Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) (Amendment) Order 2008

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out the inner workings of these two measures and their overlapping content. The Minister will expect me to congratulate the Government on their wisdom in not trying to introduce these measures in time for the last Scottish election, when one can only imagine that one more element of chaos might have been introduced into the difficult administration that took place at that election. I think the Minister was trying to tell the House that they had not been able to identify any spoilt postal ballots. However, the situation was such that there were so many spoilt ballots all round that they would have been difficult to pick out. It struck me that there appeared to be very few MSPs who were of a mind to challenge the count when the elements were so largely out of balance. Both the order and the regulations deal with similar items. Is there any rationale for having a five-year term rather than a four-year term for a review of the registration? It would appear from the wording that the registration officer could, or probably would, wait until 31 January before sending out a demand for re-registration to all those who have been registered for five years or over. This means that some who registered in January or February may well have five years and 11 months between registrations. Will the registration officers be able to consider sending out a notice on the fifth anniversary of a registration if they decide that is appropriate? The fact that these registrations will now contain a signature and a date of birth is certainly a good protection against something that occurs only in unruly countries where votes are cast on behalf of the dead. One hopes that this will be a guard against people trying to carry out what I think is known as ““personation”” in elections. I can see, in some ways very properly, that if someone does not return the demand sent by the registration officer they are struck off, but should there not be some provision for an appeal? In what way can the situation be rectified if someone feels that they have been wrongly struck off? I have been interested to see the proceedings of the Scottish Affairs Committee recently in another place when it was interviewing Mr Ron Gould, who carried out the review of the Scottish elections. Following the findings that he brought in on that fiasco, and the comprehensive list the Minister gave us of all those who have been consulted, does he feel sufficient people have been consulted so that if anything goes wrong he will be able to say that it is impossible to blame any individual?