Good reasons to support more AMs

THE gut reaction many will have to the suggestion that AMs are “overworked and underpowered” is that no one could sensibly hold such a view.

Less than half the electorate votes in elections to the National Assembly, and doubtless a significantly smaller proportion has much idea about how the institution works.

If, by accident, they had tuned in to yesterday’s evidence session of the Committee on Assembly Electoral Reform, they would have seen a succession of academics arguing that the number of AMs needed to go up from 60 to between 80 and 90.

Some would consider such views to be outrageous, and an example of self-aggrandisement on the part of a small group of people impolitely known as the Cardiff Bay bubble.

But in fact there are several good reasons for supporting an increase in the number of AMs.

When the three devolved institutions were established in the late 1990s, the relative smallness of the Assembly received little attention. While Wales was given 60 AMs, the size of the Scottish Parliament was fixed at 129 and the Northern Ireland Assembly originally had 108 members, later reduced to 90.

In population terms, Wales has around 3.1m inhabitants, Scotland around 5.4m and Northern Ireland around 1.9m. It’s clear that Wales was not given the appropriate number of AMs in line with its population from the outset.

According to Professor Laura McAllister of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre, and academic colleagues she appeared with at yesterday’s committee hearing, the Senedd is at a disadvantage because it does not have enough AMs to do a decent job scrutinising the Welsh Government and individual Ministers.

To perform the scrutiny role properly, there need to be enough backbenchers spread around the Senedd’s committees who are not overloaded with so much work that they cannot spare the time to read sometimes extremely lengthy reports thoroughly enough to be able to come up with penetrating questions. Too often, AMs are reading out questions written for them by clerks and not asking supplementary questions when an evasive or – to be kind – incomplete answer is given.

The importance of scrutiny should not be underestimated: done well, it can save the public purse many millions. But if the role is not taken seriously, what could be a saving becomes a cost.