6. Statement by the Chair of the Committee on Assembly Electoral Reform: An update on the work of the Committee

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:36 pm on 8 January 2020.

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Photo of Dawn Bowden Dawn Bowden Labour 4:36, 8 January 2020

Thank you, Hefin, for those comments. I think there's probably much in that that the committee would agree with. Now, what I'm not going to do as the Chair of the committee, and neither are any of the members of the committee at this stage going to come down and say what we believe should or will happen around electoral reform, but electoral reform is part of the brief that the committee has. So, we will be looking—. We already have had the Electoral Reform Society come in and give us a technical briefing on the various forms of a voting system. You will be aware that Laura McAllister's report, the expert panel report, did make a recommendation about moving away from the current D'Hondt system that we have, for the very reason that you've talked about: the different type of AM and the confusion that that causes. I know, as a constituency AM, I do things very differently to how a regional AM has to work. So, that was identified within the expert panel report. That was something that people generally didn't favour going forward. They wanted some more clarity around the way that people are elected. They wanted clarity in terms of knowing who their Assembly Member was.

So, part of the work that we will be looking at will focus on electoral reform, and alongside electoral reform, of course, will also have to come a discussion around electoral boundaries. Now, for the purposes of the expert panel—and that was a pragmatic approach that was taken because at that time there was a hope, I think, that the recommendations of that would have been in place for the 2021 elections. Clearly, that isn't happening. As a pragmatic approach to that, the expert panel suggested twinning constituencies, and my constituency would have been twinned with yours. So, Hef, you and I may have been Members in the same constituency, with Delyth and who knows who else. But that was a pragmatic way of doing it where we would have just reduced the number of constituencies but doubled the size, and increased the number of Members representing each constituency on an STV system—single transferrable vote.

So, all of that is for the committee to consider and we've got to take more evidence about that. We will be taking evidence from political parties about that, because we know that political parties have different views about that, and people within the political parties have different views on that, and you will know, Hefin, that in our party, there are many people that have very different views about what is the best voting system—[Interruption.] Yes, absolutely, because we have to be—. We have to live in the real world and we have to recognise that this is politics, and we have to recognise that political parties will look to see which system they think will favour them the most. Now, that's just the politique réal. So, we have to consider that. But we have said—and as I said in my opening statement—from the outset that we are going to be open-minded about this, and we will base our recommendations on evidence that's presented to us that shows us what would be the best way forward.

In terms of electoral boundaries, one of the things that have been devolved to us is the ability to set our own boundaries, but we don't yet have the primary legislation in place to enable us to do that. So, we have the competence, but not the legislative process to do that. So, we would have to put that in place as well. There would have to be a piece of legislation introduced through the Assembly to enable us to set up our own boundary commission to determine our own boundaries. So, that will be, again, one of the areas of work that the committee will be looking at—so, electoral reform, electoral boundaries.

The final point I think that you made was around the consultations being user-friendly. I take that on board, I take your point, and I will have a discussion with the committee clerks about how we might make that a little bit more user-friendly, and perhaps looking at some of the language used as well, certainly, when we're doing the more outward-facing public consultations, as opposed to consultations with organisations that work with us on a regular basis. That, I'm sure, will be very important, so I'm happy to look at that.