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Government of Wales Bill

Well, my Lords, that would have to be examined against the background. The noble Lord will recognise that Select Committees in the other place were always faced with the problems of adequate representation. Part of the issue for the responsible Assembly is that if, on one committee, the rub of the green was against a particular party in an unfair way, the whole legislature, looking at the total picture, compensated elsewhere. The other place constructs its Select Committees according to such principles all the time. The d’Hondt principle can give us clear guidance on formulae, but to apply those formulae utterly arbitrarily could conceivably produce unfairness. We would expect a responsible assembly that was created on democratic lines and eager that its committees should be representative of itself to take the same approach to these issues. There is no way that small committees can solve this issue in any other way.