6. Will the Commission make a statement on any plans to change the Senedd's electoral cycle? OQ55942

The Senedd Commission has no such plans at the moment. Unless provision is made to the contrary, section 3 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 prescribes that ordinary general elections of the Senedd must be held on the first Thursday in May, five years following the last Senedd elections. As such, the next Senedd election is due in May 2021.

I'm grateful to the Presiding Officer for that answer. I think she will agree with me that we need more democracy and not less democracy in Wales, and the root of the change to our electoral cycle, of course, lies in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, and that dreadful piece of legislation has now been on the statute book for a decade. In that decade, of course, we've had three UK general elections, which renders it utterly meaningless, and the one part of the Conservative manifesto that I welcomed last year was its commitment to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. That removes, of course, the justification for changing our electoral cycles, and it removes the need to do so.

Many of us here feel that this place has sat for too long. We need an election here, and we need an electoral cycle that provides for regular elections every four years, as was envisaged by the framers of the Welsh constitution. It is important, therefore, that those people seeking election next May understand that that Parliament should only sit for four and not five years. I would be grateful if a commission would work with Members on all sides of the Chamber—I can see particularly noisy support from the Conservative benches, which I welcome by the way—and ensure that we're able to frame legislation to ensure that we return to a four-year cycle for this Parliament, for all Welsh elections, as soon as the Fixed-term Parliaments Act is rightly thrown in the bin of history.

Thank you for the supplementary question. I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this Senedd wasn't a four-year term, otherwise we would have had to plan an election for May of 2020, and I'm not sure whether we would have been able to do that at that time, or it would have diverted our energies at that time from something else that was equally as important, if not more important, to do.

In terms of going forward, as I said in my response, it requires legislative change to change to a four-year-period term. I hear this afternoon, and I've seen many references made by Members to the fact that some would prefer a four-year term rather than a five-year term, and I've heard you, Alun Davies, say it before. Equally, I'm open to that idea, certainly, myself. But, it will be for the political process within this Senedd and within the next Senedd to undertake that piece of legislation if seen necessary. I look forward, then, to reading the manifestos of all political parties to see if any are putting it in their manifestos for Government and for the Senedd election next May.

Diolch, Llywydd.