I still wanted to know which companies supplied the electronic electoral services for the referendum. It was a hard thing to find out. Turns out the answer was a beauty:
A TORY MP is a director of a company that has become a major player in how elections are managed in Scotland, it has emerged.
Concerns have been raised with the Electoral Commission about the involvement with Idox of former Tory Cabinet minister Peter Lilley, who is a senior non-executive director.
Idox has had a hand in providing count software, including postal vote management support, among other services, for elections since at least 2012.
In a statement to shareholders, the firm said it also successfully provided “the majority of electoral services” for the 2014 Scottish referendum, saying that its systems managed the highest turnout in recent years for a major UK election.
Montreal-based CGI and Idox won the £6.5 million contract to provide an electronic vote counting system for the 2017 local government elections in Scotland.
Objectors have questioned the rationale of awarding contracts to Idox when it has links to one political party, and about the “creeping privatisation” of elections.
Lilley, who served as trade and industry secretary from July 1990 to April 1992, has been a paid non-executive director for 14 years, and received £35,000 in 2015 for his services.
He holds 533,000 shares: 111,300 are in a self-invested pension plan and 59,250 are held through various members of his family.
The former social security secretary is chairman of Idox’s nomination and remuneration committee, which makes recommendations over how much executives are paid. He is also a member of its audit committee.
When appointed as a director, during the infancy of the firm, executives told shareholders he “brings with him a wealth of experience of central and local government, which we believe will be of considerable benefit to the group, especially as it seeks to achieve an increasingly strategic role with both local and central government”.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/1447 ... ount_firm/
This is Peter Lilley. An unbiased man: