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Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I hope that noble Lords will not mind a Scot joining in the debate. The Minister seemed rather to resent Scottish interventions during Second Reading, which was a pity because in this aspect of the amendments on the additional members system there is a cross-over in experience and thinking, which some Welsh noble Lords have already mentioned. I have no personal experience of STV, but we have been discussing where I live in Scotland the effect of STV on the local government elections and how we are going to organise them.
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It has become clear where I live that in the local government context the effect of having a large area with a number of members will be that there will be members from a town far away from where we live about which we know nothing—and in which we are not terribly interested in the context of its purely local affairs—competing with members from round where I live. If they belong to different parties and come from places that are not closely identified there are going to be problems that will have to be overcome. That is what one has to overcome with an STV system.
But imagining the map of Wales—which, I admit, I do with some difficulty; I do not know it well—I remember from my experience in the Guide Association in Wales that some of the areas are very remote one from another. There will be Assembly members under STV who do not know much about the local area where their constituents are living. Their constituents will have difficulty in identifying with them. I would have thought that the STV system would bring the Assembly further from the people than the present system, not closer. I base that purely on my understanding of the effect of STV in local government in Scotland. I would have thought that that alone is an argument against it.
In relation to this debate and to the one on the amendment that my noble friend is about to move, it is essential that noble Lords should consider the issue above all from the point of view of the voters and not of the members of the Assembly. Democracy is about what the voters want; it is about giving satisfaction to the voters and trying to get more people to vote. Elected members have to come to terms with the system that they have. That is extremely important. I am sure that they could come to terms with STVs and I am sure that they can come to terms with the system that they have, but we must look primarily at the interests not of elected members but of voters. That is an important point.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I was rather surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, said that the proposals had had no serious consultation and debate. I prefer the encomium of the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, who said that the Richard report was one of the most assiduously considered and imaginative reports there had ever been.
This issue has been fully discussed and debated throughout Wales and the Richard commission came to a very clear decision. Just as we have looked at the structure of the Assembly and have seen that the proposals are to move on from the corporate structure to one more of ministerial responsibility and an executive, so we ought to consider that the electoral system which was first proposed was transitional. The Government ought not to be afraid of moving from it. The figure of 60 members was chosen because there was a general fear that if you proposed more than 60, the people of Wales would reject the concept altogether because there would be too many paid politicians. Much was made by the opponents of devolution about the fact that we are having more paid
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politicians and all their staff thrust upon us. That probably restricted the number to 60. Practice has shown, as investigated by the Richard commission, that 60 is not enough, and is certainly not enough with the additional powers that are now being granted to the Assembly.
In the transitional electoral system that we have a tension has grown up between the constituency members and the regional members. It is a tension that derives from our concept of first past the post which introduces the idea of winners and losers—not of how well represented an area is but that some people have won and other people have lost. There was undoubted resentment—I found that when touring Wales as a member of the Sutherland commission concerned with local government electoral systems—and a great deal of unhappiness expressed by Members of the Labour Party that people who had lost in constituency elections were being returned as Members for a region upon a regional list. I recognise that tension. There has been a suggestion that regional members have less validity than constituency members. Only STV can cure that. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, told us that the commission looked at all sorts of systems. The STV system maintains and retains the connection with a constituency. It means that a member is elected by the electors of that constituency and not on a closed party list, as happens with regional members. I think that everybody in this House, except possibly the Government, would recognise that closed party lists are not a very happy state of affairs. Essentially it would mean that there was no difference between one member and another. There would be equal validity, no question of rank and of, "I represent you better than that regional member over there".
The AMS system has been tried. It was an experiment. The numbers were an experiment and were transitional. Practice has shown that it is not satisfactory. I urge the Committee to consider that we should change it, and change it now.
Lord Davies of Oldham: We have had an interesting and inevitably wide-ranging debate on electoral systems, which was to be anticipated. First, I make it clear that there is a difference between the argument which my noble friend Lord Richard put forward in his commission, and which he articulated today, and the argument which has been presented by noble Lords from the Liberal Democrat Benches who are keen to advance the excitements of the single transferable vote. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for pointing out some of the difficulties of the single transferable vote, and also to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, who indicated his reservations about the virtues of that method. The difference between my noble friend Lord Richard and the Liberal Democrat Party on this is that my noble friend Lord Richard reached the position that there should be 80 Assembly members for Wales, and that the single transferable vote was a way of tackling the election of those increased numbers. The Liberals are going about this the other way round, with the emphasis on the virtues
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of changing the voting system, and latching on to the report of my noble friend Lord Richard on the 80 Assembly members.
I will address the serious issue of the extra members. We do not think that there is a great public appetite for additional professional politicians in Wales. I have not heard a single argument this afternoon that has testified to that. We have not had this afternoon any indication of whether in fact the National Assembly for Wales could include its working practices to encompass the additional load, which will certainly be consequent upon this Bill. But significant members in the National Assembly for Wales are well aware of the fact that more work could be done more effectively. I quote no less a figure than the presiding officer, who is a Member of this House also, the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, who agreed that the timetable could be changed. He indicated, for instance, that the National Assembly for Wales was rising two weeks before the United Kingdom Parliament. At Christmas, he indicated that the assembly could sit for at least 40 weeks, which is pretty close to the regular habits of the United Kingdom Parliament, with this House, I might add, from time to time, outdoing the other place in the numbers of sittings. He agreed that the Assembly could work longer. We all know that assemblies work a great deal longer than the National Assembly for Wales does at the present time.
I am an admirer of the work that has been achieved so far, but the National Assembly for Wales is in its early days, in terms of how it organises itself and the question of its reputation with the people of Wales. It will want to enhance that reputation and I cannot think of a better way to do this than to address itself to its practices, to how it works, and to be able to organise itself so that work is done more effectively. I think there is considerable agreement among many of the members of the Welsh Assembly. I do not think that an elected member is likely to go before the electorate and say that they were against the additional obligations being put on them by the development of this legislation because it would involve more work. We are not convinced that we need additional numbers. It is only the additional numbers, however, that bring in this argument for the single transferable vote and all its horrors. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, was his customary courteous and considered self in indicating that he was not totally convinced of the merits of that system. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, indicated just where it falls down in other legislatures.
Let us try to see what Wales would look like under the single transferable vote. Almost certainly, there would be one constituency for Cardiff, with probably eight members for Cardiff. Well, there is a recipe for effective representation as far as Cardiff is concerned. Of course we would see that all the elected members from different parties, if they were from different parties, would work in amity and concord in the interests of Cardiff, with never a fractious moment between them as they competed for the public's support in Cardiff. Come on, my Lords! That is a recipe for division, not for effective government. It is not even an effective measure for representation,
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because the problem for the Cardiff electorate would be just who to hold accountable in their substantial constituency.
It is not as if we have not been down this road before. We know the problems with regard to the elections to the European Parliament and the problems that the British people have with the accountability of those Members. By accountability, I put no other argument forward than the straightforward fact that a very much greater number of the electorate knows who their Member of Parliament is than knows who their MEP is. That would certainly be true with regard to Assembly members if we destroyed the constituency system. It destroys accountability, and the Government are against such a change. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, who also identified her anxieties about the implications for a rural area. Wales is pretty rural too, and a couple of these constituencies would be vast—for example, in northern Wales or central Wales, and that would present exactly the same problems.
I recognised that the amendments would be spoken to with passion from the Liberal Benches. They are after all at the heart of what the Liberal party largely exists for, which is electoral change. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, identified his reservations about any assembly which had members who were elected in different forms. I do not know where the noble Lord stands on the question of reform of this House, but I have not heard anyone advocate such change in this House, unless they are in favour of a totally elected House. I have not heard too many representations on that part from Members of this House, and that is also true for representations from the other place. All other representations are for some form of mixed membership, so we may as well recognise that we may need to adjust to that. In a sense, Wales is blazing a trail on that, as is Scotland.
Therefore, it is not for me to go into a great deal of detail on the amendments. To give the movers of the amendment their proper due, they have put together a group of amendments that makes entire coherent sense if one accepts the propositions that underlie the virtues of the single transferable vote, of large constituencies and a larger assembly. I do not think that case has been made.
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