WHY ANOTHER 30 ASSEMBLY MEMBERS WILL GIVE US A PARLIAMENT THAT WORKS FOR WALES
Professor Laura McAllister on controversial plans:
IMAGINE the Welsh Rugby Team entering the Six Nations with the two locks and the two props missing.
The players on the field could be world class and playing the best game of their lives, but the weakness in the scrum would obviously put them at a disadvantage and diminish their chance of reaching the try line.
It’s an analogy we can apply to the situation facing our National Assembly.
In politics – as in sport – building a strong team and creating the right conditions for the players to perform to the very best of their ability is essential. Look at Chris Coleman’s Wales and the Together Stronger team spirit, and how that propelled our football team to the Euros semifinals in 2016.
We also need an Assembly which is fully equipped to face the challenges ahead – a cohort of Members with the time, talent, knowledge and skill needed to hold the Welsh Government to account. It is in all our interests, that the laws made, the money spent, the decisions taken in our Senedd improve lives and have a real, positive impact on people and their communities.
It has been widely accepted since the beginning of devolution that with only 60 Members, our democratic institution is exceptionally small and underpowered compared with other parliaments serving similar populations across the world.
The implications of having too few members have become greater over the past decade as the Assembly has gained law-making powers. Soon, it will be able to vary income tax too, and the UK government confirmed earlier this year that Brexit will also result in a further “significant increase” of powers for the devolved institutions.
Despite this, our National Assembly is the smallest of all the devolved UK parliaments – in fact it has far fewer representativesthan the EU average.
If our Assembly had the same number of members per head of population as the devolved institutions in Europe, Canada and Australia – with populations of between two and four million – as well as the nine states of the USA with similar populations – the number of AMs here would be 91.
Action has already been taken to try to change the way Assembly Members work in order to alleviate the pressure and to allow our parliament to function as best it can. For example, Members now sit for more hours in the day, more days in the week and for more weeks in the year than ever before and in line with all other UK parliaments.
Additional staff have been employed in order to give greater support to Members, and Committees are forming sub-committees to ensure that they can scrutinise Welsh Government and legislation thoroughly.
Although we cannot be complacent in terms of exploring new ideas to increase capacity, it is hardly surprising that the previous Assembly Commission concluded unanimously that the only way to address this issue was to increase the number of Members elected to our Assembly.
Now, under the Wales Act 2017, the Assembly has, for the first time, been given the powers to determine its own size and the way its Members are elected. As a result, an independent, impartial panel of experts, which I chair, was tasked to provide robust and evidence-based advice on three matters: the number of Members the Assembly needs, how they should be elected, and the minimum voting age for Assembly elections.
After considering the evidence for almost nine months, we have concluded that the size of the Assembly should be increased from 60 to at least 80 Members, and preferably close to 90, to ensure that the Assembly can fulfil its responsibilities effectively. We also make recommendations with regards to introducing a viable electoral model based on a number of important principles and priorities, such as proportionality, accountability and diversity.
Another conclusion among many more was that reducing the minimum voting age to 16 would be a powerful way to raise political awareness among young people.
As a panel, we believe that we have delivered a clear way forward which, if it can win the necessary degree of support, can be achieved and implemented by the next Assembly election in 2021.
We believe our recommendations could indeed create a parliament which really works for Wales. This is so important at a time of significant constitutional change, both in terms of the Assembly’s powers and as a consequence of the decision of the UK to leave the EU.
Clearly, the proposal for more AMs will come with an additional cost, although as a panel we have advised that this should be kept to an absolute minimum. But it makes no sense to see this in isolation.
It has to be taken in the context of the cost of democracy as a whole.
For example, the cost of our four Members of the European Parliament is £7.16m a year, whereas the Assembly Commission estimates the annual cost of 30 more AMs as £9.6m.
I’m not naive and I know that calling for more politicians is never going to be popular, but failing to address an acknowledged problem in delivery would be irresponsible.
There is wide acknowledgement that it needs to happen – and my question is if not now, when? We cannot continue to risk our Assembly’s ability to deliver for the people and communities it serves.
We need to grasp the nettle now so that our elected representatives can focus on matters such as building our economy, supporting our NHS and improving education.
It is our view that more AMs could improve scrutiny and this, in itself, could result in significant financial savings for the taxpayer which could then be ploughed back into public services. As the UK Government’s Commission on Devolution concluded in 2014, “good scrutiny means good legislation, and good legislation pays for itself”.