Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:33 pm on 7 February 2018.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It was an unintentional tactic on my behalf to allow so little time for myself to respond to the debate. It's obvious that I'm out of practice on the timing of speeches.
If I could just refer very quickly to some of the main points made—some of which are common across all the contributions. The point that Angela Burns made at the outset, of course, on ensuring that the consultation that we're embarking upon is as broad as possible within the resources available to us, and that it should extend to every part of Wales—yes, we are going to make every effort to do that. David Melding referred to the specific point with regard to trying to be as innovative as possible with regard to the work we undertake on consultation—a citizens' panel, a jury. The Commission did look at these options, but, unfortunately, as David Melding has said, we came to a decision in this case that it would appear to be too expensive to undertake, although we were aware of how valuable that would have been.
A number of people contributed from their party's point of view, and it was very valuable to hear their points of view on some of the issues that we will be consulting upon, and a number also alluded to what we can be looking at arising from the gender balance report. And as Vikki Howells said, we could look, of course, at using legislation to secure gender balance, but we shouldn't avoid the responsibility of each one of our parties, and each individual here, to ensure that we promote making women and people from underrepresented sections of the community to be engaged in the politics of Wales.
May I also say thank you to David Melding for talking about an alternative option—an option of 75 Members? We haven't started the consultation yet, and yet, we have been given an additional option to consider. So, I am very appreciative of the thought that has gone into that option.
A number of Members have mentioned what is core to the work of the panel and the discussion that we've had this afternoon, namely the need to ensure that the balance between the work of this Assembly, this Parliament here, the work of its committess, the work of this Chamber, and the work of the Government all works for the benefit of the people of Wales—more and better scrutiny. More scrutiny leads to better legislation, better policy decisions by Government, and that all ultimately benefits the people of Wales as we represent them in this Parliament. So, may I thank you for the encouraging response to move forward, hopefully, to take the step of authorising further consultation on these fascinating and interesting issues?