Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:09 pm on 7 February 2018.
If you would just wait for my proposal, Simon, you might actually have that point clarified. You could have six-Member committees with two Labour, three places between the Conservatives and Plaid, and one UKIP. This would still be proportionate if the Labour Members wielded two votes each in any voting situation. After all, the four Labour Members always vote the same way in any case, with the Labour whip, and this business of one AM wielding more than one vote already occurs on the Business Committee. So, we could simply extend the efficient operation of the Business Committee to these seven current eight-Member committees. This would reduce the workload of the Labour backbenchers, who currently shoulder the biggest burden of the committee work. This is why I'm rather surprised that you don't seem to like this. So, there are ways around this business of AMs supposedly being overworked. We just have to be creative in how we think about this challenge and not simply go for the stale response of, 'We need more Members.' Now, the report says, in the introduction:
'As an independent, impartial Panel, we have used our expertise and experience to conclude that a 60 Member Assembly does not have the capacity it needs'.
End of quote. Can I give an alternative view on what the panel are actually saying? Beginning of quote: 'We are a bunch of people who make our considerable livings from politics. We live in a political bubble, completely detached from the lives of normal people. We think that the solution to every political challenge is to create more jobs for politicians. Then, hopefully, those politicians will put us on more of their commissions and inquiries, and then we go on making lots of money, all of it funded by the taxpayer.' End of imaginary quote.
The problem is that, to balance the people from politics and governance, we also needed on this panel people who were not from that world. We needed somebody, possibly more than one person, to represent the business community. We also needed someone to represent the man in the pub and the woman in the coffee shop. [Interruption.] But, in appointing this panel, the opinions of such people were never solicited. This failure of democracy means that the opinion of this panel can be completely discounted. There is also something—[Interruption.]