The System of Election

"Although we don’t want anyone to vote Conservative a lot do, and it would be quite unfair for there to be only one member to represent them." Portskewett and Caerwent with Mathren and Sudbrook BLP

There is no doubt that a purely majoritarian system of election would have been the most advantageous to Welsh Labour’s electoral ambitions. In 1999 Welsh Labour won 70% of the constituency seats. Four years later we managed to win 75% of all such seats. It is important therefore to stress that the decision to adopt the Additional Member System, a decision endorsed by Welsh Labour’s 1997 Conference, ran counter to our narrow interests as a Party. In recommending a system of election that more fairly reflected the diversity of opinion within Wales Labour effectively conceded what would have transpired to be a commanding electoral majority. We recommended an electoral system on principle, not on party advantage.

After two sets of elections Welsh Labour stands by its endorsement of an electoral system that more accurately correlates the total number of votes cast for each party with the seats they gain. But it is clear that the present system has some serious deficiencies which, left unchecked, will ultimately erode the legitimacy of the Assembly.

Foremost among these has been the practice of ‘dual candidature’, namely a candidate standing simultaneously for a constituency seat and on a regional list. It is manifestly against the interests of a healthy democracy to have candidates who have failed to secure the support of the electorate being elected to the Assembly nonetheless. It is confusing to the electorate and there is evidence that it harms the contesting of constituency seats. At the last Assembly elections some constituency candidates for opposition parties did less than they could have to contest their seat because their place in the Assembly was all but assured by being placed highly on their regional list. The number of uncontested seats is quite rightly a matter of concern at local government level. Welsh Labour urges the Commission to take the problem of poorly contested Assembly constituency seats just as seriously, recognising that dual candidature is the principal cause.

Regional list and constituency AMs have exactly the same roles, rights, responsibilities and privileges within the Assembly, but this has not reflected the very different means by which they were elected, or their roles in the constituency or constituencies. The situation has been aggravated by a number of rulings from the Presiding Office allowing regional list AMs to style themselves ‘local Assembly Members’ or as the AM for a named constituency – even though, perversely, they may well have been heavily defeated when they stood for that constituency! Once again this has caused needless confusion among the electorate, who are likely to become disengaged from the political process by seeing defeated constituency candidates in the Assembly, and referring to themselves as the local AM. It has become abundantly obvious that regional list AMs do not have the same volume of casework as constituency AMs, but their office and staff allowance schemes have been the same; this is unfair. Moreover, there is now ample evidence that some regional list AMs have used their positions to concentrate on one constituency out of the many in their region, and prepare the ground for a future candidature. This runs counter to their mandate and the opportunities that exist to represent the entire electoral region.

The practice of regional list and constituency AMs enjoying the same voting rights in the chamber and in the committees has been of benefit to the diversity of representation in the Assembly. But it is clear that an opportunity has been missed to make better use of the different mandates enjoyed by regional list members in line with Additional Member Systems in other European countries. It is common is other such systems for list members to specialise in areas of policy or to take specific offices, such as committee chairs.