Let me start by thanking the Chair of the committee, members past and present, and the Commission staff who worked to produce the report and recommendations for today. I thank also the expert panel chaired by Laura McAllister, commissioned five years ago by the Senedd Commission to bring forward recommendations on Senedd reform. One of those recommendations has already been enacted in enabling 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in 2021, and the remainder of the recommendations in general will take a major step forward today if this motion is approved. If there was ever a report that did not lie idly on a shelf collecting dust, then it may well be Laura McAllister's expert panel report.

That's part of the short history of why we're here having this debate today, but, of course, there's a longer history too. Sometimes, we make the mistake that devolution—our Senedd—belongs exclusively to us, the generation that spans from the class of '99, from the Icelandic 1,000-year old me and Jane Hutt, to the class of '21, but it belongs to so many of our political predecessors and to our successors too, from the class of 2026 to the class of 3026 and beyond.

Neither does devolution belong to one political tradition in Wales, but to many political traditions; to those predecessors, from S.O. Davies, Jim Griffiths and Elystan Morgan, to Megan Lloyd George, to Gwynfor Evans and to my uncle Jack—J.B. Evans—the lifelong Carmarthenshire Conservative, both parliamentary candidate and agent, and pro devolution. He was solely responsible for giving the 12-year-old me a 'Yes for Wales' sticker to wear on my school uniform in March 1979. 

Political debate on devolution spanned the entirety of the twentieth century, but devolution's actual starting point was not democratic devolution in 1999; its first building blocks were administrative devolution. I was reminded of the importance of this when listening to Lord John Morris a few weeks ago in the Senedd speaking about the first Secretary of State for Wales in 1964, Jim Griffiths—such an important appointment by the new Labour UK Government at the time, but preceded by the appointment in 1951 by the Conservative Government of the first Home Office Minister for Welsh Affairs, itself preceded by the creation of the Welsh board of education in 1907 by the Liberal Government. The Secretary of State's executive powers in 1964 were initially limited to responsibility for housing, local government and roads. Over the course of the next 10 years, responsibilities for health and education, agriculture and the environment were added—areas of responsibility that ultimately became the democratic responsibilities of that first elected Assembly in 1999. 

In this Chamber, we've heard today, we are familiar with what has happened since 1999: the significant increases and transfers of powers and responsibilities by successive UK Governments from Westminster to Wales. We would not be here today discussing Senedd reform were it not for the transfer of responsibility for Senedd elections by the UK Conservative Government via the Wales Act 2017 from Westminster to this Senedd. Why, then, my trip down devolution's memory lane? Well, it's to remind us all that we've reached this point today because of a wide array of actions and decisions by people of varying political persuasions over a century and more. And we are faced now, in this third decade of the twenty-first century, with the question of whether we finally want to equip our Parliament with the tools to do the job properly, with our current set of powers, and with the tools to take on more powers, if and when they are devolved or demanded.

Every independent commissioned analysis of our Parliament has concluded that we are under-resourced in the number of elected Members to do the job of holding Government to account and to scrutinise and pass legislation and budgets. Parliament members everywhere in the world should have the time to develop real expertise in subject areas, to be able to forensically scrutinise ministerial decisions, to be able to research and learn of great policy proposals to introduce here in Wales. But most of you are run ragged with the overload of the day-to-day here. As Llywydd, I watch all of you—all 58 of you—leaders of parties, Ministers in Government, backbenchers sitting on two or three committees, chairing committees, spokespeople delivering numerous speeches and questions in Plenary every week, chairing and attending cross-party groups, on top of all your constituency work, and I am reminded of the fact, in Laura McAllister's expert panel report, where it said that 115 MPs in Westminster do not sit on any committee or hold any additional role in Government or opposition. Nobody has that luxury here, and neither would they in a 96-Member Senedd.

We can carry on and do the best we can as 60 Members, or we can properly empower the next generation of Welsh politicians—and some of you are those politicians—to finally have the Parliament that the people of Wales deserve.