asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he is taking to ensure that persons who are entered on the electoral register in more than one place in Scotland are not counted more than once when computing the figure of 40 per cent.; and whether he proposes to take any additional measures to ensure that there is no double voting.

I am today announcing how I intend to make an assessment of the number of persons entitled to vote at the referendum on 1 March. It is an offence to vote more than once at the referendum.

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the assessment of the

ELECTORAL REGISTER, FEBRUARY 1979, SCOTLAND
ADVANCE FIGURES
Region Islands Area		Total electorate, including service voters, merchant seamen, peers "Y" voters	"Y" voters (aged under 18) who will attain voting age on 2 March 1979 or later	Number of electors of voting age on 1 March 1979
Border	…	78,595	1,030	77,565
Central	…	200,569	2,797	197,772
Dumfries and Galloway	…	106,531	1,329	105,202
Fife	…	249,538	3,441	246,097
Grampian	…	349,559	6,032	343,527
Highland	…	137,986	1,541	136,445
Lothian	…	573,919	6,664	567,255
Strathclyde	…	1,791,825	22,748	1,769,077
Tayside	…	296,855	3,667	293,188
Orkney	…	14,113	176	13,937
Shetland	…	15,058	176	14,882
Western Isles	…	22,566	201	22,365
Scotland	…	3,837,114	49,802	3,787,312

In relation to entitlement to vote on 1 March, further deductions fall to be made for those whose names appear on the registers but who are dead, for those who are registered for more than one address and for those who are legally debarred from voting. On the basis of all the information which I have obtained and which has been brought to my attention, the provisional estimate of the further deduction is:

Deaths	26,400
Convicted prisoners in prison	2,000
Students and nurses who are registered at more than one address	11,800

The number entitled to vote then becomes 3,747,112.Representations have been made to me that deductions should be made on other counts because of the improbability that all those entitled to a postal or proxy vote will use that facility, because of the number of people likely to be ill on March 1 and unable to vote, and because of errors in the registers.I accept that not everyone entitled to vote will in fact be able to vote on 1 number of persons entitled to vote in the devolution referendum.

From advance returns provided by the electoral registration officers of the new registers which came into operation on 16 February and the number of electors of voting age on 1 March 1979, I estimate the total electorate to be as follows:March. I am, however, bound by the terms of the Scotland Act. Under the Act, I have no power to take account of probability of voting or physical capacity to register a vote, but only of entitlement to vote. I am further advised that my statutory duty is to make deductions on the basis of actual counting or well-founded assessment.Accordingly, the number of votes on the new registers but under the age of 18 on 1 March has been counted by the electoral registration officers; deaths have been systematically estimated by the Registrar-General for Scotland on the basis of extensive records; and the deduction for convicted prisoners has been similarly assessed on the basis of records within my Department.The deductions for students and nurses registered at more than one address have been based on a carefully constructed sample survey. It may be that there are other duplications in the registers, but no authoritative estimate of these errors is available, and no means of making one is evident, although a few individual cases have been brought to my attention.