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

My Lords, my noble friend is probably right to raise some questions about the merit of voting in person. Having cast a postal vote, which is bound to be done a few days before the end of the campaign, something can be revealed that completely destroys one’s choice. The content of both these statutory instruments seems to be fine but I am bit worried about the length of the notes appended to the order. I say that in the context of the unexpected chaos that occurred last May. I was one of 11.2 per cent who had a postal ballot and, in fact, I brought my postal ballot down here and showed it to various people in the Liberal Democrat Whips’ Office, including the Whips, and they all thought it was an excellent ballot paper. That is what happens when you show things like that to anoraks, but that was not what happened in the polling stations. I believe that both statutory instruments are likely to make fraud even more difficult and I welcome that. However, I am not content about the parliamentary process for the Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) (Amendment) Order. It is terrible that these instruments do not go to the Scottish Parliament to scrutinise them as a third Chamber—let alone to do so exclusively, as I believe they should be. Will the Minister confirm that the Scottish Constitutional Commission, which was recently developed and is, I believe, a state-funded body, will be allowed to make recommendations about the devolution of the Scottish parliamentary election process? I certainly believe it should. Devolution implies that the national community of Scotland should start to throw off dependency and not in a particularly lengthy process, as a child becomes an adult. At a risk of mixing the metaphors, Scotland is the 35 year-old who needs to leave home. Therefore, I sincerely hope that this is the last time that this type of order for the Scottish parliamentary elections comes exclusively to these two Houses of Parliament.