Present:  The Rt Hon Michael J Martin MP, Speaker, in the Chair

Mrs Angela Browning MP

Mr Humfrey Malins CBE MP

The Rt Hon Sir Gerald Kaufman MP

Mr Peter Viggers MP

Apologies:  The Rt Hon Alan Beith MP, The Rt Hon the Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and Lady Hermon MP

1. Speaker's Opening Remarks

The Speaker noted that there remained one vacancy on the Committee; the Prime Minister had not yet appointed a Minister with responsibilities for local government. The Committee agreed that the Speaker should write to the Prime Minister on this matter.

The Speaker informed the Committee that he was being formally consulted by each of the relevant Secretaries of State on proposed transfers of the responsibilities of each of the four Parliamentary Boundary Commissions to the Electoral Commission. Statutory provision for such transfers had been made in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, with the intention of all the transfers being made when the fifth general review of parliamentary constituencies in England had been completed.

The Committee noted that, apart from Scotland, the general reviews of parliamentary boundaries had not yet been completed and laid before the House, and expressed the view that consideration of the case for the proposed transfers should be deferred until all the current reviews had been completed, and the relevant Orders in Council considered by the House.

2. The Electoral Commission's Estimate, 2006-07, and Five Year Plan, 2006-07 to 2010-11

The Committee considered the paper submitted by the Electoral Commission on its Estimate for 2006-07, and the accompanying Five Year Plan for 2006-07 to 2010-11 (the Corporate Plan). The Net Resource Requirement sought in the Estimate was £25.145 million[19].

[Mr Sam Younger, Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Mr Glyn Mathias, Commissioner, and Mr Peter Wardle, Chief Executive, were invited to join the meeting].

The 2006-07 Estimate

The Committee noted that the Commission had contained the proposed Requirement for Resources for 2006-07 within the indicative figure included in last year's Corporate Plan, and asked what reprioritisations and efficiency savings had enabled the cost pressures to be absorbed. Mr Wardle responded that staff and consultancy costs would be reduced, and there would be efficiency savings in office costs, but without compromising standards of service. The Commission would also place more emphasis on evaluation work, with discretionary work, such as policy reviews initiated by the Commission, taking a lower priority. The Chairman commented that this would lead to some slippage of timetables in this area.

Mr Wardle commented that electoral modernisation pilots were expected to be the biggest new cost pressure in 2006-07. While no such pilots had taken place in 2005 because of the General Election, the Government had made it clear that it intended to run such pilots in most years. The Commission was therefore now incorporating into its core resource requirement provision for the required evaluations. While no provision had yet been made in the Estimate to reflect the financial consequences of enactment of the Electoral Administration Bill, the bulk of the staffing requirements would be met by redeployment of existing staff.

Asked specifically about provision in the Estimate for evaluation of electoral pilot schemes, the Chairman said that no provision had been made in the 2005-06 Estimate because of the expectation of a General Election, but £400,000 had been allocated to each subsequent year in the plan period. He added that evaluation costs varied depending on the nature of the pilot. More technological pilots, such as internet voting, were more costly to evaluate because specialists were often required.

The Commission was asked about its capital spend on accommodation in 2006-07. Mr Wardle explained that this would be a one-off cost to enable the Commission to complete refurbishment of its London accommodation. The work was expected to take place between January and April of 2006, and would include reconfiguration to enable the existing space to be used more productively. It was also expected to ensure that the existing accommodation met the Commission's likely requirements for the foreseeable future. Specialist project management was being employed, to minimise the risk of disruption to the Commission's work.

The Committee asked about progress in strengthening the Commission's financial management arrangements. Mr Wardle said that he was happy with the improvements. A new Financial Controller was in place, working directly with the Accounting Officer and the Director of Corporate Services, and this had led to an improved understanding of finance issues. The initial impact of a handful of middle management appointments had been felt more quickly than expected.

A new financial system would be operating by the summer of 2006, initially in tandem with the current system. It would allow improved tracking of resources against the Corporate Plan by objective and facilitate more useful reporting of financial information. There was, nonetheless, still room to improve the reporting of financial data, as the existing system was not well designed for producing management accounts. The Chairman added that he considered there to have been a marked improvement in financial control over the last 18 months.

The Committee asked about discussions with Government on the potential cost implications for the Commission of the Electoral Administration Bill. The Chairman said that the bulk of the costs of implementing this legislation would fall on local authorities, but there were two or three areas where the Commission expected to incur extra cost. Mr Wardle said that, as many of the key features in expenditure terms from the Commission's point of view remained the subject of parliamentary debate, no firm figures could yet be given. Consequently, there was no provision yet for such expenditure in either the Estimate or the Plan.

In response to a question about the relative priority attached by the Commission to expenditure on core and discretionary activities respectively, the Chairman gave an assurance that the core activities were always given priority in this context.

The Five Year Plan, 2006-07 to 2010-11

The Committee noted that many of the measures for the targets set out in the Plan were based on 2004-05, an election year, and asked whether this was a realistic way to determine a baseline. The Chairman suggested that there was a need to distinguish between the outcomes to be measured, on the one hand, and the specific targets, on the other. The Commission's own activities were often only one contribution to the latter, but ways had to be found to measure and assess the effectiveness of that contribution.

Mr Wardle pointed out that the new approach was an attempt to move away from simply measuring outputs, and to look more at outcomes, thus providing a framework to justify resource allocations. The measures were intended to be dynamic, and the Commission would aim to refine them in future, to make them more effective. The Committee asked how long the Commission expected it to be before the assessment arrangements in the Plan were fully effective. The Chairman commented that some already existed, but others were dependent on effective stakeholder surveys, which should be in place by December 2006. Others could not yet be fixed as the final form of the Electoral Administration Bill was not yet known.

The Committee expressed particular interest in the proposed targets in the Plan relating to increased efficiency and effectiveness in the management of elections and the electoral registration process. Mr Wardle commented that the Electoral Administration Bill was expected to give the Commission increased powers to assess the performance of local authorities in this area. There was a need to ensure that standards were sufficiently challenging, particularly in relation to areas where the formal power of the Commission was simply a monitoring function He also noted that the Bill envisaged the Commission consulting the Secretary of State before promulgating performance standards.

Mr Wardle suggested that dynamic performance benchmarks would need to be developed, and periodically reassessed to ensure they remained sufficiently challenging. In some cases, it might be appropriate to draw on international comparisons, something the Commission is well placed to do. The Chairman commented that improved data collection might have a part to play. In some such cases, the Commission might seek to improve underlying performance by publishing league tables, and cited the example of levels of postal voting, where there was no responsibility on the part of the Returning Officer to encourage use of the facility, but the extent of its use was likely to have an impact on overall voter turnout. Mr Mathias added that electoral administrators appeared keen to take part in the standard-setting process.

The Chairman commented, in response to a question about measuring the impact on the electorate of the performance of those responsible for running elections, that the only existing formal measure was whether the result was formally challenged. This was a poor measure of overall performance, and better measures needed to be devised, not least because of the link with the Commission's role in encouraging turnout. He was aware that some small district authorities had encountered difficulties at the General Election, and the Commission intended to work with such authorities to improve their performance. Appropriate measures of performance would have a part to play in this, and in judging the Commission's own effectiveness in this respect.

The Commission was asked about the proposed targets on referendum conduct. Mr Wardle accepted that there was a good case for expressing these in more general terms rather than basing them purely on experience with the 2004 North East referendum. Responding to comments that a baseline measure for success should be that stakeholder feedback was broadly positive was too vague to be meaningful, Mr Wardle commented that, for the present, that was all that was available; it was a pity that there was no detailed stakeholder survey undertaken after the North East referendum.

The Commission was asked about the difficulty of distinguishing their specific contribution to the target of increasing or maintaining public and stakeholder confidence that the framework governing the financial regulation of political activity is effective. Mr Wardle acknowledged that, while the underlying framework was for the Government and Parliament to determine, it was also necessary to be able to determine whether the Commission's work in this area was having any impact.

The Speaker thanked the Chairman, Mr Mathias and Mr Wardle for attending.

[Mr Younger, Mr Wardle and Mr Mathias withdrew from the meeting]

Decisions of the Committee

The Treasury having indicated its intention to offer the Committee advice on the Electoral Commission's Main Estimate 2006-07 and Corporate Plan for 2006-07 to 2010-11, but the advice not having been received, the Committee deferred their formal consideration to its next meeting.

The Committee noted the Report and Accounts of the Electoral Commission for 2004-05, which had been laid before Parliament on 27 October 2005 as HC 603.

3. Appointment of a member to act as Chairman at meetings in the absence of the Speaker

The Committee agreed that Mr Viggers should act as chairman in the absence of the Speaker at any meeting at which he is present, in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 3(3) of Schedule 2 to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

4. Comptroller and Auditor General's 'Value for Money' Report for 2003-04

The Committee noted the report, and agreed to publish it. It asked the Secretary to seek information from the Electoral Commission as to the action it is taking in the light of its conclusions and recommendations.

The Committee also agreed that the Secretary should discuss with the National Audit Office and the Electoral Commission the scope for developing a systematic multi-annual programme of Value for Money scrutiny across the whole range of the Commission's activities.

5. Appointment of Electoral Commissioners

The Committee supported the proposed reappointment of Glyn Mathias and Karamjit Singh as Electoral Commissioners.

The Committee noted that work was in hand to develop and put in place a robust process, reflecting best practice, for selecting future candidates for appointment as Electoral Commissioners.

The Committee had an initial discussion of the need for the chairmanship of the Electoral Commission to remain a full-time position.

6. The Speaker's Committee Review of the Electoral Commission

The Committee noted progress to date.

7. Report on the work of the Committee

The Committee agreed a report to the House, to which it appended the Comptroller and Auditor General's report for 2003-04 on his examination into the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which the Electoral Commission has used its resources (the 'Value for Money' report—see 4 above).

8. Any other business

Mrs Browning informed the Committee that, as a consequence of new Party commitments, she would be resigning from the Committee in January. The Speaker thanked her for her contribution to the Committee's work since its inception.

9. Date of next meeting

The Committee adjourned to a date and time to be fixed by the Speaker.