Can I say 'well done' to Dawn Bowden for chairing a committee on a controversial matter of singular importance to the functioning now and in the future of this Senedd, this Parliament of Wales? She did so with real skill, and with the help of an exemplary small team of clerks, despite the unexpected disruption of a pandemic and some local political challenges. I'll reserve my remarks on that for another day, but I simply note that I feel it is incumbent on all political parties in this place to engage with the arguments and the evidence no matter how difficult politically that is. And our role as parliamentarians is sometimes to be signposts to the future, not simply weather vanes to the prevailing populist winds. 

I'll touch briefly on some of the key findings and recommendations of our report, before turning to significant challenges in making this happen. And in doing so, none of us in the limitations of this debate can do justice to the wide-ranging detail and evidence in the report. I would simply say: go and read it and digest it. 

The evidence we heard on the size of the Senedd was compelling and clear and remarkably consistent—that the Senedd is currently too small and should increase to between 80 and 90 Members to improve our governance and representation, enhance our scrutiny and our oversight of the Welsh Government, and deliver more effective policy, more efficient spending and better legislation. 

On electoral reform, and again faced with remarkably consistent evidence, we conclude that the single transferable vote electoral system should be introduced to give voters greater choice whilst still maintaining the clear links between Members and constituencies, and producing more proportional electoral outcomes and, crucially, making every vote count—making it worth while voting in seats that have only ever produced a Labour or a Conservative representative, for example; making every Member work for every vote in every constituency.

And on diversity of candidature and Members of the Senedd, the evidence was clear that having a more representative Senedd with greater diversity of candidates and representatives goes hand in hand with reform of the electoral system and increasing the numbers of representatives. But equally clear was the crying need to see positive action to help overcome the structural inequalities and barriers that make this so difficult. So, political parties should get on with publishing information on diversity of their electoral candidates and set out their plans for increasing diversity and inclusion in the way that they work. And there needs to be more cross-party work on how job-sharing for Members of the Senedd and diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender as well could work in practice. And there needs to be financial support for people with disabilities who want to stand for election—[Inaudible.]