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Government of Wales Bill

I have listened carefully to what the noble Lord has said in favour of this amendment and the substitution of the single transferable vote system, as described by the Richard commission report. However, the amendment generates a number of concerns. Changing the number of elected representatives and the voting system would be a huge adjustment for the Welsh Assembly. Furthermore, accepting this amendment would mean introducing the system without any serious consultation or debate. I am very antipathetic towards that. It is essential that before any new system is considered there should be extensive consultation about whether the people of Wales see the single transferable vote as a suitable replacement to the current additional member system, which we will come to shortly. STV is also damaging to important constituency links between Member and voter and impacts on the democratic accountability that those links enable. Much larger constituencies with more Members will fundamentally reduce the link between an MP and his or her constituency. Accepting this amendment would lead to a fundamental change to the voting system in Wales. We cannot support an amendment which calls for such a change without prior consultation with those that it affects. I am therefore of the opinion that we should maintain the current additional member system, as I shall argue shortly, which enables us to include the best features of the first-past-the-post system while including proportionality between parties through party list voting.