Scottish Parliamentary Elections

Part of Opposition Day — [12th allotted day] – in the House of Commons at 1:41 pm on 23 May 2007.

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Photo of David Mundell David Mundell Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland 1:41, 23 May 2007

I beg to move,

That this House
considers that the rejection of 146,097 votes in the constituency and regional elections to the Scottish Parliament, the equivalent of over 1,000,000 in a UK general election, to be totally unacceptable and an affront to democracy;
notes that the number of rejected ballots exceeds the winning majority in several constituencies and that different formats of the regional ballot paper were used in different parts of Scotland;
further notes that serious concerns have been raised about the issuing of postal ballots for the elections and the electronic equipment and processes used for counting votes;
further notes that repeated advice not to hold the local government elections under the newly introduced single transferable vote system on the same day as the Scottish Parliament elections was ignored by the Scotland Office and the then Scottish Executive;
calls upon the Secretary of State for Scotland to accept responsibility for the failures in the conduct of the Scottish Parliament elections and to apologise to the people of Scotland;
further notes that the Electoral Commission is to carry out an inquiry, but considers that such an inquiry should be independent of the Commission, which had a significant role in the conduct of the elections, if public confidence in the electoral process in Scotland is to be restored;
and accordingly further calls upon the Government, working in conjunction with the Scottish Executive, to instigate such an inquiry.

It would be remiss of me not to use this first opportunity to congratulate Mr. Salmond on his appointment as First Minister of Scotland and to wish him and his new Scottish Executive well as they discharge the responsibilities devolved to the Scottish Parliament. As I have said before, I believe that the Secretary of State for Scotland will rue the Government's failure over eight years to put in place appropriate mechanisms for dialogue and interaction between London and Edinburgh. However, that debate is for another day. I understand that today the First Minister is expected to make a statement on his programme for government. I shall watch with interest to see whether he makes any reference to the conduct of the Scottish elections, given his previous support for an independent inquiry.

The House will recall the statement by the Secretary of State on 8 May about the conduct of the Scottish parliamentary elections. That statement proved to be wholly inadequate, not least because the Secretary of State failed to take responsibility for the conduct of the elections. He also failed to give the apology to the people of Scotland that I, and many on both sides of the House, demanded. I could not have agreed more with Mr. Devine when he described the conduct of the elections as "an embarrassment" and added:

"we owe the people of Scotland an apology."—[ Hansard, 8 May 2007; Vol. 460, c. 33.]

That apology is still not forthcoming. Instead, the Secretary of State has sought to use the Jack McConnell approach to the cost of the Scottish Parliament: everybody is to blame, so nobody is to blame.

Annotations

Neil Scott
Posted on 24 May 2007 3:30 pm (Report this annotation)

If this election had been held in Venezuela, the "western Democracies" would be calling foul, and American troops would be lining up on the border.

This "election" was a travesty of democracy. Changing the layout of the forms so close to the elections - and after the information of how to fill the forms in went out - is tantemount to misinformaion on the behalf of the authorities.

I also feel other issues need to be looked into, for example, if the broadcast media are under obligations to ensure an even handed coverage, should the print media be under some sort of obligation on the lead up to an election?

And should political parties be able to register more than one name during with the electoral commission ("Alex Salmond for first minister SNP" and "Re-elect Tommy Sheridan Solidarity" being two very misleading examples - the Alex Salmond one because we were not electing a first minister, and the Tommy Sheridan one because it appeared in constituencies and ballots in which Sheridan was, himself not standing).