Downing Street Says » Scottish Elections

Asked if it was the case that the Government had accepted and apologised for mistakes that were made but was rejecting the charge made by the Gould report that mistakes were made for partisan purposes, the PMS said that the Gould report did not say that. If you looked at what the Gould report said in terms of that interpretation, what he said was that ‘what was characteristic of 2007 was a notable level of party self-interest evident in Ministerial decision making, especially in regards to the timing and method of counting and design of ballot papers’. What Gould went on to say when he was explaining what that meant later in the report, was that ‘it had become increasingly clear that too much political debate was associated with the design of the Scottish parliamentary and local government ballot papers. Regarding the parliamentary Scottish ballot papers, months of partisan political discussion and debate wasted valuable time which otherwise could have been used to establish a ballot paper which voters could easily understand’. That was a position that the Government accepted but what Gould was saying was that there was too much time spent on partisan political discussion rather than issues that directly effected voters.

Put that the Government was claiming that Gould’s definition of the word partisan was discussions within and between political parties, the PMS replied that that was correct.

Put that the report said ‘partisan self-interest evident in Ministerial material making’, the PMS said that Gould went on to explain what that meant; too much of the political debate was associated with the design of the Scottish parliamentary and local government ballot papers. He was not singling out any individual or institution; he was saying that, almost without exception, the voter was ‘treated as an afterthought’, by virtually all the other stakeholders.

Put that ‘Ministerial decision making’ meant Ministers, the PMS replied that in the process of taking those decisions too much time was devoted to discussions which were of a partisan and political nature.

Put that Ministers were at fault, the PMS said that the Government was accepting that there were issues that Ministers had to deal with and we were accepting the call of the recommendations in the report. Douglas Alexander had made his statement about this earlier today. We were clear that Gould was not singling out any individual; he was making a more general comment.

Put that there were only two Ministers at the Scottish Office, the PMS said that Gould had said yesterday, ‘there was no intention to assign blame to individuals or institutions’. There were repeated efforts yesterday to try to get him to blame specific individuals and he did not do that.

Asked for Gould’s definition of the word partisan, the PMS referred to page 48 of his report, Problem no. 1, which said, "too much political debate was associated over the design of the Scottish parliamentary and local government ballot papers’.

Asked if the Prime Minister was aware that Douglas Alexander was going to make a statement during PMQs, the PMS said the Prime Minister had spoken to Douglas Alexander about these issues, as expected.

Asked if the Prime Minister had full confidence in Douglas Alexander, the PMS replied yes.

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» Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Scottish Elections

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