Events Sponsored by Assembly Members

Part of 3. Questions to the Assembly Commission – in the Senedd at 3:19 pm on 16 May 2018.

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Photo of Elin Jones Elin Jones Plaid Cymru 3:19, 16 May 2018

Well, just to say, to reiterate the point I've already made, if there have been negative impacts on the work and the priorities that Assembly Members feel from changing the policy of booking space on the estate, then as we undertake this review we'll let Assembly Members know of that review and we would like your feedback formally into that so that we can learn. There was consultation with Assembly Members in designing the policy to start with. Not everybody engages at that point, of course, because we—and I'm as guilty as anybody else on this; I engage when I meet a problem. Therefore, hopefully, people will engage with the review that we are putting in place.

As a result of that review, the Commissioners will discuss with their political parties what the priorities of the political parties and Assembly Members are before we take a final view on a long-term solution for this. The point that you make about whether it's an individual AM that decides what the priorities are and who gets to decide is an important point. We've tried to put some priorities in place. They relate around policy-focused activity, they relate to work that's linked to Parliament's democratic work, and the role of cross-party groups in particular is important in that, and also to minimise an issue that's been raised quite often by Members in this place: to minimise the likelihood of similar events being scheduled at the same time demanding the presence of the same AM at one or two or three events, and then the organisers of those events being disappointed that not enough Members are staying for long enough for their events. So, it's a complicated issue, on a limited estate, to get right. We may not have it right at this point but we're keen to review that with Assembly Members' engagement into the future.