Can I also join with other Members in congratulating Laura McAllister and the panel for producing an authoritative report? I think it stands comparison with anything you'd see produced in other parts of the United Kingdom and it stands in a proud tradition of constitutional reporting that we've had in our history of devolution. Perhaps we've had to do a lot of the thinking along the way—and so we've had the Richard commission, we had the Silk commission, and also the Holtham commission, though that was more directly related to the Welsh Government. They constitute a very formidable body of evidence, I think, on these central constitutional matters. I don't think any of us can really doubt the central finding of the report, which is—and I quote—that

'the Assembly is undersized and overstretched.'

I've served in the Assembly from the start in 1999. I've seen it evolve and I realise, at close quarters, that the amount of work we do is remarkable—and it's because we are very well supported, have outstanding staff, and have learnt to adapt our procedures. But, it's not necessarily unforced in some respects, and maintaining the capacity of the work that we do does put quite a lot of strain on certain parts of the legislative apparatus, and it is appropriate for us to look at this. The report says that we need between 20 and 30 more Members. I'm not sure I completely agree with that, but certainly when you compare us to Scotland and Northern Ireland, we are very much smaller and we do need to address this issue.

Can I turn to what the Electoral Reform Society said? One of their central insights was that we only have about 42 AMs who can sit on committees to scrutinise the Welsh Government. This is at the heart of our weakness, really; there aren't enough AMs to scrutinise. Whatever we say about devolution in the United Kingdom, it has produced very, very strong executive powers. I was talking to someone the other day who remonstrated with me for using the 'federal' word, and I said, 'Well, actually, in the UK, we are beyond federalism; our Governments are a lot stronger than most federal Governments in the western world.' So, we do need a powerful legislature too to scrutinise the work of that Assembly.

The Electoral Reform Society point out the fact that increasing membership, in their view, would require an adjustment in the electoral system, and they prefer the single transferable vote. But, myself, I don't think it is wise to connect increasing the size of the Assembly with a new electoral system. The one could blight the other if we're not very careful, and I think I detected that tone from Vikki Howells's contribution. I think we'd be very wise to look at what is essential, and that is to see if we can increase, with public support, the size of the Assembly.

Now, I did say 'between 20 and 30'. Certainly, 30 extra Members, I think, would be too big an ask. That would increase our size by half. In Northern Ireland, they're thinking of coming down a bit, I think to below 90. I have a proposal that if we were to more modestly suggest 75 Members then the proportion between constituency and regional Members would remain the same. So, we would not have to change the electoral system—though, of course, we would then need 50 directly elected constituencies. So, there would be a boundary commission that would have to meet to do that. But, at least we could proceed on the basis of preserving the current electoral system of the additional member system, which does produce quite a high level of proportionality. That's why it's endured in Germany for so long. So, that would be my suggestion. I know you could also keep that proportion if you had 90 Members, but I think that is really too demanding given the general political climate at the moment.

Can I finally just turn to the role of citizens? I do believe that we are seeing a great force being generated now for citizen involvement, and we are moving quite decisively to participatory democracy. Representative democracy has had its day, citizens require much more activity in decision making and I welcome this. That's why I've suggested that we should look at a citizens' chamber being established at some point in the National Assembly. Now, you might want to do that at the twentieth anniversary of devolution and ask that chamber to look at the constitution as a whole. That may be one task, but it could also look at our legislative programme and suggest items for that legislative programme.

But I do have this one piece of advice for the Commission: I think something far more active in terms of citizen involvement is required than what I have seen suggested so far by way of consultation. We need at the very least a citizens' jury or panel to look at this question, because that could open the doors for this policy to become practicable. If we had a powerful endorsement from the public and that was seen to be unbiased, then I think we could move ahead on this issue. I'm not convinced by those who say, 'Well, it's going to cost £100,000 or £200,000 to run that sort of panel or jury.’ After all, we are considering a significant increase in our membership, which will bear additional expenditure running into millions of pounds. So, that's my advice to the Commission: ensure that citizens get to have their say.