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Response to Gould report
19/03/2008
The Scottish Government's response to the Independent Review of the Scottish Parliamentary and Local Government Elections - the Gould Report - was published today.
Full administrative and legislative responsibility for the Scottish Parliamentary elections should come to the Scottish Parliament, Minister for Parliamentary Business Bruce Crawford said following its publication.
Ministers also began a consultation on how best to 'decouple' future local government elections from Parliamentary elections.
Mr Crawford said:
"Ron Gould's report into the administrative fiasco of the election in May 2007 described in detail the complicated systems and structures that have been created over the years to manage our elections.
"It demonstrated that the Scottish electoral system is fragmented and antiquated, with no clear lines of accountability for its management or to the people of Scotland.
"There are too many bodies involved in this patchwork approach, too many pieces of legislation to be reconciled and quite simply too many opportunities for things to go wrong.
"The fragmentation of roles and responsibilities were identified as being critical obstacles to the delivery of elections. The current system should be unacceptable to modern democracy.
"Beneath the surface we have clutter. Currently for example we have 32 Constituency Returning Officers, eight Regional Returning Officers, 15 Electoral Returning Officers - and with responsibilities split between Government Departments. And that's before we consider the web of steering groups and sub-groups.
"Ron Gould's Report provided a unique opportunity to introduce the fundamental reforms necessary to address these underlying problems and restore voter confidence in our electoral system.
"This is an issue that should be beyond politics, an issue above point-scoring. We must make the changes necessary to ensure we never have a repeat of last May's problems. That means wholesale changes, not tinkering around the edges.
"We believe - as does the Parliament - that the key step would be for clear and coherent responsibility for executive and legislative election functions in Scotland to rest with the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament.
"That was Ron Gould's view - that responsibility be assigned to "one jurisdictional entity" and that the Scottish Government be "the logical institution".
"The Government believes this is the most practical way to improve the management of elections, and would provide democratic accountability to the people of Scotland in line with the principles of devolution.
"As well as this important recommendation, the Government plans to take forward the other recommendations of the Gould report.
"Today we are publishing a consultation paper on decoupling the Parliamentary and local elections. Further consultations will follow in the role of the Chief Returning Officer and on the design of ballot papers and other operational issues.
"If we are to rebuild the public's trust in our voting system, we must start work now to be fully prepared ahead of the next elections and ensure the problems experienced last May are never repeated. That is what the voters of Scotland expect and deserve."
On January 10, the Scottish Parliament passed a motion that agreed:
That the Parliament welcomes the Gould report, including the recommendation calling for the further devolution of executive and legislative powers to the Scottish Government and the Parliament for the administration of its own elections and the decoupling of future elections to this Parliament and Scotland's councils; calls on Her Majesty's Government and the Scottish Government to discuss, agree and publish a timetable for appropriate implementation of the report's recommendations having regard to the conclusions from both the Scottish Parliament's Local Government and Communities Committee and the House of Commons' Scottish Affairs Committee.