As Rhys ab Owen explained in opening this debate, I experienced a more proportional system when I was living in Ireland, and I stood in elections for sabbatical officers at my university’s students’ union, as well as Ireland’s national union of students. The STV system was used in those instances, which meant that we had to campaign in a completely different way to how we’re used to campaigning in a first-past-the-post system. One had to work really hard for every single vote, and not just for the first vote, but also the second and third votes, and every other one after that. It's a completely different approach to campaigning and you have to be much more positive because you have to persuade people who aren't even going to give you their first vote that you deserve their second.

In a first-past-the-post system, very often—and every party is guilty of doing this—there is a tendency to try to urge people not to waste the one vote that they have and to encourage them or to frighten them to vote for the party that's most likely to prevent the party they disagree with most from being elected. We've all seen the posters, 'Only the Lib Dems, Labour or Plaid Cymru can win here to keep the Tories out', for example. Every party does this. We've all seen those posters. And this very often does work, unfortunately, or it means—and this is the important point—that people don’t vote because they don't see the point of voting for the party that they feel closest to. They think that it's a done deal and there's no point in voting. Is that democracy? No, it's not. If we are serious about creating a more representative democracy and one that inspires people to want to vote, and that they see the point of voting and want to stand to be candidates, then this would be a huge step forward. And, without a doubt, if it is to work, we need a uniform national system so that there is consistency nationwide.

Consistency is important. After all, we saw a great deal of inconsistency in the numbers of young people who registered to vote in the Senedd elections in May 2021, varying from 68.8 per cent in the Vale of Glamorgan to 31.73 per cent in Swansea, which meant that 54 per cent of young people didn’t vote. I encourage my fellow Members to support today’s motion for these reasons. The current system isn't working. We have an opportunity to forge a better, proportional system that brings more people into our politics and makes people want to vote. Thank you to Rhys for bringing this issue before the Senedd.