Thank you to the Llywydd for introducing this debate today, and to Laura McAllister and her team for such thorough work. This, of course, is a debate that we've had before. I remember going on behalf of Plaid Cymru to give evidence to the Richard commission about expanding the Assembly at that time, when it was recommended that we should move—even 10 years ago—to an Assembly of 80 Members, and here we are, still an Assembly of 60 Members. So, it's about time for us to talk to the people of Wales about the thorough, genuine and purposeful recommendations about turning an Assembly that is evolving into a Parliament into a genuine Parliament, with real balance between the Government and the opposition parties.

We in Plaid Cymru welcome the report, but I don't want to influence the genuine consultation with the public. So, I just want to talk a little about the principles that Plaid Cymru feels are important as we look at this issue, keeping the options open on the methods of achieving those principles.

First of all, I want to talk about the fact that we need to expand the Assembly's capacity to scrutinise the Government and to hold it to account. This is something that Angela Burns has just talked about as well. Usually, that's described as 'more politicians', but I would like to describe it as more politicians but less power for the Government, because the Government that has to face a more powerful Parliament is a Government that can be more accountable—that has to be more accountable—to the people of Wales. We are also losing politicians in Wales. We'll be losing Members of the European Parliament, and we're talking about losing Members of Parliament at Westminster through parliamentary reform.

The second principle is to extend the franchise to younger people to vote. I know, from talking to schools myself, that young people can be divided 50:50 on this issue themselves, but I think that extending that right to young people to vote from the age of 16 onwards is something that we ought now to genuinely consider along with changes to the national curriculum.

Thirdly, we have to ensure that whatever we do is commensurate with or proportional to the representation that we have in the Assembly already or improves on that proportionality. And it's important to Plaid Cymru that we strike the right balance between local accountability and the fact that votes across Wales should be reflected as much as possible in this place in the way that people vote. We celebrate the fact that a by-election took place yesterday and we welcome Jack Sergeant as a new Member, which shows that there is a process, and, even though some might be disappointed in the number that turned out, I thought it was quite encouraging that almost one in three people in Alyn and Deeside voted in a by-election—it's better than some Westminster by-elections. But the more we can build on participation, the better it will be for this Parliament in dealing with the issues before us.

Of course, we have to ensure that we retain and improve representation according to gender here. This is something that Siân Gwenllian has talked about in the Assembly recently. There are specific recommendations from Laura McAllister in the report. What I'll say now is that it's not uncommon in a modern democracy to see processes and techniques in place to ensure that the parliament represents, as much as possible, women and men on an equal basis.