The following amendment has been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Jane Hutt.

And the next item on the agenda is the Plaid Cymru debate on the electoral system, and I call on Sian Gwenllian to move the motion.

Motion NDM6052 Simon Thomas

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

Believes that the Wales Bill should make provision to enable the National Assembly for Wales to introduce the single transferable vote at all levels, except for elections to the European Parliament and House of Commons, to ensure fair representation for all political viewpoints.

Motion moved.

Thank you. We’ve tabled this debate today because it’s become clear that there is a need to change the present democratic process. Forget about the referendum for a moment, if you can, because, generally, people believe or feel that their vote doesn’t count. There is a need for them to see that there is a purpose for them voting and reforming the system is one way of tackling this complex issue. So, Plaid Cymru is of the view that the Wales Bill should make a provision to introduce a single transferable vote in order to secure equitable representation for every political viewpoint.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

Before coming to that, I will touch on two other issues. The first is the need for young people between 16 and 17 to be allowed to vote. That is vital by now, because young people were angry and frustrated that their voices were not heard in the referendum, and there is also a need for us to create a youth parliament in Wales, because Wales is the only country without such a parliament. We must move forward in order to bring young people into politics. Obviously, it would make it easier for them to vote, by introducing online voting, for example, and introducing political education in schools would also be important.

But, turning to this subject, then, in 2012 only 39 per cent of people voted, and in this year’s National Assembly election, just over 45 per cent voted. So, it’s obvious that people feel there’s no point in voting, because it’s the same people who win all the time. I’ll give you two examples. In 2012, in the Sketty ward in Swansea, the Liberal Democrats won five seats with only 37.5 per cent of the vote. Labour received 29.2 per cent, and the Conservatives 20 per cent, but yet again, they weren’t able to win any of the seats. And, in a more notorious example, in 2008, in Cardiff, the Liberal Democrats won the majority of seats with only a third of the votes. Over the years, every party has benefited from the first-past-the-post system, and every party has suffered because of it also, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

The STV system is used successfully in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland uses it in local elections, and nobody—no-one—in Scotland is elected without opposition. It has improved accountability and it’s actually made politics more vibrant, and it’s not just me saying this, but the Labour leaders in Glasgow and Edinburgh. In Northern Ireland, they are doubtful whether the peace process could have been agreed without it. And the Richard commission had actually recommended STV for our Assembly here.

I turn to some of the arguments that are presented to oppose STV. The idea of proportional representation was rejected for the 2011 elections, but it wasn’t a proportional system that was in hand—some of us will remember the campaign at the time: ‘No to AV, Yes to PR’.

Some people say that STV is difficult to understand, but I reject that totally, because that’s a bit of an insult to the voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland who have no difficulty whatsoever in understanding the system.

So, this idea that it stops any particular party from winning or always leads to coalition, well, that’s life sometimes. Sometimes that happens in a democracy, and the modelling on STV that has been undertaken in this country shows that it can create one-party Governments if those parties do well in an election. And the current system is also creating a system of no clear control.

There are advantages in introducing STV in Assembly elections. Regional Members would be selected directly by the electors rather than by a party list system. It would lead to more positive politicking, because political parties would compete for the electors’ second and third choices. And so, that would lead to more positive and mature campaigning.

Those who would gain would be any politician that would work in a positive and constructive manner, and those who would lose out would be those who take the electors for granted. It would mean that the politics of Wales would gain, and, ultimately, this is very good for the people of Wales, and that is what we should have uppermost in our minds. Thank you.

Thank you. I have selected the amendment to the motion and I call on the First Minister to move that amendment tabled in the name of Jane Hutt. First Minister.

Gwelliant 1—Jane Hutt

Delete all after ‘National Assembly for Wales to’ and replace with ‘determine future Wales-only electoral arrangements.’

Amendment 1 moved.

Formally.

Thank you. David Melding.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I just say that the Conservative group will oppose the motion? But we will support the amendment, and, if the amendment carries, we will then support the amended motion. The problem I have with Plaid Cymru’s approach is it endorses STV and I think we need to have thorough consideration of how it would operate in practice in the different levels of government. We don’t have a line, as a group, on whether we should use a particular form of electoral arrangement, but we do think the power should come to the Assembly so that we can examine the choices.

Will the Member give way?

I’ve barely started, but I will.

I just want to elicit a little bit of information at the start. You said you don’t have a line. Do you nevertheless accept the recommendation of the Richard commission that STV should be used for local government in Wales, even if you haven’t made a decision around the Assembly itself?

Well, I was going on to say that I think all electoral arrangements have their advantages and disadvantages. Now, for a long time, I’ve thought the disadvantages of first-past-the-post in an increasingly multi-party system, or in Wales where you have—or used to, anyway—a dominant party system, meant that we should look at other forms of election, but it is something I think we need to just carefully look at. Now, you can look at the Scottish experience and weigh up how people feel about living in large multi-member wards. Is that always appropriate for local government? I don’t know. I think that’s the sort of issue, the practical outcome, we need to examine and assess. So, ‘yes’ to us having the powers and ‘yes’ to us fully looking at the various options.

Will you take an intervention?

Yes.

Will you agree with me that the current situation, where we do have large multi-member wards in our large inner cities, combined with first-past-the-post, really is anti-democratic, just as the example outlined?

Well, you know, I’ve said that I think there are advantages and disadvantages with whatever system you use. Frankly, the most elegant thing to do would be to use similar systems. So, there are implications: if you do it for local government, should you be doing it for the Assembly and quite a small legislature, and how would that work? As I say, I don’t have a closed mind, but, speaking as the constitutional spokesman for the group, I have to emphasise that STV’s not something we are prepared to endorse.

I have to say, Gwenllian, I greatly enjoyed your mischief and the outrageous examples of liberal over-representation that you gave. I’m sure it would’ve entertained everyone in the Assembly, but I have to say that I come from a tradition where we’ve been on the receiving end of a system that rewards our 20 per cent of the vote with no representation at all for a long time, but my party has to face up to the fact that it’s been sort of calmer in terms of outrage when it comes to a UK level, because we’ve often benefited greatly from winning general elections with sub-50 per cent performance, if I can put it as neutrally as that. So, look, it’s appropriate that the power comes to the Assembly and then we fully consider it. I think, having said that, we would be looking to change some of the current systems, and we want to do that based on good, hard evidence.

We’ve had democracy in the UK for some time but it has evolved gradually over the years. There were two great reform Acts of the nineteenth century that considerably extended the vote and eliminated many rotten boroughs. Some Members may recall from their reading of history the example of Old Sarum in Hampshire where the only elector was said to be a cat. Well, rotten boroughs of a sort still exist here in Wales: places like Blaenau Gwent, where one party—and I won’t say who—won 81 per cent of the council seats on 55 per cent of the vote. There are other similar examples. Regardless of which party benefits, first-past-the-post is clearly a system of election that frequently creates a situation that the Labour Members like to refer to as a democratic deficit. Scrutiny and oversight of a council is clearly more difficult in a situation where one party holds a large majority of the seats. In such circumstances, the delivery of council services may suffer accordingly. Here in UKIP, we support the introduction of STV as a more democratic system. We will work with whoever else in the Chamber supports us on this issue. Thank you.

I’d like to thank everyone for their contributions. First of all, of course, there is an amendment before the Assembly that would broaden the scope of the case that has been put already in the Chamber. The purpose of the debate, of course, is to concentrate on the fact that the National Assembly will have the power to change the electoral arrangements at a local level, but also at an Assembly level, ultimately. And, of course, I am extremely supportive of that, as are these benches. It’s very important that it’s this Assembly that controls the system and the means by which we elect Members to this Assembly in future.

Of course, it’s true to say that the Wales Bill itself doesn’t allow that only 51 per cent of the vote is required to change the system, and I think that’s quite right, because, with such a fundamental change, it’s very important that more than one party should support any change in the electoral arrangements. I wouldn’t argue against that. But, for me, the problem that we have at present is the fact that the debate, as set out in the motion, is too narrow, because, instead of arguing that the Assembly should have the power to change the electoral system, it argues that the Assembly should have the power to change this system, but only to one alternative model. So, it narrows the debate, rather than broadening it.

So, what the amendment seeks to do, therefore, is to ensure that, first of all—

I’m very grateful to the First Minister. Perhaps he can help me with a constitutional difficulty that I have with the motion before us today, namely that this Assembly is asking, once again, for Westminster to legislate, as I understand the motion, on constitutional issues that should belong to us in this place.

I think that’s quite right. What we should say, of course, is that we want the power—and it has been given to us—to change the electoral system to any system that the Assembly should vote for, rather than restricting ourselves to one system. What we have at present is a wording that states that we ask Westminster to change the system to a particular model, rather than us having the power to change the system to the system that the National Assembly thinks would be the best for Wales.

What the amendment does is to broaden the scope of the motion that we have before us in order to ensure that, yes, the Assembly would decide what kind of system would ultimately be adopted, but without narrowing the debate to considering only one system and saying that we should only consider one system when we ask for the power from Westminster. So, for me, the amendment broadens the powers that the Assembly would have, and, ultimately, it would be up to the Assembly to decide on a cross-party basis what kind of system should be adopted in this Assembly and in local government.

Thank you. I call on Simon Thomas to reply to the debate. Simon.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’m pleased we had this debate. It was short, but sweet, and I think Sian Gwenllian set out extremely well in a very concise but well-targeted and focused opening speech the reason why we brought forward this debate.

Of course, when we did table this debate, we didn’t know that the Assembly itself would be voting today using a kind of proportional representation, because you’ve had a second-preference vote to choose your committee Chairs today, and you’ve accepted that you don’t get first-past-the-post all the time for everything that goes on. So I think that’s a small chink in the arguments against first-past-the-post, and a small step forward for more proportional representation. If we have it for our committee Chairs, then surely we should have it to elect our Members. [Interruption.] Some of the committee Chairs, yes—quite. I was open for an election; I don’t mind.

I just want to put one thing to bed, because there’s been a little bit of mischief making by the First Minister, ably assisted by Dafydd Elis-Thomas, I’m afraid to say, on the precise wording of this motion. The motion is very clear:

‘Believes that the Wales Bill should make provision to enable the National Assembly for Wales to introduce the single transferable vote’.

We as Plaid Cymru support STV, so of course we will want to advocate STV. But there’s nothing in the motion that says that we can only introduce STV under the provisions of the Wales Bill. We want the Wales Bill to make provision to enable us to introduce STV. We could introduce another system—of course we could—and therefore there isn’t actually anything between our motion and the Government amendment, apart from the Government not accepting STV, because that’s the reality of it: the Labour Party doesn’t accept STV.

It would be much more honest if the Government amendment just said that. At least the Conservatives spokesperson was very honest and said, ‘We don’t know what we want at the moment’. I think that might have something to do with the fact that we have a Conservative Government that could call a referendum on leaving the EU having been voted in with a majority of 12 on 37 per cent of the vote. And that cannot continue. [Interruption.] That cannot continue. [Interruption.] I agree it’s in the manifesto, of course it is, but you should never have the majority. You should not have a majority in Westminster on 37 per cent of the vote. There should be 82 UKIP MPs—there should be 82 UKIP MPs. And if we’d had a Westminster that had reflected UKIP’s voice for the last 10 years, we may not have had a referendum. We may have had more subtle ways of exploring the great depths and the well of unhappiness that people have with the electoral system, that wouldn’t have come then to a binary choice, saying, ‘If you’re unhappy with politics, vote out’, but would have been a much more subtle way of expressing those strong views in the proper electoral system. And maybe if we’d had those MEPs—MPs; not MEPs, but MPs—from UKIP over the last 10 years, expressing those frustrations that they have and the perfectly acceptable policy positions they had, we wouldn’t have had a situation where, just last week, people thought, ‘It’s time to say “no” to the kind of politics we’ve had for so long, and the way to do that is by voting out of the European Union’, therefore cutting off their nose to spite their face. But that’s the situation we have.

Plaid Cymru’s wedded to STV. We may not win the argument for STV in the long run, because there might be a force here in the Assembly that argues for a different kind of proportional representation. After all, we have a kind of proportional representation now with the list system. But we’ll continue to argue for STV in the absence of any argument for an alternative to improve politics, which neither the Conservatives nor Labour have suggested today. Unless we do something about first-past-the-post, we are condemned to always polarising debate and to having the sort of decisions we had last week. Let’s awaken our politics, let’s bring in young people, let’s give them the vote as well, and let’s ensure that we have a better forum and a better representative parliamentary democracy at Welsh level and UK level that properly, therefore, expresses people’s frustrations and complaints and doesn’t lead us to the false promises and false choices that we had last week.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Thank you. We’ll defer this vote, then, until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.