 Rwy'n cael ei ddweud. Rôl i chi'n mynd i gael a'u gweld yn gwybod y Comedau Spee Mogel. Gofa hawdd honi gwaith i gael â Gwyrdd Cymru. Felly i chi fod i'n gwybod i gael i gael i'u gael i'n gwybod i gael i'r masgrifi sylwyd. Felly i chi'n gwybod i chi, mae'r gwybod i gael eu gwleithwyr mor hwn. Aelodd Meri Pic-Cathle wedi'i gael i gael ei gymhreithio. Ewan Milton ar Llywodraeth Cynon, Iwan Llywodraeth gwaith i'r Gwyrdd Cynon, wirrwydd, llwyddon y Llywodraeth i'r rhywfyrdd ynllwydd, yn gyffredinol am Caerdydd Maewynaid, ddweud o Gymraeg i bwysigol Llywodraeth a Gwysigol Llywodraeth yn y gweithio ar afarn! Mae hyn yn ddenchyn nhw ei fawr yn cael ei gallu cymryd ar gyfergofod ddraig, fel yr oedd honnw yn mynd i'n gwneud ei pethau, fel y byddan nhw ei fawr yn cysylltiad cyflwyniadol, a ddefnyddio cyfleoedd y pethau. Nid iddyn nhw wedi cwysylltio i fynd i gynnwys cyflwyniadol Felly, wrth gwasanaeth, wrth gweithio'r cyflwyton gwaith o'r cyflwyton, fy ydych chi'n gwathion gael cael eu mwy oes ffordd, neu nhw i chi'n gwybod i gyfan gyda Gathl? Erdan, rydych. Gweithio'r cyflwyton i chi'n gweithio'r cyflwyton cynnyngwch ar fy nôl o'r cyflwyton, byddai'n gweld neb Windows i gyfleidiau am yr unigfyrddfaen, a chi'n eich byw o'r cyflwyniad gan gyffredin wrth yn ei gwaith o'i gŵm a'i rwyf i'n eu cychwyn the experience of the referendum before it all goes to the back of our minds. I think there are three points that I want to make at this point, which hopefully will frame the discussions. One is that we talk a lot about the scale of the event that we had in September, and quite frankly it was just huge in every aspect. But it did go well, and we think the reason it went well was because of the planning, the professionalism I strategies have Vetcome on the hard work of the many dedicated people across Scotland who work in election teams and who help us and support us to do the job that we were given. I also wanted to recognise the contribution at this committee made. Your scrutiny of the referendum legislation was vital in shaping the rules and approach, in particular we welcomed the long leading period to allow us to plan to do that we think is so important. Dwi ddigid bod yn iawn gweld gweithio i Gweithio Llywodraeth nesaf, i Llywodraeth i Llywodraeth, i Llywodraeth i'r bron ddwylleth tonneb yn ei gweithio, ond i gweithio i'r gennych, oedd yn gweld gennych, a'i gweithio i'r ddymu'r ddigid yn gweithio i'r dyfodol. Felly, dwi'n iawn gweld ganweithio gweithio i'r ddydd y bydd iawn. Felly, mae'n eu cy dese ddwych yn gweld gweithio i'r ddwy flynedd wedi'u gweithio i'r gweithio i'r hanes I know that we achieved the objective that we set out to achieve, which was that voters would have confidence in the result. That's not just my assessment. We've obviously got the Electoral Commission report, but we've been speaking with those representing the campaign groups and the political parties with the press, with international observers and with Scotland's voters, most of whom have commented on how well the referendum was run. It was an event that we didn't rush, so we had time because of the early passing of the legislation. We had time to develop and implement structures and controls to ensure that we would have the highest standards in terms of this electoral event. That was something that was really important. For us, it was an example of a referendum that was made in Scotland and delivered by our unique institutions with the Electoral Management Board for Scotland having an important role. As Chief Counting Officer, my position as convener of the EMB meant that I could call on the support, expertise and professional resources of the entire board. Our project management approach is already being promoted across the UK as a case study and model of best practice in how to plan, manage and deliver major electoral events with a clear objective, principles and appropriate controls. Of course, while that is important for Scotland, we are not complacent and we are already learning the lessons of 2014 to continue to improve our own performance in future. Finally, although there were many challenges facing us in delivering this referendum, I am sure that we will come back to the issues around turnout and the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. With extensive planning and engagement of all the professionals in the 32 council election teams within the Scottish Government, the Electoral Commission and colleagues in Police Scotland, we were able, through consensus guidance and a handful of directions, to craft a framework that ensured that polling and counting went smoothly right across the country. I think that it's probably appropriate at this stage on behalf of the committee and hopefully I'm sure on behalf of the whole Parliament to thank you as the chief counting officer for Scotland, the electoral officials who were involved in the process across Scotland for the organisation of the referendum for your hard work, your professionalism. I know that the long hours were certainly part of the situation that you were involved in and it took a huge commitment to deliver what I think has been widely recognised. You have said yourself a remarkably successfully organised referendum where the people of Scotland immersed themselves in democracy. I think probably we've enabled ourselves through not just both governments, the Parliament, this committee and yourselves to show something pretty significant in terms of how democratic societies can work and I think it's been a model that the rest of the world can learn from so I'm very grateful to you for that basis. In your opening statement Mary, you talked about the need and time to develop structures and controls and learning lessons and therefore I'd like to begin with one of the areas where we might need to start using some of these lessons quite quickly and that's in regard to 16 and 17 year olds and proposed section 30 that's being discussed between the two governments. All things being equal in an ideal world, when do you think that section 30 needs to be in place and when do you think that this Parliament needs to put the legislation in place to make sure that we develop these controls and structures that you talked about to enable 16 and 17 year olds to successfully take part in the referendum? It's a slip of the tongue. The Scottish Parliament elections in 2016. Well we are very fortunate in that we do know the date of the Scottish Parliament elections, that's really helpful because all of our planning can then take place within a set period and the answer really is as soon as possible and certainly not later than the spring of 2015 and there are a variety of reasons for that which my colleagues can expand upon. There are two aspects to successfully extending the franchise. I think one of them is getting young people actually on the register so that they can vote and my colleague Ian Milton can expand on what the timescales would be for him in terms of his responsibilities as an ERO. The other aspect of that is of course those young people wanting to be on the register and wanting to then go and use their vote. So around that the issues were around voter education but also using Education Scotland, our own education teams within the council, community education, whatever. Whatever resources were available to us, young Scott, everything, to try and reach out to young people and engage with them. Now those were remarkably successful but it will be a whole new group of 16 and 17 year olds rather come 2016. So we really will have to redouble those efforts I think but I think we've cracked it, we know what worked and so I think we can revisit some of those things. I know your committee worked closely with the Scottish Government and the agencies about that as well but within the councils we did quite a lot and we can keep that moving and then re-engage with that particular cohort of 16 and 17 year olds in the registration period to get them on board. But in terms of the specifics of registration probably best if I leave it to Ian to pick those up. Certainly. The position regarding, if we look at the experience that we had for the referendum, the franchise act came through with Royal Ascent in August 2013 for the canvas which commenced on 1 October 2013. Now that didn't meet the six month rule that Gould set down but we had actually, Electoral Registration Officers had been in discussion with Scottish Government for a considerable period before then so in that respect Electoral Registration Officers knew where they were going but ideally the legislation if you were going to follow the six month rule would need to be in place by 1 February 2015 because the canvas will start from 1 August 2015. That's interesting because I recognise from the Electoral Commission's report which came out this week, they certainly talked about six months before the canvas having to have all legislation commenced but was Gould not six months before the actual event that the legislation had to be in place? Well the event is the canvas. I'm pretty sure Gould is pretty specific that it was about the election date six months before and the Electoral Commission have gone further. I may be wrong and I stand to be corrected. No, I think you're quite right, I think it was six months before the event everything should be in place, not just the legislation but hopefully all the regulations that flow from those as well. I think Ian's point is simply that for him the event isn't polling day but the canvas that is when you capture those voters so ideally you would want the full six months for that as well. In planning for your canvas you need to know what questions you're asking and who you're asking those questions from. So to do that, to get your forms designed and printed and make sure all your contracts are in place, make sure your response service is in place if you're going to use automated response or electronic response services. These all have to be designed in advance of the canvas actually being launched so the event as far as a canvas is concerned is in fact it starts in the autumn. Some eros might start on 1 August, others might start on 1 September or thereabouts but that's when the canvas starts and that's when the documentation will be arriving on people's doorsteps. Interesting challenge we've got here because August you say the canvas will be for the 2016 election and so it's going to be in place six months before. We were talking about then in effect in February, 1 February so we need to not only do we have to have the section 30 order passed at Westminster, we've got to get the legislation through here by February. In an ideal world, that's interesting. I think we absolutely would want to stick with the gold principles around this but if we do know that something is coming and we are absolutely clear that it's going to be approved then that makes a big difference. Obviously the gold experience back in 2007 was around legislation that you could have no certainty about at all. It was changing quite significantly right up until about three months or so before polling day. Okay, we now know we don't have the ideal world. What timescale is it doable is the next question that needs to be asked in that case. I think you need to look at the experience that we had. We've demonstrated that we can do it. We've demonstrated that we can make sure that 16 and 17 year olds are enfranchised without the legislation in place until August. So I suppose anything better than that is an improvement and a step in the right direction. You can handle August with anything better than that. That's quite an important message actually in terms of how we take this forward. What is most important is that there is very close working as there was for the referendum between officials like myself and the policy makers and the Scottish Government. We had a referendum focus group that met informally and that worked extremely well between officials and Scottish Government and people like myself. So that meant that when the final legislation finally was enacted we were all up and running. But in an ideal world you'd want the legislation first but as we've acknowledged. Well I guess you'll now be talking to the Scottish Government officials sometime next week to begin to discuss who's come to do it together. I'm sure that the approach has already been made. I'm sure that's right. I think Stuart Millar had a supplementary in this area. It's okay at the moment thank you. Thanks that's very helpful and I'd echo the convener's opening remarks. I think I'm sure we all would in terms of the conduct and success of the operation and recognising the scale of it as well. When it comes to lessons learned clearly there are a number of areas that are important. I wonder in terms of the joint working I think Mary mentioned in your opening statement joint working with the Electoral Commission and Police Scotland. They are clearly important partners and I noticed Neil Milton's report a number of queries over some of those working relationships and particularly around things the Electoral Commission notified to voters which were perhaps not as helpful as you felt they might have been. And also the question without obviously going into any individual cases but the question of whether Police Scotland took attempted electoral fraud as seriously as they ought to have done. So be interested in your comments on those broad areas in terms of working with other agencies. I can pick up on the second point in relation to the police. I would say that the experience we had of dealing with the police service generally and specifically the senior officers who were working directly with us was one of the best experiences I've had of partnership working. We had very clear lines of communication, we had access to the most senior officers if we had specific concerns and we planned the whole approach from very early on with regular meetings. I was still meeting with Jim Baird who was the chief superintendent we were working with right up until polling day, in fact he was at the count. So it was a long lead-in period for us to get to know each other and to understand what the important issues were. So I have no doubt that those officers have absolute clarity around the importance of pursuing potential cases of electoral fraud. They obviously have to work closely with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and I know that in relation to a number of cases, evidence gathering is still going on. So it may be that people get a wee bit frustrated that it looks as though there were cases on the day but what's happened to them, my understanding is they may still be trundling through the system but they were certainly taken up with the degree of interest that I would have expected. In relation to the report, perhaps if I could actually contextualise my report, this report wasn't written as a piece of evidence for this committee. This report was written as an overview which went to a number of sources. It was to inform the Electoral Commission, it was to inform academic organisations that were interested in the referendum, it was to record the position as far as electoral registration officers across Scotland were concerned and it's been used in a variety of forum. For that reason I apologise because at times I start talking about R-11 and E-6 and all sorts of things but they're just electoral administrators terms and maybe when you've been amongst electoral administrators as much as I have then you start to take on these things which is possibly regrettable. At times the report is possibly a touch franc in the sense that it does highlight specific incidents but what I would point people to is the opening paragraph which is the most successful electoral event ever in the experience of electoral registration officers in the committee but nevertheless we need to pick up on points where we can improve and that's what the report really set out to do. It shouldn't be seen as a critical report, it's more a case of where we go forwards. Absolutely and that was hence the contextualisation of my question as well recognising the fantastic success of the operation as a whole but pursuing those particular points. I guess if the principle you were outlining in relation to 16 and 17 year old franchise was a principle of no surprises and you can do it if that's an accurate summary of what you're saying there. I guess also in relation to advertising or promoting opportunities for voters by their actual commission it is also presumably about using the experience of the referendum in order to better inform how they make known to the public how to proceed. Is that also essentially what your point is to do? Absolutely yes. I mean we do work extremely closely with the Edinburgh office and also the London office of the electoral commission so we have very good lines of communication. I think it's a very good point that we had so many first time voters and they weren't all 16 or 17 year olds by any manner of means or indeed people who maybe hadn't voted for a long time. And I think what we perhaps one of the lessons learned is that we need to go into a lot more detail than perhaps we had anticipated. I mean we all of us in the media as well because we spoken with the media about this as well in terms of just exactly what happens in a polling station. What should happen, what will you expect so that we could have demystified the whole issue of pencils for example which bedeviled us right up until polling day. And also the other end of that is in all honesty in my entire life as a returning officer no one's ever been interested in the count other than people like us. But the interest, the levels of interest in the minutia of what happens in the count was great, fabulous. But there are so many people you can't sit down and explain it to at the time. We all issued booklets that were available in the count so that you had an explanation. But if you were just watching it on TV it must have still seemed a bit mysterious. So I think one of the lessons for us there is just to take a wee bit more time to actually explain what happens, what are the various stages. Why do you verify as well as count what's all about you know. That's very helpful. I've got a couple of supplementaries here. Linda was first then Mark and Stuart as well but I need to. Yes I'll push on and just a wee comment about what Mary has just said. I think you know extend that awareness raising to how to register and things like that as well if you miss because we certainly locally came across some confusion there. I was wanting to ask Ian a bit more just on this issue about the register for young voters. Because in the SAA submission there is explicitly and implicitly the view that it could have been done better and perhaps there was complications. Is there the ability to rationalise some of that in terms of the different register, the confidential young voters register and the other one? And how do you do that making sure that you're not creating potential vulnerabilities for those who will in fact be 15 at the time of registration and come as attainers? Yes I mean that's a fascinating point. In democracy you've always got this tension between privacy and transparency and it's illustrated absolutely with great clarity with young voters. And really there is no magic solution to this. It is complicated because electoral law is complicated. It's not an administrative issue and we rationalised as much as we could but it is nevertheless complicated. For example an application received by an electoral registration officer before 1st of December 15 in this canvas that will happen next autumn. Will allow an under 18 year old to be registered providing they are 18 by 30th November 2016. And they'll be shown on the electoral register as an attainer and they'll be shown with their name and they'll be shown with the date of their 18th birthday. Now if the application is received the following day on 1st of December 2015 then we can show the individual as an attainer with their 18th birthday as long as that 18th birthday is on above for 30th November 2017. And that is where the issue arises because there's no electoral law as it stands just now. It's not a case of saying well if your date of birth is before that date you're going to be an attainer on the electoral register and if your date of birth is before that date then the other way round. Because it will depend on when the application is actually received by the electoral registration officer. And that is in the representation of the People Act of 1983. So it's a fundamental piece of legislation that drives electoral law across the United Kingdom. And the question is can that be rationalised? Can what was put in place under the Franchise Act for 16 17 year olds bearing in mind that there's the issue of 15 year olds being noted. Can that be rationalised? Well it is to a certain extent and in essence we will be capturing data for 14 year olds as well as 15 year olds for the same reason as we capture present data for 16 and 17 year olds for existing registers. And I think the other thing we need to bear in mind is that this is going to be an ongoing process not just for the Scottish Parliamentary Election. Because after all if there's a Scottish Parliamentary Election where the franchises of 16 and 17 year olds are in franchise then it will apply to any by elections. So it's going to have to become part of business as usual in the electoral administration and registration front and that's where a challenge lies. I think one of the issues about the polling list and the electoral register was obviously the young voters register was confidential. And so it meant that designated organisations had access to it through the polling list but the permitted participants didn't. And you get into issues about transparency. Folks I don't want to stop and discuss it but we are getting very deep here. There's quite a range of areas we're going to have to cover and might not get through but we need to get to it. Mark and Stuart have said that there's a quick supplementary issue. I will be brief convener. It was just around the points that Mary Pitcaithle was raising about doing more to inform voters about the processes. Now I remember in 2007 when we did the first STV council elections there were specific officials at polling stations who were there to guide folk through the process and explain what was happening now. Obviously there were added complications in terms of multiple voting systems on the same day whereas what we had here was a binary ballot but at the same time as you identify large numbers of people who'd never cast any form of ballot in their life. With hindsight do you think having those kind of desks in polling stations might have been a move to make? I know you've said there were no delays or anything like that but certainly when I was going round polling stations in my constituency staff were saying that they felt it was a bit onerous having to both issue ballot papers but at the same time offer guidance and advice to people who might require it. It's a fine balance because it's the simplest ballot paper if you like. If you think of all the different kinds of ballot papers it's nice and simple and straightforward and normally you would be expecting a polling office and a polling clerk to be able to deal with that. We recognised early on that we had to plan for a very large turnout and because of that we restricted the number of people who could use each polling station. We asked county officers to have no more than 800 people use at electors potentially using a polling station on the day to try and prevent queues. Now we were successful in preventing queues. The only time I saw any queues were before seven in the morning which was great but it wasn't a queue because of any slow responses from staff. That was fine. During the day I had no complaints about queuing but I recognised that some stations were busy and I certainly would recognise that POs and clerks on the day didn't really get much of a break. They did work pretty much full on. For that reason most county officers did employ additional staff. They weren't necessarily called information officers but they were there to provide additional capacity to let somebody have a sandwich for lunch or have a comfort break or whatever but also to be there to help people. So if somebody did come in and was utterly confused or just wanted to ask a lot of questions they could take them off to one side. I certainly saw that as I went round some polling stations working quite well. I know that in polling stations where with the late surgeon applications for people to register the 800 was breached because more than 800 on that particular list for that polling place. The response from the counting officer at that stage could only be to put in more staff. That was what I think tended to happen. I don't know if Chris wants to say anything about the experience in Edinburgh for example. I think the experience in Edinburgh as Mary was saying that one of the key things we were doing was training all polling staff. We've given the submission example of polling station handbook that was given to all polling staff and that went through in detail what the process was that a voter would engage in when they came into a polling place. All staff were aware that there were going to be a lot more people engaged in the process in voting than normal and certainly in the face to face training that we all gave to all our polling staff that was a particular challenge we wanted them to pick up on. We also looked at this in the round. We're not the only ones that are communicating with the voters. The Electoral Commission material went to every household in the country and explained the process. There's a key role that the polling clock and the Poseidon officer have in guiding people through the voting process and we do recognise that and build on that. Given that we're going to have three elections in the next three years, each using different ballot papers and different electoral systems, having something in place at polling stations would be advisable. Given the high turnout that we've seen and that many of the people who voted for the very first time in the referendum we would hope would continue to vote but they'll be voting in different ways. Having three people in a quiet polling station where there aren't that many voters assigned to that polling station and where the turnout may not be at the same level as we had in September could be seen to be a potential waste of public money. Even if the fees and charges order allowed for it, there could be criticism of three people sitting all day with no more than a couple of hundred voters assigned to that polling station. I think it should be left as horses for courses. I think it should be about having a very close look at what's the likely turnout in an area, what's been the previous experience, how well is it a community where there might be lots of young people voting for the first time, for example, or is it something where we think the two staff can cope? I think we should be, there should be some flexibility around having a look at it closer to the time. Edinburgh responded right up until, you know, putting additional staff in right up until a day or two before polling day. The 16 and 17-year-olds who have also gone on to register for the first time, but those who were not in education, those who were actually doing apprenticeships, how did you manage to get information to them to get them registered? I know that was a point I raised when we went through the legislation. The Franchise Act required electoral registration officers to issue a young voter registration form to every household in Scotland as part of the canvas. So that was the principle data capture method. But we also used obviously the education authorities, but to deal with the apprentices, we also dealt with Scottish Youth Parliament and other fora to try and get the message across. We also worked with colleges of FE or whatever their current title is because I lose track, but further education, tertiary education establishments, not only just universities but colleges as well. So we were getting the message out as strongly as possible. The Electoral Commission did a lot of work on that as well, and so we feel confident that we had managed to capture as many as we possibly could. In that respect, we also worked with people like the care providers for dealing with looked after children and that raises all sorts of issues, but that was a success as well in my assessment. Can I just add briefly on that as part of our duty to encourage participation, which technically I suppose applies to elections, but we applied it to the referendum and would certainly apply it to 2016. West Lothian, my council, not alone in this by any means, had awareness raising sessions with our West Lothian College for the younger voters, and particularly the 16 and 17-year-old employees in my own council being the biggest employer in the area. So there were specific measures taken to target 16 and 17-year-olds in our area, and other councils would be doing the same. On a more general point, depending on resources, and resources are not the same everywhere of course, S4 and S5 in secondary schools were targeted specifically for awareness raising, and that's not just to get yourself registered through our ERO colleagues but also the voting process. So we can improve on that, but of course that is resource intensive, and obviously in the current climate that's a problem, but we would hope, and I'm sure other councils will be trying to do the same to repeat that for 2016 to capture the new 16 and 17-year-old voters. I have to say that the media did a great job as well, though we had great support from media who were looking for us to do interviews. My quid pro quo was always well. The message I want you to get out then is around trying to avoid queuing by turning up at a certain time, getting to young voters about the deadline for voting etc etc. So there was always a bit of a trade-off in terms of using their ability to be able to reach out to people that we might not be able to get to. Alison, you're in a question in this sort of area as well, so probably news is trying to get me in. Yeah, thanks very much, and I too would like to congratulate you all on your contribution to the most successful electoral event ever, and I'm also pleased to note Mr Milton that we're not expected to understand all the jargon in your report. I was reading that thinking, oh, should I know what R11 is? My questions probably are for Mr Milton in particular. You note that deadlines for registration and for absent vote applications immediately prior to the referendum were too late and too inconsistent, and you're obviously concerned about the impact that that might have in future elections. I don't know what you also say that policymakers might be loath to interfere and change that in any way. I just wondered if you'd like to make further comment on what we might do and the problems that presented. Certainly, the deadlines for registration and the deadlines for absent vote applications are really considered by administrators to be fairly cast iron in that I believe they lie in, you know, they're well embedded in legislation. So the deadline for registration to vote is 12 days before the electoral event, but it's midnight, whereas the deadline for making an absent vote application is 11 days before the electoral event, but it's 5pm. And then the deadline for a proxy, this didn't apply in the referendum particularly, but in electoral law, the deadline for making an application for a proxy vote is normally midnight on day 6, and then for emergency proxy is 5pm on the day. So you have this midnight deadline of 5pm, and it depends on what event you're working towards. So ideally, all the time deadlines, if they were all brought to either noon of that day, which would mean that any form has been delivered or handed in, would be handed into offices that were being manned, and also people who were handing them in could get an assurance whether that's the form handed in, yes, we've received it in time, or rather than popping it through a letterbox that's 11.59 at night and wondering whether it's going to be accepted. So there's a time issue, and then the question over the deadlines being too close to the election is a real challenge. The political constitution reform committee in the House of Commons has recently published a voter engagement report. It's a fourth report just earlier last month, and that stated that they want to see deadlines brought close to the electoral event to increasing engagement. And the electoral commission in its report in a referendum commented along similar lines that maybe deadlines should be brought close to the electoral event. But that creates huge difficulties for administrators, and especially now that we're actually in a different registration framework than we had for the referendum, because now we're in the individual electoral registration framework, which is a completely new, if you like, filter to electoral registration. And it means that each application not only has to be received by the ERO, but also has to be verified through a verification process that can take up to five days. I mean, we did keep offices open until midnight, and returning officers were trying to give as much support to EROs as possible, according to staff, if that was appropriate, helping with call centres, etc. But it would make such a difference if there was a specific time. And I think for the voter it would ease the concern they might have as to whether or not their application was valid, because an awful lot of time the next day was spent dealing with people who were phoning up to say, did you get it? And actually, that was the same day as we were dealing with the very last day for applying for an absent vote, for applying for a postal vote, and the two are too close together. But at least the second date was a five o'clock deadline. You could sort of close the door and say, well, if it's not in, it's not in the day before with no time specified and having to therefore assume it's midnight, it really isn't. It's not good for the voter, and to be honest, there are some people who just always leave things till the last minute. I don't think you would have lost many voters. They would have just got it in at five to 12 during the day rather than at five to midnight, and I think it would be a huge improvement if we put times that are in the normal working day. The law commissions of England and Scotland are considering the entire set of electoral legislation at the moment, and one of the things that we've been appealing for is consistency in the timetable and making sure that that's reviewed and looked at very clearly. Also, just to be positive about it, we do deal with that timetable and the key thing for ourselves is just to know what those dates are and to communicate those clearly and make sure that people can work within them. I'll see a supplementary to that, and then I'll come to Robin in worse. You've answered that very clearly, and it doesn't seem beyond the wit of man to address this issue sensibly. It sounds that if there's a feeling that deadline should be brought closer to electoral events, we're clearly going to have to look at resourcing and capacity. It also said in your report that in some areas third parties claiming to promote engagement submitted volumes of applications on behalf of the electors. What was going on there? There's a number of organisations that are interested in political engagement, and whether they have a particular agenda or not is not for me to question. In a way, any engagement activity is to be welcomed, and certainly in this referendum there was massive engagement, which was absolutely fantastic. But what can happen is that some organisations might decide that they're going to have a registration drive in a particular locality, and they will go round with a form, they'll have maybe picked the form that my office issue from my website, or they'll have maybe downloaded one from the Electoral Commission website for a couple of different times, and then gone round to doorsteps and invited people to register to vote. Now, as long as those forms are properly completed and assigned and are returned to us by the deadline, they are valid applications to register to vote. The problem is that every form that I received like that in my office was for somebody who was already registered to vote, but it was a fresh application, so it had to be processed. We had to reference it up, work out the address, because sometimes the address wasn't. They didn't give the tenement flat location, so they maybe gave the house number but not the tenement flat location. So there was time, administrative time spent, working out which property record this application referred to, and then finding that the person was already registered. So that tied up a resource. One office received about 500 applications just before midnight on Day 11, sorry, on Day 12, and each one of those applications had to be considered, and established whether there was a registration already in place, if not, was to valid registration, and if so, they should be added to the register. I'll have to move on from this bit, Ian. I've got Robin Lewis who wants to ask supplementaries in this area, but I must get to the issue of costs, because that matters to you folks, and I'm going to come to Stuart Maxwell after I've loaded these two supplementaries. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. You were talking about the burdensome, particularly burdensome nature of registration hearings and appeals which we've been exploring this now, and you mentioned, of course, that we're in a new system. Indeed, it looks to me as though, if there's any query about an application for a postal vote, that the deadline is 12 days before the person has to reply. This makes it unlikely that you would be able to handle such things if there were late applications at midnight or at noon following day. Can you comment a little further on that? Yes. Once an application is received, if it's received in time, but there are questions to be raised to be clarified, maybe the correspondence address for the ballot paper isn't very clear, then we will follow that up, and we will get to the bottom of it, and the application will not be treated as void. But it all takes a significant amount of time. In the case of hearings, this is to do with a registration application, which the ERO has concerns about, concerns about the veracity, possibly, of the application. So, just before an election, when you receive maybe several thousand applications, 12 days beforehand, and you find you have a number of those that you actually are unhappy with, then you will call a hearing, and that all takes time. Now, if you've got one or two hearings, that's quite easy to deal with, but if you're moving into double figures to allocate a day in that short period between registration deadline of day 12 and determination deadline of day 6, then you've only got that window to actually operate in. And to get the applicant to acknowledge receipt of the hearing notice and be available for the hearing, all takes time and resources. So, normally it's not a major issue. The level of engagement in the referendum and also I think the desire for people who were maybe not residents in Scotland to nevertheless participate because they consider themselves to be Scots, led to a number of what I consider to be fraudulent applications, which require a hearing. But do you think there's going to be a knock-on effect because of the way in which the new letters are written in a fashion which gives the applicant 12 days to respond with the information that's required to confirm their identity in order that they can get a postal vote? How can that possibly work? Because people have work reasons, there's distance, there's getting to offices, there's a lot of different ways in which the ordinary voter might be put off from taking part in this. Is it likely that people will actually be put off from registering because of the complexity of the way in which this is now being run? Right. In relation to individual actual registration, I'm not familiar with which letter you're referring to. Well, it's a letter which I happen to have been sent because they said that they couldn't verify my identity. Right. To confirm now you're wrong. And the language is threatening and it's been evolved by the Electoral Commission. I understand that, not yourselves, but the timings are really difficult and it's the on-going thing that's going to happen. I think this is a slightly different issue, but it's a very key point. Individual Electoral Registration, if Chair has time, was rolled out first of, well, 90th September in Scotland with EROs having to write out to every elector from the 1st of October this year. The vast majority of electors received a letter from an Electoral Registration officer telling them that they'd been confirmed and that they need to take no further action and that they were on the Electoral Register and they were on the Open Register or they weren't on the Open Register. Post referendum, you might be saying so, but we could pick up on some of these issues in writing to you because they're obviously quite important. Very important. Because I recognise the significance of them so we need to have an exchange about it. I'd be very happy to do that. One area around registration, which may be affected by individual electoral registration, but was a concern in the referendum, was university students returning to their city of study immediately before the referendum and discovering that they'd ceased to be registered even if they hadn't actually moved their term time address. Is that an issue that is already being addressed? Is that something that registration officers are aware of and what can be done to deal with it in future terms? Yes. We were very aware that the timing of the referendum did not really fit in to the university timetable whatsoever. I prepared a report that was put to the EMB that really informed a lot of administrators on where we were going with that. It was a unique situation with the referendum taking place on the 18th September which coincided almost with most freshers weeks and so there's a lot of work done with NUS, with the universities, a lot of messaging done through Electoral Commission. I'm pleased to say that the feedback has been positive that those that were entitled to participate did and those that weren't didn't. In that regard, that I think was a success. The issue going forwards with individual electoral registration is a different issue. There's no timing issue with regard to the Scottish parliamentary election so that isn't an issue but there is an issue about how we register students in future and we're working on that with NUS and academic registrars just now. Thank you very much. It's on to a different area. Sydney really dealt with in the final paragraph of Mr Milton's submission about the costs that have been estimated at £700,000 of additional costs rather to prepare and run the referendum. Could you maybe explain to us in a little detail how you came to that figure? My understanding is that it's costs that are reasonably incurred which are additional to those which are expected to be incurred. Can you take us through how you came to that figure? Certainly. The additional costs, if we look at a normal electoral event to start with, electoral registration officers are maintaining their registers year round is within their budget to maintain their registers. A normal electoral event will be a Scottish parliamentary election or a UK parliamentary election and our resources will normally cover that. We don't normally need any additional funds. But this referendum was so unique that it demanded huge additional resources to be put into in a reactive manner because whilst you can plan for the event and plan for high levels of engagement, what you cannot necessarily do is forecast how many phone calls and emails you're going to receive and how many people are going to change their voting preferences as opposed to absent vote to voting in person and then maybe changing their mind back again. All these different aspects which were almost unique due to the level of engagement that we experienced. In my own office, an electoral event will pass with virtually no additional hours being worked by my staff. We're organised to deal with it. In my office this time, we worked more than 2,700 hours additional hours to try and deal with the huge volumes of interest. Many of these were just phone calls or emails saying, am I on the register or I've got my absent vote, what do I do now? Many of them flowed between registration and returning or counting officer but they've made the call, we're not going to pass them on to another office, we'll deal with it. Eric, can you expand on it from your perspective? Yes, I think the additional staff we put into polling stations as the registration numbers increased significantly. The additional work we had to do on polling day, the number of emergency proxy applications for example was way beyond anything we've ever experienced so that went on all during the day. Those are the sorts of things that we hadn't necessarily been able to anticipate. Counting officers are currently preparing their claims for the expenses but that will feed through and we'll be able to give a full explanation for any additional costs over and above what's allowed for. Those sorts of things, if you're just looking for a flavour of it, that's the kind of thing that happened. It was about scale as much as anything else and levels of engagement. I understand the additional hours and that's quite clear, you could count that. A very high turnout was expected, it was anticipated that the turnout would be very high. It was expected that lots of new people would come on to the register, many of these things were anticipated. I'm presuming that there was preparation and additional resources were expected to be spent in advance of the referendum itself. I'm just trying to... I would assume that effectively the resources would have been available for what was anticipated. Are you saying that it's over and above that again? Not for EROs, no. The financial memorandum for Sira, the Scottish independence referendum act, did not actually, although it stated that the Government would meet the fees and expenses of electoral registration officers, the actual fees and charges order did not make any allocation to electoral registration officers and really that is the issue, I suppose. On that point then, are there ongoing discussions with the Government? Yes. We're not anticipating any problem, we're just highlighting that these sorts of things add to the overall cost of the event but that's something we're discussing. So the matter's under discussion with the Government and you're assuming expecting it to come to a successful resolution? Absolutely. The key issue here is that it was a late surge in registration, a late surge and it's the last minute surge in registration with the deadline and equivalent surge in post-voting applications. That's what the EROs had to deal with. Everybody knew it was going to be a big high turnout and you can plan for that but the late surge was the problem and that information has to be translated to the EROs contractors to print the postal packs and so forth and then turn the registers on the day and it's that late surge that was the key issue. The issue for us is that for the next election, next May, what's the level of interest going to be in that election and to what extent will we experience anything similar to the referendum and then turn the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections? That's what we have to build into our planning for the future and that is trying to estimate turnout and surges and you'll be a better person than me if you get that attitude. I wasn't even going to try to estimate the turnout but I would assume, and maybe I'm wrong here but I would assume, given the level of individuals who are now on the register, no-one's moving on to individual registration but effectively has a lot of the work in a sense over the hump because of the referendum so that anything in May 2015 or even May 2016 effectively must be lesser even if there's a high turnout than what has been expected. Certainly one of the points that Mary pointed out was emergency proxies. The law for the referendum, the rules around emergency proxies was quite different to any other electoral event and that led to a huge volume of emergency proxies and a huge number that weren't valid and that took an awful lot of work to deal with. That won't be repeated in 2015 or 2016 unless the rules have changed because the existing rules for emergency proxies for UK and Scottish parliamentary elections are more business as usual so in that regard we won't have that. I keep interrupting you, I don't mean to do that but I do want to get Alec Johnston with his question before we get to the end of the session. A high turnout and high demand and looking down the list there's some very impressive turnout figures but I notice that Dundee was under 80, Glasgow was only 75. Is there any reason why these two cities were at the lower end of turnout figures? I suppose that we're starting from a lower base. I would imagine that their turnout figures are generally at the lower end so I know that they think that there's no complacency and they would certainly like to get closer to the Scottish average but an average is just that, it will have people who normally have high turnout in areas who had over 90 per cent this time and other areas where maybe the turnout is in the 30 per cent range. So to get to 75 or 80 per cent is really good performance as well so it's where you're starting from I think. Having explored the reasons for low turnouts when low turnouts were the norm, one of the explanations I received was that there was a problem that existed a few years ago with let's say dead wood on the register. There were people who had registered in more than one electoral district, there were people who had moved on and their names were left on the register. Is there any extent to which these lower figures may expose a problem that continues to exist in these cities? The rules around what's termed dead wooding which is when a household doesn't make a canvas return for one year, well their entry is carried forward into the following year for those electors in that household unless there's evidence to the contrary which is available to the electorate registration officer. That policy is consistent across Scotland, it's in law and it's practised by EROs across Scotland so we're very consistent about our approach to dead wooding. So would it be reasonable then to suggest that a city like Dundee that has a high student population or a city like Glasgow that might have a more mobile or transient population in certain areas would be the areas where there would be a higher proportion of that type of registration on the register? All the cities suffer from the transient population Aberdeen city. Aberdeen was over 80 but it was relatively low as well. That is normal but I don't think that's down to a dead wooding arrangement at all. I think that's just due to the makeup of the electorate in that city. I don't think it's due to the register being if you like inflated. I don't think that's the issue. I think it's more that just the people who live in the cities don't seem to be engaged to the same extent as people who live in the cities. So these figures would be consistent with a historical pattern? Yes, I think so. I know there are members around the people who want to ask further questions. Forgive me, we're not going to have time to go into much more detail. I think there's one question that needs to be asked though because we are here to look at the Smith Commission proposals to make sure that we also reflect that in the response we get in the four minutes we've got left. So I just wondered in regard to the Smith report what implications does it have for the Electoral Management Board? Will it be useful for us to hear that since we've got the circumstances here? I do think that we have no concerns about what's listed in the Smith Commission proposals as an EMB. We haven't obviously had time to look at it in any detail at all, but I think that they need to be read alongside the Electoral Commission report as well, which talks about the benefits of the EMB having a stronger statutory footing. Particularly, I'm not a power-mad egomaniac who desperately wants power of direction overall of my colleagues. As you would see from the referendum, I use the powers of direction very, very scarily. So it's not because we want to have those powers so that we use them all over the place, but they are important where we are trying to get consistency, and I think it would be helpful to read the Smith Commission alongside the Electoral Commission. I was particularly interested in page 12 in that regard and about the statutory basis, so that's helpful to hear that, but if at some stage the Electoral Management Board would like to submit to us some further consideration on the Smith Commission proposals, that would be gratefully received. With that being said, thank you very much. I know that this has been a tight session this morning, but we've got a fair bit of information from it. If there are any questions that members have not answered, can you make sure they go to the clerk and will follow up these up in writing? In closing the meeting, I can just announce that the next meeting will be on Thursday 8 January, when we'll have evidence from representatives of the Electoral Commission themselves focusing on the report. I wish members, and those who are present here today, a very happy festive break, and I look forward to seeing you all in the new year. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We've enjoyed the session today, so thank you very much and happy Christmas.