'm a little bit concerned about friction within the process because right now there's a fantastic relationship between those working at polling stations and those voting, so that's just for Dr Clark. I think that there's an almost inevitable aspect of this which could lead to some degree of conflict in polling stations. As we know, people are getting more assertive about their rights in many ways and I can just see, in fact I've seen this when I've observed elections, people actually not being able to vote and actually being quite confrontational with the presiding officer and or polling Clark. Let's remember that people who work as presiding officers and polling Clarks are essentially volunteers. They've taken a day off work to do this. If that kind of confrontation, that kind of conflict becomes institutionalised almost because of a policy of this sort, I would expect that to be difficult these actually coming through further in recruiting people to these positions. There are problems with that already, I should note. Thank you. Edward, could I come to you? Thank you, convener. Just that the first thing is really an observation is that many returning officers in polling stations are now changing and the old reliance on their ability to identify everyone locally is no longer present. I've also made the observation, having carried an ID card around for me for many years, that when you first get introduced to it, it becomes a different problem. You're not used to it, but once you get used to it, it's relatively easy. There may be initial problems. Can I just ask what is the evidence that you have heard regarding problems with impersonation in England? Is there a problem there or are you just saying, because there isn't a problem in Scotland, it's not a problem across the United Kingdom? Thanks for that. Quite simply, the figures from England would suggest that there's not a problem there either. There were what, something like 33 polling station irregularities. That's not necessarily the same as personation, supposedly in the 2019 general election. How many voters cast votes? 32 million. That's one per million voters having some form of irregularity. That may just be turning up, not being correctly registered or so on, very far from being personation. Basically, the evidence, whether through academic research, whether through convictions, certainly allegations equally, would suggest that there's not really anything to be worried about here. I think Louise would like to comment, Edward. Louise? Sorry, can I come back on that? Sorry, Edward. I was just going to let Louise comment and then allow you to come back on. I'll be quite to Louise as well. Thank you. I just want to briefly come in on the point about personation. Absolutely, conviction rates are very low. Recorded rates of personation are very low, and that has to be a good thing. The note of caution that I would sound is, of course, that personation is an identity crime. They can be very difficult to identify. Part of the key thing to think about here is that security is partly about actual, genuine security. Let's make the system more secure, but it's also about confidence. One figure that I'd just like to throw into the mix that we've been talking about is some research that we did after the last poll in Scotland, which suggested that something like 47 per cent of voters would feel more confident in security if there was some kind of photo ID. I would just balance that, however, by also saying that 44 per cent said that they didn't think that it would make a difference to security. It's not a very straightforward picture when you look at some of the research. I just wanted to make that point that personation in terms of recorded instances is very low, but we have to think about the impacts on confidence as well. It's just the very point that Louise has made. It's very difficult to prove whether somebody has gone and voted on somebody else's behalf if no one in the polling station recognises them. That person could have cast a postal vote and then taken an electoral registration card down to the polling station, waived it at the Presiding Officer or the returning officer and been allowed to vote. It is really difficult to prove. The fact is that, as you said, Louise, it's difficult to prove. How do we have absolute confidence that the problem isn't bigger than has already been suggested? Does anyone like to comment on that, Chris? I just think that you can't actually prove a negative like that. It's true. It's an identity card. You don't actually need a poll card to vote. When the voter attends the polling station, they're asked to confirm their name and address, but they're orally given an oath as to their identity. We trust them. We take their word that they are who they say they are. We can't prove that they're lying, but we rely on that level of trust. That confidence is very important. There's always a tension between integrity and accessibility, but what we're looking at here is the process and the practical steps that we've got to take in implementing what is in legislation to apply and just think about what that will mean for us. Thank you, Chris. Edward, have we lost sound to you? No, I heard that. I just couldn't hear you, convener, but I'm confident that I've heard the answers to the questions that I needed. Thank you, convener. Thank you, Edward. Tess, would you like to come in on the voter ID question? Are you all right, Paul? Is there anything you would like to... I suppose the only thing of us is the publicity around about it, which I don't think is actually covered in the paper, but I don't know if you have any comments on that at all, because I think you're right. If it's a UK general election, it can be called as three weeks, not as I think, if that's correct. It's unlikely that it would be three weeks, but that's not a lot of time to... My issue around that probably would be if there's a damage. Some people don't differentiate between a UK general election and other elections. That might damage, I suppose, their ability and the voting system, so I don't know if you have any comments on the publicity side of things. The publicity is absolutely key to making sure that the public understand what they need to do so that they can vote and what they have to do by what timescales, because the last thing you want is people being disenfranchised because they haven't done something or they haven't understood. I think the other challenge is probably around things like social media, making sure that the messaging is correct. I've certainly seen in the past messaging saying, you're too late to register to vote, but you can still get postal vote. Well, that's not true, because if you're not registered, you can't get a postal vote, but people don't always understand it and sometimes this miscommunication, so a very clear communication strategy will be needed. The longer you lead in, you've got to an election, the more chance of getting that message out and understood by people. A short SNAP election, that is a harder message to get out quickly. Can I just ask you for a scenario situation that came to mind? I'm not sure what the answer is. Obviously, because of the difference in the electoral systems, there is the possibility that a UK-wide general election would take place potentially under the rules that are being proposed in this bill. We would have a Scottish election, most probably a local authority election. If a voter attended with some identification that the clerk declared to be false and therefore couldn't issue a vote in respect of the UK general election, what pressure would that put under them also to refuse the vote in the Scottish election? I think that's one perhaps better for Chris, rather than myself in terms of polling stations. No problem. That would be a very difficult circumstance to be dealt with at a polling station. There would be two separate sets of legislation that would be in force and the Presiding Officer would have to be applying one set for one election and a separate set of legislation for the other election. I think that one thing within that, if the elections actually happened at the same time, generally they wouldn't be formally combined. The polling stations would be separate, so they would be in different places or different rooms. The person would have to move from place to place rather than get two ballot papers issued at the same time. That would preserve the security or the difference between the two processes to an extent. It would be rare for them to be both elections to be dealt with at the same polling station, because they're not formally combined. They'd have to be a separate set up. The issue does remain though that if there's separate legislation applying to separate elections, there could be a circumstance in which someone would be qualified to vote in one election because they were holding an ID but not qualified to vote in a second. My question has a slight more nuance in it, in the sense that the name that was voting would be registered to vote, but one polling clerk would have made a decision that the evidence that's being presented before them is such that they can't vote on that name, on that evidence in the UK election. But what would happen about the other election, and if I can add the other little problem, what if they've already cast their vote in the local authority Scotland election, albeit in one room, and then a discussion happens at another table in relation to the UK wide election, presuming that the polling official at that station would then get involved in that decision, I don't think it would rest exclusively with one of the two people sat at the table. What would happen with regard to the integrity of both votes? Each election has to be undertaken according to the rules that apply to that election, so the officials involved would have to apply those rules. Now it would potentially lead to some dispute and some conflict at that point, as we've already discussed. The separate registers, the UK parliamentary register and the local government register all separate documents, the separate lists of names that are there, so again there's a separation between the processes there anyway. So do you have confidence that the defence of it being in essence an entirely separate event, albeit happening in the same venue but not in the same place within the venue, would be sufficient to protect those individuals who are having to make very difficult on-spot decisions from subsequent accusations? That's a very hard question to answer. It's a hard question. That ultimately might be tested by the courts. The people responsible are delivering the election according to the rules, and that's all that can be asked to do. Whether that led to difficulties actually in the conduct of the election at the place at the time is separate from whether or not they're doing things according to the legislation, which is what their responsibility is. Thank you very much. I'm going to move on from voter identification to an area about the implications with regard to the strategy and policy statement for the Electoral Commission. I suppose that at the heart of this it's my concern about the impact on the independence of the Electoral Commission because of the proposed changes or because of the proposed ability to provide a strategy and policy statement. I don't know whether who would like to kick off on that. Louise? Thank you. The first thing I'll say is that having a strategy and policy statement as proposed is not compatible with the independence of the commission. To take it sort of back a step to explain that, we first of all very much welcome scrutiny. We're always happy to come before committees, whether it's to this Parliament or any other. We are, as I'm sure you know, we're formally accountable to all three of the UK's parliaments, and that's a very important part of the way that we work. It's an important accountability for us as well. The challenge that we have with the strategy and policy statement is twofold. The first is that it's not solely about improving our accountability, that the provisions that are set out in the UK bill do go much further than that, and they do go to the level of giving us guidance on the performance of our functions. That could be any function. That could be how we target voter registration campaigns. It could be how we target enforcement actions. It's very broad sweeping power that's set out in the bill at the moment. The second fundamental point is the point about what that means for our independence. We are quite an unusual, probably even a unique regulator in that the laws that we regulate are set by the people that we regulate, but very crucially they're only set by a very small subset of the people that we regulate, and they apply both to them but also to all their political competitors as well. That's why it's so important for those who campaign in elections as parties and campaigners and those who vote in them to know that there is an independent regulator who can take independent decisions about interpreting and implying the law. That's really the heart of it for us. Of course, the commission BORP wants to take into account the views of the UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, indeed all those who have an interest in our work and our strategic approach. Of course they want to take those into account, but what's really important is that the board, our commission board, then has the power and the independence to take decisions on our strategic approach. What this strategic policy statement would do is put one political party, and it is essentially one political party, in a privileged position of influence above all others and above all their political competitors as well. That's really the point where we think it's going to impact on confidence, it's going to impact on the integrity of the elections, because it will impact on our independence. Thank you, Louise. Alistair, if I can come to you, you've already given evidence where you've stated that the proposal has been widely criticised as eroding the independence of the electoral commission. Is there anything that you would like to add today to that? I'm thinking in particularly with regard to the lack of voice that other devolved nations would have in it. Sure, thanks, convener. Yes, I've written a piece at the invitation of the Committee on Standards and Public Life on the strategy and policy statement. I agree with what Louise has said. Basically, that very much seeks to direct the electoral commission, and there really is no place for that in what an independent electoral regulator should be. I would say two things. First of all, this has been justified in relation to parliamentary accountability. Now, there are ministers who sit on the Speaker's Committee, which is part of the regulatory structure, parliamentary accountability structure for the electoral commission. If it is really about parliamentary accountability, ministers should have no role in actually sitting on that committee to begin with. Second concern about that particular committee is at the moment its single party dominated. I think that really is a difficulty. This is the first time that it's happened. There are clear issues within the membership of that committee. Notably, I've also argued this in another piece, that that committee in and of itself should actually be showing more independence. One way of doing this would be to appoint lay members to the Speaker's Committee for the Electoral Commission to represent the voter's voice. That is notably not represented in any of the parliamentary governance around the Electoral Commission. Now, coming to the devolved institutions in that regard, Scottish and Welsh ministers are to be consulted, my understanding is. I'm not so sure about Scottish and Welsh ministers being consulted. I think that if we're talking about parliamentary accountability, then the Scottish Parliament corporate body should certainly be consulted. Its opinions taken into account should actually be dealt with and accepted by the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission. Equally for the equivalent body in the Senate, I would argue that that should be the case. Ministers, I would prefer this to have a proper separation of powers and really to be about parliamentary accountability rather than having government representation on it. Chris, I know in your, the Electoral Management Board's submissions you stated it was important that independence of political control is preserved. Also that their current role in supporting and regulating elections across the different devolved governments is recognised. Is there anything you would like to add? There's nothing more really to add to that written statement or to what Louise and Alice have said. It's the commission operates over all the devolved administrations that's important to maintain that accountability across all of them. That's what we were saying there. Thank you, Chris. Tess, could I come to you with regard to your question? Thank you, convener. In relation to digital imprints, so how in your view do the proposals sit with the requirements already in place? Sorry, my apologies. Alice, do you want to? By all means. Thanks for the question. It's one of the better parts of the bill that digital imprints are being looked at in this regard. As we know, there's been a Scottish digital imprint regime for parliamentary elections and so on. There are some difficulties, I think, with what is proposed, however. My understanding of what is being proposed is that the digital imprint would include anything that is paid for and political in the UK Government's elections bill. That's very different to the Scottish version of the digital imprint regime, which is election material and which is either paid for or unpaid for. This allot is going to depend on definitions, because political can be a very, very wide definition. That could quite conceivably catch up charities, for instance, in that regime, which I think transparency is great that we should know who's paying for various things. But imagine, for instance, hypothetical case of a homelessness charity who's saying something that the Government doesn't like. There's a sense that they could well feel pressurised into not saying things because they might be caught up in this sort of regime. The definitions of what is going to be included in that political regime is going to be crucial. I'm not sure we know what that definition really means yet. The Scottish version of this election material, paid for and unpaid for, I think, is, to my mind, clearer, because it has an analogy in what we've been doing with elections for many, many years now. However, I can see arguments in both ways. What I would say is that the Scottish Government's position on this to deny Llywodraeth Crescent is reasonable, because I think that these are issues that need to be teased out in much more depth than I think they're going to be getting in this debate around the election bill and its Llywodraeth process. You've given an example around the charities. Can you give another example that might spring to mind? Nothing immediately springs to mind, but all I would say is that political can be a very, very big category. To me, that's slightly worrying. Who knows? You might even get university lecturers caught up in that kind of thing, because we've said something that's conceived in a particular way, for instance. All I will say is that I think that the definitions are going to be absolutely crucial, and how that's operationalised in practice. My guess is that that will be left to secondary legislation, which I think is deeply worrying, because there's less ability to scrutinise that. I think that the idea that the Scottish Government has refusing Llywodraeth Crescent on this is perfectly reasonable, so those ideas can be teased out for a regime that is actually appropriate to Scottish circumstances. Dr Clark, your view on enforcement of these new requirements? I think that that's a difficult one, because I don't think that we know how that's worked up until now in the Scottish regime, to be honest. I think that what we need is more analysis of how that particular regime has started to be implemented and to be reviewed. I don't think that we have that analysis at the moment. So this is an academic saying more of research is required, unfortunately. I think that Louise would like to come in on your question as well. Louise? Thank you. I'll start off by saying credit where it's due. The Scottish parliamentary elections were the first elections held in the UK where digital imprints were in law. Yes, there is more research to be done about how that went. Our experience during the campaign itself was that compliance by candidates, by parties, by campaigners was very high. A candidate survey that we did after the poll, for example, showed that something like nearly 90 per cent of candidates were very clear on what their requirements were under digital imprints and that most of them found it quite straightforward to comply using the platforms that they did. But there is more that needs to be done. We've only very recently got the spending returns from the larger parties at the election. For example, we need to prepare them for publication and then we need to do that work of seeing whether the imprint regime does help track spending through for us as regulator and for voters as well. I just wanted to briefly mention this topic of definitions. I think that it is absolutely right that the law needs to be clear. The intention set out in the bill is that the commission will draft some sort of guidance to sit behind it and to help campaigners understand what the requirements are under the bill. But no amount of carefully worded guidance is going to deal with poorly drafted law, so the law is absolutely the fundamental bit that needs to be clear. On the point about political, I think I'm in a slightly different place. What we need to be very careful on distinguishing here is what counts as recorded campaign spending by campaigners. That's not changing. The requirement for digital imprints under the bill will be slightly broader, but it's not requiring any kind of reporting of this spending, for example. It's not requiring campaigners to notify us or to register on spending outside of election periods. So inevitably there is an increasing burden, if you like, by suggesting that by saying that digital imprints need to be on a broader category of material. But it's not the same as saying that that broader category somehow then suddenly falls within the whole regime. A follow-up question. One of the concerns I would have is that Dr Clark raises a point about literature or positions from charities making positive statements. What about, what's your view, whether it's Louise or Dr Clark or Mr Wildman, in relation to charities who are in receipt of grants from the government, who, because of this, there actually don't make comments because they're afraid of the consequences? That is a big concern as well. I would just pick up on that and say, I mean, I think that this one, the reasons, I think it needs debated further. I mean, there are potential freedom of speech and denial of freedom of speech issues here, and I don't think we know the answer to that. I think, I mean, maybe worth, Louise may have a view on this, maybe worth going back and having a look at how the lobbying act, for instance, from 2014 worked, because I think charities got caught up in some of that as well. But quite simply, I can see such a case happening and charities deciding that they should remain silent on issues, and I think if it's part of that charity's function, then that to me would be a fairly regrettable position to land in. Thank you. I think the freedom of speech issue is a key one, and as you say, Dr Clark, it needs exploring. Thank you, Tess. I suppose that that almost goes on to your next question as well. Do you want to move on? Thank you. My next question is around the different regimes across the UK, and that would allow for confusion. Do you have any thoughts on that? In relation to the expenditure. So we'll have a different system in different parts of the country in relation to it. Alistair? I'm fairly relaxed about that. I think that's a natural outcome of devolution. Indeed, I've made the argument in the House of Commons before that perhaps the House of Commons could learn from Scottish experience and some of these things, but I think perhaps Louise is better poised to answer that question than I am. Louise? Thank you. I'm happy to come in. To a significant extent, I agree. The fact that different regimes are in place is an inevitability of devolution, and it's a situation that has been there since devolution came in. I think that what's fundamentally key is to try to support whether it's campaigners, whether it's administrators, whether it's voters, everybody who's subject to different regimes through good public information to help them understand the differences. You mentioned campaigner spending in particular. I wasn't sure which bit of that you're talking about divergence of, but obviously there's going to be a really clear need for our guidance to cover the rules for different types of elections, which is how we structured them at the moment, so that people can see very clearly which particular spending regime applies to the bit of spending they're doing for that election. I wasn't sure which particular area of campaigner spending you were referring to. In relation to the organic materials, Louise, and around enforcement of that, please. I understood. This is an area where, in the Scottish regime, unpaid for virally spread organic online campaign material is covered by the regime and an imprint would be required, so long as it was in fact election material in the first place. Under the UK regime, it is different, and for a particular subset of campaigners, campaigners who haven't notified and aren't registered with the commission and therefore their spending is below a certain threshold, that nature of political material, as it would be in the UK, no imprint is required. Given that the commission is all about transparency, I doubt that it will surprise you to hear me say that the Scottish regime, with a more comprehensive approach to unpaid digital campaign material, has benefits for transparency for voters. There's a number of reasons for that. We have no way of knowing how many campaigners there are who spend below the registration thresholds because they don't need to register, so we don't know how many there are. You could actually be talking about a significant amount of spending on influencing voters that is not subject to the requirements for a digital imprint under the UK regime. Explaining the differences is key. The commission worked very closely with Scottish Government officials, campaigners and Police Scotland before the 2021 elections to produce comprehensive guidance on that regime. As I said, it's a little too early to see how that played out in practice because we haven't analysed the bigger spending returns yet, but there's going to have to be a process of learning there and hopefully we can feedback positive experiences and areas of learning, not just to the Scottish Government but to the UK Government as well for its proposals. There is also an intention under the elections bill that the commission will introduce guidance, again, for digital imprints on a UK-wide basis. That should hopefully help to avoid any confusion about what people need to do. Very briefly, on the enforcement side, we will be responsible for enforcing these regimes for parties and campaigners. Obviously, the police will be for candidates. We don't enforce to catch people out. If somebody is doing their absolute best to comply but gets confused between which regime it is, we'll help them. We'll support them to get it right because that's got to be in the interest of bringing them into compliance and helping them and voters. I'm going to pass over to Edward to move the questions on to another one. Thank you, convener. There's always a mad scrabble just before elections to get your postal vote in because you don't know when the elections are going to happen unless, of course, it's in the Scottish parliamentary elections next term, which has been passed, de-conflicted with UK elections. The mad scrabble would be not be better reviewing postal votes every three years and sending out reminders to people to update their postal votes rather than just doing it at the last possible moment. Pete, can I bring you in at that? I should perhaps clarify initially that there are two types of postal vote you can have. One is for a one-off election. In fact, there's three, one for a particular period, and the third is actually for in effect an indefinite postal vote. Most electors go for an indefinite postal vote, so at the last Scottish Parliament election, we saw the number of postal voters increase from just under about 16 per cent to just over 23 per cent at the June register after you've taken off the one-off postal votes. It's still at around 22.5 per cent of the electorate registered vote by post in Scotland. There is a mechanism. Every five years, you have to refresh your signature. The purpose of that is really to make people's signature changes over time, and we ask people to reapply every five years to not reapply for their postal vote, but provide a fresh signature to keep that update. If they don't apply for a fresh signature, they lose their postal vote. My own area, we wrote out to about 4,000 electors in January, and 98 per cent of them renewed or supplied a fresh signature, but 2 per cent did not. To do it every three years increases the frequency, but it's a new application that, under these proposals, they will have to provide a date of birth as well as a signature. It's going to have to be a full new application, so the process will happen every three years rather than in effect every five at the moment. It will be an additional burden on both EROs, but also on the public, they're going to have to apply for these things more frequently. They won't have to go just before an election, because the very point that you made was that it was done in January, which was just in the build-up to the election. If we did it every three years, we would get a more accurate and less frenetic activity just before an election. It would also allow those people who are away on business or know that they're going to be away for a few years thinking about the armed services for which I was a member to renew their postal vote when they know that they're not going to be there for an election. Surely there's some merit in it, or is it all just bad news? I think that the point around the three years is that the election cycles are five-yearly and you've got, certainly within Scotland, you've got the UK elections, you've also got the Scottish Parliament elections and the local government elections, so that three-yearly renewal will at some point fall in a January ahead of an election. And certainly the first year we do it, we're going to be writing out to a million electors across Scotland asking them to reapply for their postal vote. That's a significant volume of postal vote renewals to process in one period. My only comment is that we're talking about UK elections here. It's a fixed-term Parliament in the Scottish Parliament. It's not a fixed-term Parliament in the UK Parliament, but I understand that you want to push the twos together. The other question I have is about postal votes and the limits on an individual can return in person. Do you think that people understand that? Do you think that people understand that family members can return more than non-family members? Is it complicated or is it very easily understood? I think that if you're talking about postal vote, handing in postal votes at the polling station, I think that that's probably Chris's, is better. I'm not aware of a limit myself. There's no limit currently, but I think that the legislation is certainly proposing limits on the handling of postal votes to try and prevent bulk deliveries at one time. That certainly could impact the confidence in the process, but that's where it also comes in. Certainly, the legislation about handling postal votes is not only about the postal votes, but about the postal applications themselves. If you're limiting how they're handled, it's also about the inputs to the system, not just the handing in the postal votes. Handling in at the polling place is only one way of submitting a postal vote. There's nothing to stop someone posting it in the letter box around the corner, posting a bundle at that point. Indeed, just to clarify, there's two aspects to this. In the first answer, Pete, you were talking about applications for postal vote and renewal of signature. What we're talking about now is actually on the day of the election, those postal votes, those people who have cast their vote by post have not put it into the postal service, but people taking it to the polling station to actually put into a specific box. My understanding, and this is what I'm actually seeking the clarification on, in Scotland there is not a limit to the number one person can present at the polling station, but the bill that we're looking at the LCM for is proposing a restriction on the total number that could be handed in that way. Is that your understanding as well? Good, thank you. Edward, I don't know if you want to come back on any aspects of that. No, I was going to move on to proxy voting as well. Before you do that, I'll just ask Chris of, again, the situation where somebody attends on the same day, where there are two elections, you would have confidence that because the two elections are run separately, although in the same building, that if someone was to present 25 postal votes for the local election, that would be satisfactorily, would be able to be defended satisfactorily for the local election, but may not be. If this bill becomes law, it will be refused for a UK-wide general election. That's the implication of the legislation. I'm inviting you to repeat what I thought was your view in relation to an earlier matter, that you would have confidence from the point of view of the individual polling clerks that refusal on one could be defended because it's UK-wide, but accepting it in the Scottish Parliament. I think that the position that we had is that it could be defended under the rules, whether that would allow them to defend themselves against a person challenging them in the place is different. Absolutely, and I recognise there's a difference between the events on the day, face to face and any subsequent legislation. Thank you. Sorry, Edward, can I return to you? It was just a question then on proxy voting. There's a proposal to reduce the amount of people that an individual person can be a proxy for. I, for example, in the past have been a proxy for all my children. This bill would stop that. Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? Not that I vote for my children on their instructions, but whether the limit of proxies is a good thing or a bad thing? I think two is quite minimal for a lot of families. I'm taking your opinion on it. I think the first thing to say is the fundamental principle has to be that if somebody is entitled to vote, eligible to vote, wants to vote, there needs to be a mechanism for them to do so, and all the methods of voting that we've discussed here today are part of that picture, including proxy voting. There is an argument that there are safeguards already in the proxy system in the application for a proxy to be appointed, for example, that need to be thought about very carefully. You can see a circumstance where reducing the number of proxy votes that one individual can cast may well impact on whether somebody can vote or not, who is otherwise entitled to do so. That's part of the key thing for me, because you're tying eligibility to vote to the person who's being a proxy, not to the person who's actually wanting to vote. There is quite a lot to think through here. The proposal was first mooted, I think, by the review that Sir Eric Pickles did, and when we responded to that, we said that we're not sure that the benefits will outweigh the potential disadvantages of reducing the number of proxies so severely. On that one, I think that there are quite a lot of accessibility issues that need to be worked through. Thank you. Would anyone else like to comment on that? Edward, would you like to come back? No, I'm wondering if you were going to let me go on with my next question. I'm not being impertinent, but I'm happy to move on. Thank you, Edward. I was just going to ask, with regard to proxy votes, that the memorandum itself that we are looking at is silent on it simply because the Government are indicating that no legislative consent would be required about it. So, Edward, your next point. Questions? Sorry, not a point. It's just really what the panel think is administratively rather than politically, is the removal of the 15-year limit on overseas electors to be able to vote in UK parliamentary elections. Is it a administrative problem? Is it a political issue? So, I'm not asking you to comment on the politics of it, just whether it's an administrative burden. The current verification of overseas electors is quite a slow administrative process, particularly once you go to the older registers. A lot of the, if you apply within say the last 10 years, quite often those registers are held digitally and it's very quick to actually check whether somebody was previously registered in your area. Once you get to the older registers, it becomes a slower process. You have to physically get the hard copy of the register. Quite often streets move, constituencies change, polling districts change. And certainly we've had it in my own office where somebody has said, I was last registered in Stirling. We've gone through all the Stirling registers for the last 15 years, couldn't find them. And they said, oh no, I think we were last living in Edinburgh. It can be quite a slow process and once you open it up indefinitely, you are then looking at going back to some quite historic registers to try and check that. So it becomes a slow process and I think the other thing I would say with overseas electors is actually communication isn't always easy. The application form has encouraged people to provide an email address or a telephone number, but not everybody does. We get a certain number that just don't provide those sort of contact details. So you're left having to deal with the elector by mail and mail to the post to various corners of the world can be quite slow so it's not necessarily a quick process. It's not saying it can't be done, but it is administratively harder. The bill also proposes that people, if they weren't previously registered, can provide proof or declare that they were previously resident in an area and the ERO can refuse it if they're not satisfied with sufficient evidence. And I think you then get into what does that evidence look like and what sort of evidence could somebody provide to say that they were living somewhere, say, 20, 30 years ago, would they still have it. So there's some questions there. It's not saying it can't be done, it's just probably a bit of an added administrative task. I was just wondering whether anyone wanted to come in, Edward, before your response. Alastair. Just basically to say very quickly that it's nothing more than a symbolic change. That change won't actually do anything to resolve the difficulties overseas electors have in voting. Normally there to do with mail not getting out in time, not being able to get back in time, those kinds of issues. And what's regrettable about this is that it's a missed opportunity to consider other ways of doing overseas voting, whether that may be consular voting as some countries do, ballot download, which may ease some of the postal pressures, those kinds of things. So it's purely a symbolic change, I'm afraid. Edward. Sorry, that was a political answer, which I wasn't looking for. I think a 15-year point is quite an arbitrary point to say that once you've been overseas for 15 years that you can no longer vote in UK elections. So what I'm hearing is that there are improvements that could be made to this system. And what I'm also hearing is that as the more use of digital records become more or they can be used more often with the age of the electorates increasing and the frequency of the digital records being available will make it easier. So that's what I heard from Pete. Is that wrong, Pete? I think you're right about the digital. I think one of the challenges will be how long do we hold on for digital copies of the register? But you know that you do get into sort of day storage, but yes, you're right. Over time more registers will be digital, searching will become easier. But it will require EROs to hold on to digital versions of the register that they may previously have disposed of after 15 years. That's all the questions that I have. I would take the comment that it's a political decision and there are ways of making it better, not that it shouldn't happen. Thank you, Edward. Paul, can I come to you? Yes, thank you, convener, and just before I ask a question, just to, obviously, as you mentioned, register of interests in serving councillors, it's not overly relevant, but just that I'd mentioned that at the time. It's really just moving on to undue influence, and I think around the electoral offences and sanctions around that, and it's really just to ask the committee if there are any views on the proposed change to the law on undue influence and the new sanctions for intimidating behaviour. And I know, I probably asked Chris, first of all, on that one, and I know Alasdor, you've made comments as well, indirectly on that one, just to comment on that, if you don't mind. Chris, come to you first. I think the comments we've made around the proposed new offences were really a broader comment that there's an opportunity to simplify, consolidate and modernise electoral offences in general. So it's a lot easier to understand what the actual problem is, what the crime, particularly crime, might be committed. The issues of undue influence, I think, again, it's down to definitions. We just need to be very clear about what is meant, and some of the proposals around intimidation that have been there, I think, again, that's how that would be applied, would be a real challenge. That's for the one about making someone exempt from standing if they've been guilty of intimidation of various people involved in the election process. And of course, anyone standing for election, they make a declaration themselves that they're not excluded, not exempt from standing. So we put that very much in their court, the ball in their court, for declaring that they're not exempt. So we'd take what's on the nomination paper as proof that they are exempt, whether that's true or not, is up to them. But certainly, I think, the key thing we've said, and it's in line with the comments that Dr Clark and others have made, is the need for a modern, more rational and simplified set of offences that everyone could understand. Nothing much to add to that. I mean, I think, this and around harassment and those kinds of issues are things that do need looked at. I think that the question probably before the committee is whether or not that should be looked at in this bill or left to future Scottish Government legislation. My general preference for that would be for Scottish legislation to take that forward to give a Scottish answer to a particular Scottish problem, if you like. But I don't feel strongly one way or the other about it. I think it's welcome that this is being discussed and we're discussing ways forward with it. A comment to make on that. I think it obviously said in the research that 7 per cent of poll station workers reported at least one case of intimidating members. That seems quite high to me. I mean, having standing at polling stations for a long number of years, that seems quite high and it's concerning. I can see the need if that's the case at poll workers. 7 per cent, if you're talking one in 13, one in 14 voters. It's concerning, I have to say. Can I just come back on that? Yes, but my colleague also goes on to say in that particular piece of evidence that what Chris said, definitions and how that plays out in perceptions, I think is important. Because what party campaigners might see as legitimate campaigning behaviour, some might actually see as being a bit stronger than that. So I think we need to be careful here. I don't think we want to curtail legitimate campaigning behaviour. I think that really would be a regret if that was the case. To be clear, that figure was based on English evidence, not Scottish evidence as well, and in a particular round of elections. But I agree with you that it's high. I think, as I said, the fact that we're actually talking a bit away forward with these things is a good thing based on that. Thank you, Paul. Can I thank all the witnesses for attending today? It's been a very interesting and very useful contribution. There will now be a short suspension while we change over. Thank you. Thank you, and welcome back to this eighth meeting. I would now like to welcome the guests of our second panel who are all joining us online, and that is Jess Garland from the Electoral Reform Society, Dr Catrona Burness from RNIB Scotland and Ethan Young from Inclusion Scotland. Thank you all for putting yourselves up today to submit evidence on this point. In order to maximise the time that we have to inquire about various avenues that we'd like to approach, I was going to move straight to questions. Don't feel everyone needs to answer every question, and if you would like to contribute remotely, if you press R, then we'll know that you want to add something to it. Can I thank you for joining us today? I'm going to kick off, really, with an open question, which I would like you all to contribute to, to just contradict my first statement. That is really to give us a very short submission about what the barriers and challenges are that are faced by people who just want to vote. Jess, if I come to you first. Thank you. In terms of all voters, speaking on behalf of all voters, we have a system where firstly you have to register yourself, so you firstly have to sort of jump through a hoop to prove that you are eligible to vote. That doesn't happen automatically here, as it does in other places. Then, of course, you're then ready to go and vote. Our concerns really are around voter ID putting up an additional barrier to people accessing the vote, people who are legitimate voters. That's where our concern mainly lies with this bill. Thank you, Jess. Can I just push you on that point? Are you suggesting that some of the hurdles that exist at the moment are too excessive and to add to those would cause problems, or are you saying that we have enough hurdles at the moment? The former. Excellent. Thank you. Kichona, can I come to you? In particular, I know that you represent the RNIB, so could you give evidence with regard to the experience of those with site loss and site reduction? Yes, I'm very happy to do that. The right to vote independently and in secret is at the cornerstone of our democracy. It's almost 150 years since the secret ballot act was passed in 1872, and that guaranteeing the right to vote in secret. However, blind and partially sighted people face considerable barriers to exercising their democratic right to vote in the sense that they are likely to need assistance in order to cast their vote for the candidates that they choose. We've been campaigning on this issue for many years. In relation to this particular bill, we have concerns that introducing voter ID will add to the barriers that blind and partially sighted voters face. We also have concerns about proposed alterations to the wording in the bill in relation to the clause that normally enabled provision of equipment to assist blind and partially sighted people to vote without any need for assistance, which is part of our campaigning call. I know that some members of the committee will come to the specific use of technology and otherwise later on in this session, but thank you for that overview. Ethan, if I may come to you on behalf of Inclusion Scotland. First of all, I must say that disabled people already face a multitude of barriers when voting and accessing voting. Inclusion Scotland's concern to the elections bill is published will increase these barriers rather than reduce them for disabled people. It is discriminatory and breaches the UK Government's obligation under the UNCRPD to afford disabled people the same right and access to vote as non-disabled people. We share the concerns of many civic society organisations about the potential negative impacts of the bill's proposal on the democratic process, particularly for third party campaigners. A primary concern for disabled people's rights relates to the proposals on voter ID, which I am happy to go into further at any point. Thank you, Ethan, and that will be a point that I am sure we will explore later on in this evidence session. I thank you all for that, and I am going to hand over to Paul. It is really just a question who wants to answer it first. Is there a danger of creating a two-tier system between UK Parliament elections and Scottish elections? What additional challenges that we have? The one key question that I kind of asked in the back of that to the previous panel was in terms of communication. For example, there was a UK general election. Sometimes the period can only be around about three weeks, so it is trying to communicate that to voters that you represent and what challenges that would give them. I do not know if you would like to answer that first and maybe come in to Ethan, but if you all want to come in on that one. Ethan, would you like to come in first? It is a good question, and I think that there is certainly room for confusion. For example, if disabled people who do not have a voter ID and therefore have not voted in a UK election, then a Scottish election comes up and they think that they need voter ID to go and vote, they might not do that. It certainly does cause confusion. That is going to be the biggest impact there, and it will potentially reduce the amount of people who are coming out to vote, particularly disabled people. Can I just pick up that point with yourself as well, particularly in terms of communication? If there are any thoughts on how you communicate with voters that you represent in that regard, because I said that it could be as little as three weeks, it is unlikely to be, but it can be as little as three weeks within legislation that an election is called. Do you have any particular challenges about communication? Absolutely, and one of the big things for disabled people is that I need to plan. People need time to plan. We often cannot react as things come up on the spur of the moment as people who face less barriers would. There is that time and that lead-in that people need, especially when they rely on other people or any number of other things that disabled people would rely on to be able to lead an independent life. Communication is also key in the way of being accessible. We need to do better at accessible communication. We need to ensure that what we are communicating is in easy lead, large print, British Sign Language, for example, Braille, if it is not we are excluding people, especially with a short lead-in time. Time to get that right or to access that. It is all right to say that we can give you that if you want. If you are saying that in English and not plain English, how do people then access that? How do they know that it is there if you are not speaking in a way that they understand? That is really important. We need to do better there, because it is all right. I know that sometimes we often say that those things are available upon request, but if we are not advertising that in an accessible way, how do people then know that it is there to access? Communication is key and time is key as well. Katrina, do you want to come in on that as well? Yes. I concur with what Ethan was saying about the need for accessible communications. We know that blind and partially sighted people have great difficulties in reading the materials that are produced around elections produced by the political parties cells in terms of campaigning. I am getting information at the same time as other people, which is key. In relation to voter ID, communication around voter ID, RNIV is estimated that around 40,000 blind and partially sighted voters do not have a form of acceptable voter ID in communicating that it would be necessary. For UK-wide elections, that would be a challenge. Against a general comment, I think that the question that you made about the 40,000 is really important. Ethan, I do not know if you want to come back in that regard or just make a comment on that. Are there other figures that we know are available, for example that 40,000 do not have ID for people who are registered or blind? Are there other figures that you have available at that time, or is it something that you could provide to the committee at some stage? That figure is very concerning. If 40,000 people do not have voter ID, that is really putting up barriers to them being involved in elections. Jess, can I come to you? Yes, those statistics are backed up in both the Cabinet Office research and in the Electoral Commission's research, which both show that people with a disability are in one of the highest groups for not having the required photographic ID. One of the most vulnerable groups when it comes to not being able to access ID, and as I think the early committee said as well, the failsafe on that from the bill is this voter card that local authorities are supposed to provide, but of course there are additional access issues to getting that. We haven't really got the detail on how that's going to apply, but we do know from evidence saying in the United States that lots of people find it very difficult to access those cards, there's transport implications, there's cost implications to getting to the issuing offices. Lots of overlapping and problems that are feeding into each other, particularly for people with disability. Can I move on to Tess? Sorry, my apologies, Tess. I'm going to go to Bob first, if that's all right. Can I ask a pointer just in relation to that before we move on? Please do. I have an exploratory question, so there's a lot of work that's been going on in the last few years about accessibility for people with disabilities to visit constituency offices, and we're trialling in Parliament a new app, let's say, or all the parties. In your view, because technology is moving on so quickly and we now have an app to make constituency offices more accessible, do you think that technology could play a part in improving this situation? Can I let Bob put his question in Tess, because I think it will lead to that slightly open discussion that you're looking for the response to and allow the witnesses to contribute perhaps on a slightly wider point on that. Bob, do you want to? Yeah, absolutely, convener. Tess makes a really important point, but I think that as I develop my questioning that will be teased out a little bit. If we look at the representatives to People's Act 1983—not something that I do very often, I have to say—we look at electoral commission guidance ahead of the elections last May, it's pretty clear about what's prescribed equipment to support accessibility in polling stations. I make no judgement whether that's sufficient or not, but there's a degree of reassurance, even if it doesn't go far enough. That would include tactile voting devices for those blind or visually impaired, large print sample papers help to cast votes and other adjustments for those living with barriers, mobility, wheelchair-accessible booths and ramps and the like. There are certain things prescribed at the moment that under the UK legislation would effectively take that away and put in a reasonable test. I know—we should hear from Dr Burness—there's a lot of concern in relation to that. Perhaps this is an opportunity to put some of those concerns on the record before I develop my questioning further. I'm just leaving across to pick up my tactile voting device. The law prescribes that every polling station should have tactile voting devices to assist voters to find the candidate party that they wish to vote for. This is placed over ballot paper. Those are numbered, brail numbering and boss numbering. You use this device to try to identify, say that you want to vote for the candidate at box 5 to lift up the flap and place your cross, hopefully, in the box and not in the margin of the ballot paper. The tactile voting device has been found in itself to be unlawful because of the need for assistance in using it. It doesn't guarantee that a person with sight loss can independently review the candidates on the ballot paper and reliably find and mark their chosen candidate so that they're not in soul control of secrecy. I've just realised—have I been on mute? My own icon was telling me that I was muted, so I thought I'd better check that. The tactile voting device has been found to be unlawful in the case brought in 2019. R&ID has been working with the Cabinet Office to find a solution to that. We have specific concerns around the wording of the UK elections bill, which I mentioned. There is a clause in the current legislation that says that a device of such a description as may be prescribed for enabling voters who are blind or partially sighted to vote. Without any need for assistance from the presiding officer or any companion, we want to see that reinstated or retained within the legislation because we think that it is important to maintain that the alternative wording in the bill is such equipment as is reasonable to provide. Who decides what it's reasonable to provide? Does individual returning officers decide that it's really not reasonable for us to provide something like a tactile voting device? We won't necessarily do that. It will mean that visually impaired voters won't necessarily know what kind of interventions or assistance they may get at a polling station. We have very significant concerns about that. We are very interested in working with the Scottish Government and the UK Government on arriving at solutions that would make voting accessible and whether that, in the future, involves a more technological intervention that could be online voting or telephone voting. We have been trialling an audio device, using an audio device along with the tactile voting device, what the audio device does. It's like a small, I'll call it a book reader, something blind people are often familiar with as something used to listen to novels. In this instance, it's not a novel. It's reading out the list of candidates. Often voters don't know what order candidates are appearing until they get to the polling station and they see the ballot paper so that it would help visually impaired voters to prepare for voting if it was really quite easy to know what order candidates appear in the ballot paper in advance of going to the polling station because then you would know which number you were aiming for on the ballot paper. STV elections present particular challenges because you are more than one vote and you may want to vote up to four candidates or to number every candidate on the ballot paper in your order of preference. It's very hard to retain in your head where each of those candidates are on a ballot paper. The audio device is intended to allow party-side voters to listen to lists of candidates and use that to help them to place their vote. In trials that we've been running, it proved rather successful and popular in local elections in Norfolk at the 2021 elections. We carried out a local trial in Falkirk in partnership with the 4th Valley Sensory Centre recently. In that particular trial, we set up a polling station assistance from Falkirk Council who provided polling booths, etc. Seven people took part in an exercise where elected representatives were invited to use where-sins specs and to use a tactile voting device to go into the polling booth with a ballot paper, a fictitious ballot paper prepared for the purpose of election trials with made-up party names and candidates. In the trial, there were 18 people with sight who carried out this exercise. Four of the 18 didn't vote correctly for the candidates they thought they'd voted for. When it came to the people with sight loss, nine cast their votes. Only five voted as they intended to, and this was with using the audio device to assist them to cast their vote. The group that faced the greatest difficulty were those who were registered blind. As the three of the four registered blind voters didn't vote in the way that they intended to, but had thought they had. That was a discomforting experience for a voter to think that, well, I know how to use this, but in fact I haven't voted as I need to, so where's my vote gone? That's an account that I've probably taken too much of your time. Thank you for that. It is very worrying that such high figures, albeit in a small sample group, believe that they voted one way, but it would be recorded differently. Ethan, I think that you wanted to come in and I know that a couple of committee members want follow-up questions. If you'll permit me, I might backtrack very slightly when we're talking about numbers. I'll be very brief. To our knowledge, surveys suggest that around one in ten disabled people would be denied the right to vote because they don't have the necessary ID. That's over a one million disabled people, a significantly higher proportion of disabled people don't have the necessary ID compared to non-disabled people. Again, that would be breaching the principle of what the UK have signed up to in the UNCRPD to reduce the barriers rather than increase the barriers to participation. In terms of, I was a bit lost on what the questions were directly. There was a question about access to an emergency office. The question is in relation to the bill is moving away from setting a prescribed set of equipment to be used to assist to a test of reasonableness. Is that an improvement or not to the current situation? My apologies, Ethan. At the minute, the bill prescribes very specific technology that should be available to assist people to cast their vote. The new bill is proposing removing that specific list but adding a test of reasonable equipment and whether or not you think that that is an improvement or a detriment. I mean, I guess it's how we define that. I think that that's what the issue is, is what is reasonable. To me, what is reasonable is that everyone has the right to vote, everyone has the right to the same access to vote and that's what reasonable is. I think that looking at what we've just heard about people with visual impairments, challenges are to vote in secret. I think that we need to get that right, obviously. It's still not right. People should still be able to vote in secret. That is their right. We need to do everything that we can to make that happen and what one person might think is reasonable. Another person might not. Cost always comes into play. It shouldn't because it is our human right to vote. No matter what the cost, we should do whatever it takes to enable people to vote in a way that they want to. I know I've not answered that directly but we need more detail. I think that that's the challenge here. We've not got the detail and we can't leave the detail until later on for stage 2. I think that it is important that you've put on record the human right to vote and that applies to all humans. I'm just going to let Bob come in because I know he's got a follow-up question and then I'll come to you to respond. Dr Burnett, I apologise if that seems a little bit process driven but it directly relates to the concerns. My initial question was in relation to whether there was any degree of comfort whatsoever than having something specified on the face of the bill. That might have to be changed to be more appropriate rather than the reasonableness test, which could in theory have been 30 to 32 times across Scotland. The goodness knows how many times across the UK now. I would hope that the electoral management board for Scotland, I'm sure they would, would do a good job on that but that's not the point. I suppose that it's about whether RNIB, Inclusion Scotland and others, whether on the face of the bill or through secondary legislation, where there could be a whole series of minimum standards specified in statute that everyone should expect, whether that should be specified. That could be changed if it's secondary legislation, that could be changed speedily after consultation with various groups, whether it's important to have something specified as opposed to the local interpretation of reasonableness. Apologies for giving that a little bit process driven but just in terms of the legislation I think that's important, something spelled out in statute or open to local interpretation. Catriona, if I can come to you. Sorry, the wording that's being proposed is such. I think we've just lost Catriona at the moment. I'll give it a couple of seconds to see whether the feed comes back on. I'm guessing from that view not. No, we appear to have lost about. I'm sure she will try and come back in. Ethan, do you want to comment on that specific question from Bob? I think that we absolutely need to benchmark what reasonable is, because someone's reasonable might be lower than someone else's reasonable. I think that to have that level of detail at that point would be really useful and helpful, because it gives us that level of comfort as to exactly what we're talking about when we mention the word reasonable. For that, Ethan. Tess, can I come to you with your question and then if Catriona can make it back in we'll come back for her response. This seems an easy question, but it's quite a tough one. If each of the panel could come up with one ask, so one thing that you would like to suggest that needs to be changed to make electoral events open and accessible to all voters. So just one thing. Thank you. Simple but always challenging question. Jess, perhaps I start with you. Sure, and it's a change that actually was proposed during committee stage on the elections bill in the House of Commons, which was for voters to be registered automatically, as happens in a number of other countries. This is based on evidence, which Dr Clark referred to earlier, that the biggest problem that the polling staff experience on elections day is not personation, but instead people coming in wanting to vote and not being registered. That seems very straightforward. Indeed, the electric commission has done a feasibility study, which has looked at a number of ways of doing it. Of course, you can have full automation or you can have voter registration that is a bit more automatic. Perhaps it happens when you engage in other Government services. That is something that would have probably the most immediate and obvious impact on people being asked to access their vote. Thank you, Jess. Ethan, what would your ask be? Well, I think really having a proper accessibility audit of the whole process from signing up to vote to go on and actually voting or voting by post, that needs a full accessibility audit, which needs to be informed by and run by disabled people. Disabled people are the experts in the barriers that they face. Therefore, they are the experts in helping policy makers to find the solutions. Often, when I speak at other events, you do not hire a baker to build a bridge. Why do non-disabled people make policy that impacts disabled people, often without understanding or having a lived experience, to solve the problem that we are facing? Thank you for that. Anything further, Tess? I want to move on to a short section because it has been raised by everyone about voter ID. Jess, I would like to come to you because we have heard very clearly, and Katrina has joined us again, very clearly about the impact on certain groups with regard to voter ID. I wonder whether you would have any comment about the impact on different socioeconomic groups that we have not heard from on this. What are the challenges with regard to voter ID for them? The form of voter ID that is in the elections is a photographic ID. The two most common forms of that would be passport and driving licence, both of which come with a cost. It is not surprising that, in all the research of the Cabinet Office's recent research and the Electoral Commission research as well, the group most likely not to have the right forms of photographic ID are people who are unemployed, people living in local authority accommodation and, of course, I mentioned earlier, people with a disability. There are clearly groups here who are vulnerable to losing out on their vote, groups that we definitely would not want to. The worry for us as well is that, in some of that same research, 42 per cent of people who said that they did not have one of the required forms of ID, said that they would be very unlikely or unlikely to go and get a voter card. I mentioned earlier some of the problems that people can experience, cost problems as well in terms of paying for a bus to get to the issuing office and various things. We are really concerned that this policy is going to have a chilling effect on turnout and, in some cases, prevent legitimate voters from voting. We did see that in the pilots where there were pilots of this in local authorities in England in both 2018 and 2019. To share some of those figures, five local authorities piloted this in the 2018 local elections in England. 1,000 people across those five areas turned up without the ID and 350 of those failed to return to vote. In the 2019 pilot, 10 local authority areas, 2,000 people turned up without the ID and 750 failed to return. Across those 15 areas, more than 1,000 people effectively denied their vote. That is a lot stronger evidence-based and, I think, much bigger numbers than we are seeing from the actual counts of vaccination that we had earlier of vanishingly small. We are really concerned at the risk here of the impact that this is going to have on people accessing their vote, particularly from certain groups as well. Can I push you on your experience and knowledge on this and turn the question around slightly in the sense that... I've got two questions. I'll ask the first one first and then I'll go to the second one. Amongst those groups, what is the confidence that the Government or local authority or election officer in providing that specified identity if you don't have a passport, you don't have a driving licence, what is the confidence level amongst those groups that that will happen? Do you know that? I don't know the confidence. We know that people are quite confident in the process as it stands. 87 per cent of people think that voting in general is safe, 90 per cent of people think that voting in polling stations is safe. The argument that we are going to increase voter confidence by asking them to provide extra ID stands up. We don't have a lot of detail about how local authorities are going to be providing these cards. Is there an online version? Do you have to turn up in person? How often is the issuing office going to be open? Just to take an example from the US, there is one area in a US state where the issuing office for the voter ID card is open on every fifth Wednesday of the month. There is not a lot of months with a fifth Wednesday. You can see how, in some circumstances, these things can be particularly restrictive and, indeed, weaponised to be so. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut across you. I'll bring my second question in then. Is there any evidence about whether or not providing voter ID, not actually in the provision of it but someone with voter ID, does that increase the confidence? Amongst groups about an election? Very limited evidence on that. There is some evidence from the pilots that, if you ask people if you feel like it's secure, there is no evidence in the change of people's behaviour and what have you. The limited question is about who might have turned up and who then didn't turn up. The limited evidence on that, were people put off in terms of those pilots? Just a supplementary group, we have heard about voters with disabilities and the convener mentioned about social economic groups. The other question that Jess for herself would be about ethnic minority groups, one in terms of voter registration and two then looking at ID. Is there any research about that particular group? I'm concerned that that's one thing we've not really touched upon today in regards to voter ID, but are there concerns in terms of registration, as I said, and then ID if they have registered after that? In terms of ethnic minority groups, definitely a group that we were very concerned would be impacted by this policy. Different messages from different research, some research says that this is the group that was most affected by voter ID, other evidence suggesting it's not so much of a problem, particularly when it comes to accessing the ID. However, a lot of black minority ethnic groups have said to us that it's not just the possession of ID, but the environment that you're in. Do people feel encouraged to vote? Do people feel welcome to vote? That is a case made by Operation Black Vote, particularly who have spent decades encouraging black citizens to vote. They said that this could impact on people's sense of feeling welcomed and encouraged into the system, so that's their position. In terms of registration, the group who are most likely to be under-registered are groups who move house more frequently. It's people in rented accommodation. Younger people, particularly people who are moving around and also private rented accommodation, that's the group. Of course, that makes up a significant number of black minority ethnic community as well. That's the group that suffers most from under-registration, so there's probably a crossover here. The people who are moving around a lot more are going to have more trouble getting to the polling station. Thank you very much, Jess. Katrina, I was just going to ask you to come back in after the unfortunate experience with regard to the IT. Just to recall the question that you were being asked is what your confidence in the reasonable provision being put into the bill, rather than a set of technologies that would assist? Yes. I'm just going to check that you can hear me because, again, a little vox is telling me that I'm muted. In relation to the wording that's proposed for the bill, it's saying such equipment, as it is reasonable, provide for the purpose of enabling or making it easier for relevant persons. The relevant persons here are voters who are disabled or blind and partially sighted. We think that the new wording weakens the guarantees for blind and partially sighted people in two ways. It will mean that individual returning officers instead of the Government will make a decision on what to provide, that you could have a postcode lottery of provision. It will also mean that blind and partially sighted voters won't know what to expect at polling stations or what they are entitled to. I mentioned earlier that it could be taken that a returning officer might decide that they don't think the provision of a tactile voting device or other such equipment to enable an independent vote is reasonable or whatever reasons they come to that. If you lose the words without any need or assistance from the face of the bill, we are very concerned not to lose those words. If you lose those words, there is less clarity that there is a right to an independent and secret vote being afforded to blind and partially sighted people. The current legislation does not specify precisely what is prescribed within the clause, but it does establish that there is a right to vote without any need for assistance. I would emphasise that that is an area that we want to preserve within the bill. I will pause there because you might have supplementary questions, but I am conscious that I missed out on five or six minutes of the deliberations. My apologies for your experience with IT, not unique, but thank you for that contribution. It is very important that that answer in relation to Bob's question with regard to the bill is very helpful to have on the record. I am conscious of time, so I am going to extend on behalf of the committee and myself my very deep thanks for attending today. I know that the clerks will be in touch whether there are any other items that you would like us to take into consideration before our report is drawn together. So thank you for attending today and with that, that draws to close the public element of this meeting. Thank you.