Chamber and committees

Apologies, convener, and apologies to Mr Mountain.

Good for you, Edward.

On accessibility, I am a member of Renfrewshire access panel and I have been since I was a councillor. I think that I have previously mentioned the panel in this forum, but it does some fantastic work with Renfrewshire Council to ensure that any new buildings such as polling stations are accessible. When an access panel works well, it will effectively audit a new building, but the problem is that, because it is not a statutory group like a community council, it does not get automatically included in the process. As a result, you have to ensure that a relationship exists between local government and the panel.

I think that that sort of thing can be done at a local level while we will do everything we can to ensure that we are reviewing these matters and that everything is open for those who have accessibility issues. Locally, the local authorities should be working with the volunteer groups—the access panels—across Scotland. As with any other volunteer organisation, there are areas where the panels have more volunteers and work better. In Renfrewshire, for example, the panel carried out audits on the access to the new St Mirren stadium in 2009 and on Paisley’s new town hall when it was being renovated. It is now being renovated again and the panel will have access to that, too.

If local authorities automatically deal with access panels and include them in work on polling stations, which is what should be happening, we should be okay. We would therefore suggest to local returning officers that it might be an idea to engage with their local access panels or disability groups on such matters.

We have had on-going dialogue with the Electoral Commission. It was one of the first meetings that I had when I became a minister—because I knew that the bill was coming and that it was one of the important ones—in order to ensure that we had that on-going relationship. That relationship is extremely important for all the Administrations—the UK, Wales and Scotland—but part of the legislation that the UK Government is suggesting makes that relationship extremely difficult for the Electoral Commission.

I ask my colleague Iain Hockenhull to comment on the technical aspects of the legal case that you mentioned.

We could probably look at many aspects of the UK’s idea. Although we were an innovator on that, other people can come up with ideas that might be helpful and guide us in another way, and we could consider digital imprints again for our electoral reform bill. The whole idea would be for us to take the digital imprints idea and move it to the next level, if there is one. However, it comes down to one of the disagreements between the Scottish and UK Governments, which is that the UK Government believes that it has the right to impose its process and system on us because the area of internet service provision is not devolved. Its argument is therefore that it can do that. Our argument—which is based on the arguments and advice that I have had from officials—is that that is not the case. We believe that we can still legislate for digital imprints ourselves. If the committee wants further detail, I will get Iain Hockenhull to add to that.

It is not so much about the confusion that voter ID causes; it is to do with the fact that, as you quite rightly state, there is not the will to introduce it, because people do not believe that there is a level of electoral fraud that means that we need something such as voter ID.

We are trying to encourage the public to engage with the voting process; fundamentally, voter ID would make that more difficult. It would put a barrier in the way of a member of the public being able to cast a vote. I do not want that. I want to ensure that we have elections such as the one that we had this year in Scotland, in which there was an open and frank discussion and the public came out in numbers.

Possibly. I will need to check with Iain Hockenhull with regard to the consultation—if I wish to do it.

If you are willing to give the names of these individuals and groups to my team, convener, we will quite happily include them. After all, we want to ensure that the process is full, frank and open and that they have the opportunity to say what they want to say. Having been involved with disability groups for most of my political life, I know only too well that they will be pretty vocal, and I am quite happy to engage with them.

As I said in my statement, there are many areas where we have common ground with the UK Government, but some parts of the bill are toxic for the Scottish Parliament and Government.

I will do so in the future.