Who John Swinney blames for thousands of postal vote delays as Scottish voters being left 'disenfranchised'

First Minister John Swinney says he is worried thousands of Scottish voters will be “disenfranchised” because of delays to postal votes.

For many areas in Scotland, the school summer holidays have already begun and families across the country are jetting off on their breaks.

But concerns have been raised that many haven’t received their postal ballots in time, leaving voters unable to use their democratic vote in the general election on July 4.

Mr Swinney said it was “deeply concerning”, but added he was not surprised of the delay to voters receiving postal voting packs.

“If I take you back to the early days of the election, the day the Prime Minister called the election, I expressed concerns about it taking place during the Scottish school summer holidays,” Mr Swinney told the BBC.

“Various people criticised me for making that comment, but here we are. Just as I feared, people are leaving Scotland to go on their holidays, have applied for their postal vote, but haven’t got them.

“It’s a deeply unacceptable situation that people will be disenfranchised because the election has been called when it is inconvenient.”

Around a quarter of the electorate now vote by post. It is not known how many of these voters have not received their papers yet, but the numbers delayed are believed to run into the thousands.

Mr Swinney said it was important everyone had the ability to vote because so many Scottish seats were “very close contests”.

Postal votes should be sent as early as possible but Royal Mail will have special teams working to identify and prioritise election mail

He said: “If we go back to 2017, in my home constituency of Perth and North Perthshire, Pete Wishart won by 21 votes. Along the road in North East Fife, Stephen Gethins won by two votes.

“Individual votes count, so I’m troubled by what’s happening with the postal ballots in this election with marginal contests in Scotland. I’m worried people will be disenfranchised.”

Royal Mail said postal votes should arrive through people’s letterboxes by Saturday at the latest. Those who applied before June 7 should have received their voting pack last week, but those who applied after this date will get their pack in a second dispatch of forms.

But that is too late for some - Anthony Teasdale, who lives in Perthshire and applied for a postal vote for him, his wife and his 18-year-old son on June 12 did not receive his packs before going on holiday.

He told Holyrood Magazine: “We are going abroad for a couple of weeks and haven’t heard anything back. I rang the council on Wednesday and was basically told we now wouldn’t be able to get a postal vote.

“There were no other options because the deadline for registering for a proxy vote was June 18. No explanation was given because the person wasn’t in a position to give me an explanation of why that had happened.

“I’m just flabbergasted - I’m basically being disenfranchised by bureaucratic incompetence.”

The Electoral Commission’s advice to those who do not receive their postal vote by Saturday, or who go on holiday before this and have not received their papers, is to contact their local elections team. Most local elections teams can be contacted via their local authority.

A spokeswoman for the Electoral Commission said: “Local authorities and Royal Mail are working to get these out to postal voters as quickly as possible.

“As is the case at all elections, given the electoral timetable, there is a short window of time for administrators to prepare and dispatch postal votes. It is not uncommon for all postal ballots to not have arrived at this point.”