Can I thank the Minister for the statement? Can I, in fact, welcome the statement and welcome the general direction of travel? Can I also thank the Minister for arranging the briefing by officers earlier today? I found that very valuable.

Obviously, it's a very extensive Bill, and I'm not going to indulge in a long list of quotes and discussion points, but I was going to concentrate on the voting systems, specifically the single transferable vote versus first-past-the-post. And, obviously, I note the proposal, we've discussed it before, about actually not having a strategic lead from here to say, 'Listen, guys, we're going to have STV across the board in local elections, just like in Scotland.' You've devolved the decisions to our local authorities, which will possibly render—of the 22 local authorities, obviously, some of them STV, others first-past-the-post, with authorities next door to one another having completely different voting systems from that point of view. Now, I think there is a potential for some element of confusion there, and I would prefer that there would be a strategic lead from here to say, 'Listen, guys, we're going for this, it's STV, and everybody's having STV.'

I'm a long-term proponent, as is my party, of proportional representation, plainly, because, at least then, every vote will count, and, hopefully, addressing low turnouts and spoilt-vote scenarios. The sky hasn't fallen in on Scotland, basically, who've had STV in local government for some years now. In particular, I've always thought that the combination of first-past-the-post and multimember wards at local authority level to be particularly undemocratic. You and I both know Cockett ward specifically in Swansea, where I previously was a county councillor myself; the electorate there is 12,500 in Cockett in Swansea, and there are four county councillors. Then, obviously, every elector feels they have four votes and they're all going to vote the same way, so you need a slate of four candidates. I can see Mike has obviously been in another multimember ward in Swansea, but we can compare experiences if we like. But, anyway, even, dare I say, when 15 years ago all four of those ward councillors in Cockett were Plaid Cymru, we only got about 60 per cent of the vote. We didn't get 100 per cent of the vote, so even in those halcyon days when Cockett went Plaid, we didn't deserve it. There should have been two plaid, one Labour, one Lib Dem, if you were being fair about it. I note now there are four Labour councillors in that ward on a similar percentage of the vote, so the same argument still applies about fair play: never have the residents of Cockett voted 100 per cent for whichever party has the four county councillors.

But STV, you see, would answer that conundrum, wouldn't it? In terms of, if we must have multimember wards, what about having STV, then?