Chamber and committees

I am happy to take up the minister’s offer of engagement ahead of stage 3, with the caveat that we might end up not reaching agreement anyway. However, I am happy to give that a go and, therefore, I seek to withdraw amendment 69.

Amendment 69, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 35 to 43 moved—[Jamie Hepburn]—and agreed to.

Section 28, as amended, agreed to.

After section 28

Amendments 4 to 7 moved—[Bob Doris]—and agreed to.

Will the minister give way?

Absolutely. That is an interesting point for us to consider. The cost of administering a by-election exceeds the annual salary of a local councillor, so there is a cost benefit analysis to be made on that point.

I apologise to Mr Simpson, because I cannot remember what the exact results have been in his ward at most local authority elections. If I recall correctly, if he were to have vacated his ward mid-session for whatever reason, I do not think that it is particularly likely that his party would have won the by-election, which would have left those who had originally voted Conservative without the representation that they had asked for. [Interruption.] Ms Webber is reminding us that her party probably would win a by-election in her former council ward.

However, in general, the point stands. That is shown by the examples that I have mentioned, including in Perth City North at the moment and in Dundee. It was a regular occurrence in Glasgow for years, including in the Hillhead ward, which my party won at a recent by-election. If we were to win another by-election in Hillhead, we would have three out of three councillors in a ward that originally elected one Green candidate, one SNP candidate and one Labour candidate.

I do not believe that Parliament has ever debated the issue before, so I will move amendment 57 because I want to air the issue. If there is an appetite to explore the matter further, my intention would be to come back at stage 3 with a more detailed amendment. Frankly, I did not want the legislation team in Parliament to put an extensive amount of work into an amendment if there was no appetite for it across the Parliament, but I want to explore the issue at this stage and ascertain whether there is an appetite to explore it further.

I move amendment 57.

That is a fair point from the minister. My counter to it is that, much as I think that the bill is full of reasonable suggestions, in many respects it is a missed opportunity. There was a missed opportunity for the Government to consult much more widely on opportunities for democratic reform, which would have coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Parliament.

Nevertheless, I acknowledge the points that the minister made and I draw out what he said about the commitments made elsewhere in relation to consultation and his offer to the committee to consult on the issue. I am perfectly happy to take up that offer. I acknowledge that amendments 57 and 68 propose significant changes and that consultation on those amendments would be helpful.

In lodging the amendments, I wanted to provoke and kick-start the debate, so I am perfectly happy to withdraw amendment 57 on the understanding that the Government will take the proposals forward as part of any future consultation that draws in other areas, which we will come to later in our proceedings.

Amendment 57, by agreement, withdrawn.

Sections 1 and 2 agreed to.

Before section 3

I am grateful to Joe FitzPatrick for that intervention and I recognise the substantial amount of work that he did on the issue when it was part of his ministerial role.

Depending on what the minister is about to say, I am very open to not pressing amendment 66 at this stage. Like some of the other issues that we have discussed, it is an important principle and a long-recognised area of debate that needed to be aired as part of the process. If there is the potential for us to reach agreement ahead of stage 3, I would be more than happy to take that approach, but I will wait to hear what the minister has to say.

I move amendment 66.

I thank Mr Simpson for that intervention, which takes me to the exact point that I wanted to close on.

I concede—absolutely—that there is a trade-off. Individual candidacy matters more in a local election than it does at any other level. It often does not matter quite as much as those of us who are candidates and elected representatives would like to think it does, but it matters more at a local election, so there is a trade-off.

At the moment, many people—usually most people—vote to elect councillors from a party that does not come first in a multimember ward, and they are then left without representation as a result of a by-election caused by a vacancy left by any candidate other than the one who came first.

I do not comprehensively recall the—

Apologies, convener—I read the wrong number at that point. You are right: the proposed threshold would be 0.01 per cent of voters for constituencies, and it would be 0.05 per cent for the regional list. Sorry—I should have made that clear.

Amendment 68, on by-elections, is designed to address what I see as democratic distortion caused by having single-member by-elections for multimember wards. Again, it might seem a little odd that this amendment is being moved by a Green, given that, as of this year, we have finally started winning some by-elections. However, I think that it is important to air the distortion argument in Parliament.

For example, at the moment, Perth City North has three Scottish National Party councillors in a three-member ward as a result of a by-election. That is despite the SNP having less than 50 per cent support—it still has substantial support—and there being strong support in that ward for both Labour and the Conservatives.

Four out of four councillors in the Drumchapel/Anniesland ward were from the Labour Party after our colleague Bill Kidd stood down from his council seat to focus on this Parliament. If there was another by-election in Hillhead, in Glasgow, because Councillor Ken Andrew decided to move on and do something else with his life—I emphasise that I do not believe that he is going to do so—the Greens would win that ward and would have three out of the three councillors in a ward that elected only one Green at the last election.

The Scottish Parliament made the choice to adopt a proportional system—the single transferable vote—for council elections. Other countries that use STV for their local elections do not generally have by-elections. For example, the Republic of Ireland does not have by-elections. Of course, Northern Ireland also does not have by-elections, but that is for very different reasons—it is about maintaining balance between communities—so I generally do not use that as an example. The Republic of Ireland does not because it has a similar system to what I am proposing.

If a vacating councillor was originally elected on a party ticket, that party’s nominating officer would be able to appoint a replacement for them. I would propose maintaining a by-election system for independents, so it would not go as far as it does other systems. In Ireland, for example, if an independent councillor vacates, it is up to the council to decide how to appoint their replacement. I would not go quite that far, as I think it is reasonable to have by-elections in the case of independents.

Yes.

Yes.

To start off, I would just say that, as much as I am grateful for the minister’s various offers to take to consultation some of the issues that have been raised as part of this process, the fact is that we are now heading towards the point where the Government is committing to a consultation on dual mandates, residence requirements, deposit reform and by-election reform. Indeed, we are getting to the point where there will be further consultation on more issues than are contained in the bill in the first place, which I think brings us back to the issue that I raised before—that this has been a missed opportunity to take forward a more holistic and substantive package of reform.

Nonetheless, amendment 58 seeks to end the anomaly in which peers, quite rightly, cannot be MPs—they cannot even vote in a general election—but they can be MSPs. This is not a judgment on individual peers who have been MSPs; it is purely about the principle of democratic accountability. In that respect, it is somewhat different from Graham Simpson’s dual mandate amendments, because it is not concerned about somebody's ability to do two jobs simultaneously. Instead, it is more focused on the issue of democratic accountability.

The Lords is not, by definition, a democratic institution. It is unaccountable; it makes law, but it is not accountable to the public. I find that an affront to parliamentary democracy, and I think that it is contrary to the values of this Parliament, too. Peers are absolutely free to become MSPs—they should just resign from the Lords first. This simple amendment follows through on that simple principle. I welcome the Government’s commitment to consult on the matter, although I do not find that, in and of itself, necessarily a reason for Parliament not to move forward with it for the 2026 election. Nonetheless, we are where we are on that.

I should also put on the record that I spoke directly to Katy Clark before lodging this amendment, particularly to emphasise that this is not about individuals but about a democratic principle. Of course, it would apply only from the next election; it would not apply to anybody currently in that position—that is, Ms Clark herself.

On amendments 60 and 62, which relate to the aggravators, I want to give a little bit of clarification with regard to what the minister was indicating. The amendments would give those sentencing someone convicted of an offence against the categories of people involved in the elections the ability—and the option—to reflect on the harm done to the democratic system at large by the offence. It does not mandate the giving of a more substantive or different sentence; it simply gives those sentencing the option to consider the matter. We should recognise that, as well as the harm that is done against the individual, these offences do harm against the democratic process as a whole.

The minister, quite rightly, made the point that we have seen rising concern in recent years. Our democracy is under a bit of pressure—not as much as in some other nations, but increasing nonetheless. Indeed, those who are involved in our democracy face increasing hostility, something that I have no doubt we have all experienced, and the amendments simply give those sentencing an additional option. The measures would apply only to those convicted of an offence that had been directed at one of the six categories of people in question, and there is also the option to consider it as an aggravator in the way that the minister mentioned—that is, with regard to emergency service workers.

With amendment 61, on the disqualification register, I have lodged what I think is quite a simple amendment. As has already been mentioned, there is no list of disqualified individuals. We have a system that relies on self-policing by those who, by and large, have been disqualified because of their conduct in relation to the electoral process and offences committed against those involved in it. These people are generally going to be on the disqualification register because, by definition, they do not particularly respect the democratic process as it stands.

I think that the Electoral Management Board is the appropriate body to maintain such a list and to make it accessible to the returning officers. As I have already pointed out, nobody will be required to check 2,500 names off the list. For a start, that 2,500 gets divided by 32 at the local council elections, but, in any case, you would be checking the smaller list against the larger one, rather than the other way round. I think, therefore, that this is a simple amendment that would come with a small additional cost, as we would be talking about a—thankfully—relatively small list and a small number of individuals.

We are talking about a group of individuals who have already, by definition, disrespected the democratic process, so relying on self-policing by them would seem to be a vulnerability.