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Government of Wales Bill

Changing how we elect our Members of the European Parliament has not been a happy experience. From my vantage point in Welsh Labour, although I guess that this is generally true, I have noticed that individual Members of the European Parliament used to have a relationship with their constituency. They were able to attend civic functions and party meetings, which led to the constant injection of European issues into the wider political culture. Since that relationship was broken, accountability has not been the same. In retrospect, whatever the advantages of that change—it was introduced to try to obtain fairer representation—it served to break the link between MEPs and local electors.