Commission on the Powers and Electoral Arrangements

of the National Assembly for Wales

 Submission by

Dr Denis Balsom

• The adoption of an electoral system with a proportional element has allowed the National Assembly to become a forum for genuine debate between all four principal political parties whilst still retaining the essential one member – one constituency link.

• The presence of all four main parties in the National Assembly is especially important and any reform to the present system should be undertaken to ensure, as far as possible, that this range of representation is retained. The absence of Conservative representation from Wales in the House of Commons since 1997, despite polling a fifth of all votes, has diminished public debate.

• Sharing constituencies in common with those for Parliament has the advantage of allowing electors to identify with a single unit as their unique political territory.

• If the number of Welsh Parliamentary constituencies were to be reduced by any future Boundary Commission (as in Scotland), several dangers present themselves. Assuming that future Parliamentary apportionment was to be proportionate to that for England, the number of MPs from Wales might fall to 32. On the present basis of parity + 50% additional members, the size of the Assembly would be correspondingly reduced to 48. Such a reduction would further exacerbate present concerns that the Assembly was already too small. New legislation to retain the present Assembly constituencies, separate from new divisions for Parliament (as in Scotland) would mean the loss of a sense of common political identity.

• The familiarity of the first-past-the-post electoral system and the principle of an elected member representing all of a community, irrespective of partisanship, are core values, embedded in the British political tradition, that should not be prejudiced.

• The outcome of the constituency election however, can be grossly disproportional and any reform that extended the scope of simple plurality voting would further compound this problem. In the context of a relatively small Assembly, such disproportionality could seriously undermine public confidence. At Westminster, such concerns are less of an issue, amongst over six hundred MPs and where, traditionally, the two main parties have both had areas of concentrated strength which, in part, cancel each other out.

• The defined electoral regions are not natural political communities and are therefore not areas to which electors relate to intuitively. Although the present configuration existed previously as Euro-constituencies, these no longer apply and were not, in any case, natural, elector-friendly, homogenous areas.

• The present system gives each elector 5 AMs, one from their constituency, four from their region. Whilst this may give electors a greater chance of raising issues with a Member who shares their own partisanship, the AMs do not share a common mandate and are elected on a different basis.

• Uncertainty exists within the electorate as to who is their ‘real’ AM. This confusion is sometimes compounded by the vocabulary of Members. When Nick Bourne refers to his constituency, does he mean Mid & West Wales or Brecon & Radnor – in this particular case, usually the latter where he is the candidate and not the elected Member.

• The lead candidates put forward by the political parties on the List are not necessarily the individuals that would be elected should the party become entitled to additional members. The political parties (esp. Labour) have tended to rank prominent leadership names high on the list in an attempt to attract voter support, whereas many of these candidates will actually be elected in the constituency election. This ploy deliberately misleads the electorate, for either the party is not really in contention for an additional member seat, or the true candidate for election is actually placed much lower down the List.

• Candidates use the list as an insurance against failing to win a constituency contest. This dual candidacy can also confuse the electorate, who may wish to consciously reject a particular candidate only to find them elected via the list. It should remain a basic democratic right not to elect a particular candidate or to be able to vote a Member out.

• Any list candidate not fighting a constituency is put in the invidious position whereby their own prospect of election increases in direct proportion to their colleagues fighting seats likelihood of failure. Thus a Labour candidate for Mid & West Wales, for example, would be acting against their own interests in urging electors in Llanelli to vote Labour in the constituency election.

• Political parties do not share an equal commitment to contesting the regional list election. Where a party’s strength in the constituency election precludes additional members, they are forced into a charade of competition (e.g. Labour in South Wales West). Electors are being cynically encouraged to vote for the same party in both elections, even though their regional vote is effectively wasted.

• Any increase in the number of Assembly Members made by the Commission should require the extra AMs to be elected from the List. The allocation of a greater number of List seats would enable the final outcome of an Assembly election to be more proportional than currently achieved.

• Additional member AMs should be elected from an all-Wales list. A single, national AMS election would:

1. Negate the present danger of wasted votes
2. Would give each party an equal incentive to compete
3. Would allow candidates from minority parties, e.g. the Green Party, to compete more effectively, led by their national spokesmen rather than being forced to find candidates for five regional elections.
4. Similarly, candidates from outside of the principal political parties, whom the original White Paper conceived of as potential Assembly Members, such as national figures from business, sports or the media, would also be able to compete more effectively.

• Electors in the List election should cast a single vote for a party by name. The parties may wish to publish a list of their pool of candidates before the election, but the elector would only vote for a party by name. After the election, the parties would nominate their additional members, who might include defeated constituency candidates.

• Issues concerning the representation of social minorities, such as women, youth, ethnic minorities and the disabled, should be matters addressed by the political parties in their nomination procedures.

• Post election, alongside nominating policy spokesmen etc. parties may wish to announce the names of AMs assuming particular responsibilities for various parts of Wales.

• Perfect proportional representation should not be the absolute goal of any reform to the electoral system. The present hybrid approach retains the important constituency-Member link and also facilitates the broad representation of all the main political interests. Any further developments should be within this model. A reformed system need not alter these fundamentals of the status quo, but greater transparency and openness would engender increased public confidence and promote more widespread democratic values.