We now have the will to elect more members of the Senedd
A new committee has been set up to look at reforming the Senedd. Here the chair of the special purpose committee on Senedd reform, Labour MS Huw IrrancaDavies, reveals what the committee will do and why it will be different to previous inquiries
THE special committee on electoral reform has been set up to report next May and the idea is that the committee will not redo the work that’s already been done by Dawn Bowden’s committee on electoral reform in the last Senedd but will take it further to actually come forward, if we can, with a cross party proposition on where we now go on electoral reform.
We’ve got all the major parties, the Conservatives and the Lib Dem member, Plaid Cymru and Labour all represented on this, so it is genuinely a cross-party committee and that is an important consideration because any output from this committee will need to draw their cross party support as well. We’re not going to rehearse the evidence that the expert panel led by Laura McAllister did and we’re not going to rehearse the work that Dawn Bowden’s committee on electoral reform did at the tail end of the last Senedd.
We’re moving it on into some specific areas.
One is more members of the Senedd.
Dawn Bowden’s committee came to the very clear view based on evidence, based on taking evidence from from outside bodies, comparing different Parliament’s different legislators, comparing the fact that we are now a tax raising and primary law making legislature, which, we were not when the assembly was set up. And of course we now have a Wales-only body of law.
So on that basis we are significantly underpowered, why does that aspect of our work matter to people? It’s not to do with arguing for more members for the sake of it. It’s the quality of scrutiny of government. If you don’t have the right quantum of members and if you look at the Scottish and Northern Ireland all other European Parliaments, we are so significantly underpowered in Wales, that there’s a question, as the expert panel said, whether we do the job of scrutiny effectively.
In other words, do we allow government to get away with things because we can’t scrutinise them?
This committee, if its members agree, it’s been set up in the terms and remit to look at proposals, specific proposals around how many more members there should be on the basis of that question, or should there be additional members has broadly been answered.
Secondly, how do you also take forward issues of electoral reform.
People will know the widespread dissatisfaction generally with the system we have called the multimember system where we have members based on a region and we also have members on first pass the post basis and constituencies.
Laura McAllister’s expert panel and Dawn Bowden’s committee in the last Senedd, both came to the conclusion that the preferred model would be something based around the STV single transferable vote, because that has the benefit of becoming more proportional so every vote counts but also retains the link with a constituency. It might be a different size constituency, a different shape of constituency.
The committee would seek to find agreement on a clear proposition. All this aims towards May when Welsh Government then, if it is minded to take forward the proposals of the committee, would bring forward a bill, legislation.
The other two aspects are, if we look at changing the numbers of people represented here in Welsh Senedd Cymru, and you look at the type of process that is used to get people here, then that also lends itself then to what you do on constituency boundaries, particularly if you move to a more proportional system of voting.
So one of the unfinished pieces of business that Dawn Bowden’s committee pointed out before, is that we need to get on with the job of boundary decisions. So yes, again this committee will, if there is cross party consensus, put forward propositions on how that will be taken forward and it may be for that as straightforward as saying, we need to set up the boundary review.
It would have a mind to historic boundaries, it would have a mind to other things going on in the ether, but it would be its own piece of work.
In electoral reform terms there is something which is often referred to even by the academics as the sweet spot, which is at what point do you pitch a boundary, so that people have have a connection geographically, but can also enable a greater degree of proportional voting, if that is the will of the committee.
Too big, and you lose connection with your voters and voters lose connection with you. Too small you can’t do the proportionality.
Which brings me to my fourth point. Why proportionality? Many people will argue the pros and cons of proportionality as against first past the post as well. But what is unarguable and what Dawn Bowden’s committee already concluded, with the agreement with the expert panel, is that you can increase diversity in this place, with more women across the party spheres and more from ethnic minorities, BAME communities and so on. You need not only to increase the numbers, but you also need to change the way in which you vote within that system as well in order that parties can be more proactive themselves in the selection of candidates for the lists, or the regional lists, or the constituencies and to make sure that there are people in winnable seats, being actually selected.
So diversity goes hand in hand with the increase in numbers, the electoral reform, and the different sizes and shapes of seats.
The overall intent of the committee is not to redo the work that the other committees have done before us but to take forward these specific areas of focus and to bring forward if we can agree, proposals that may form the basis of Welsh Government law.
The one thing that is equally important in all of this, if you were to do any form of electoral reform people will always say, electoral reform is a diversion, democratic reforms are a diversion and constitutional reform is a diversion.
Nobody in the Dog and Duck speaks about this, and frankly there’s more important things to be getting on with. If we took that argument, we would still just have landowning males with the vote in the UK.
Constitutional reforms are for a purpose, for better scrutiny of government, better representation in the parliament, and to make people’s votes matter, so wherever you vote for a Conservative, Plaid Cymru, Liberal, Monster Raving Loony your vote counts. That’s what this is about, not reform for the sake of reform.
It’s overdue and I think there’s recognition that we’ve been talking about this for far too long.
We now need to get on with putting some proposals in front of the Senedd and in front of government. In order to do that you need political agreement, and to take any of these reforms forward in the Senedd you need a super majority, so two thirds of the votes. So you need political support.
Secondly you need governmental support, the will in government to say we will pick this up and run with it.
You also need public support. And that is something else that the committee will be looking at... how to better explain the necessity of the piece of work that we’re embarking upon, and why it matters on bread and butter issues – quality of health service, quality of highways investment, quality of social care - because better scrutiny leads to better decisions in government, and it means more transparent government, because then you have good legislators who really hold the torch to government’s toes all the time.
We’ve already carried out reforms in the last Senedd, we’ve had the major reform of 16 and 17 year olds now being able to vote.
We’ve made other reforms in terms of the way you can vote in Wales, we’re not following other countries within the UK.
We are making it more accessible for people to be able to vote and to do it safely, credibly and a bit more easily as well. So those reforms have already been done.
The reason I say that, is because it’s not true to say that when these things are discussed and considered they never lead anywhere, they do but it’s often stage by stage.
In the last Senedd, the Llywydd, brought forward some of the reforms we’ve just seen in the Senedd, including the renaming of this place as Senedd Cymru to recognise that it is now a bonafide parliament with tax raising, tax varying, primary law making powers.
It seems now that there is a will to go further.
There’s a will in political parties here in the Senedd and I think the public mood is changing as well.