SUBMISSION TO THE RICHARD COMMISSION
From Cllr. Chris Simpson

Introduction

I apologise for sending in this submission after the official closure date. I have only recently become aware of the timetable of the Commission.

I am sending in a submission in two parts:

1. A response to the questions posed in the document on the Commission’s website
2. A response to the submission from the Electoral Reform Society

1)    Is the size of the Assembly adequate for its present job? In general terms, my answer is yes (but see also my paragraphs 6-9 below). I would point out that Israel, a country similar in size to Wales, has a Knesset of 100 members which manages to do the work done by both WAG and Westminster. I do not accept your position in paragraph 10)a) that size should follow function. This neglects the facts that the efficiency of WAG and the ways it works have a great deal of influence on the amount of business it can transact. All other public services are constantly being pressed to find "efficiency savings" – I do not see any reason why WAG should be able to enlarge itself instead of becoming more efficient. (In passing, I think it is clear that Westminster is one of the most inefficient public bodies in the UK. WAG should avoid copying the Westminster model wherever possible.)

2)    Presiding Officer and Deputy (para 12) Elected AMs should not take up these posts. They cannot carry out the duties they were elected to do. WAG should have non-elected appointees carrying out these duties, so that the 60 elected AMs can all do the jobs they were elected to do.

3)    Is the Assembly sufficiently representative? The electoral system chosen has to strike a balance between allowing the expression of a broad range of political perspectives within the chamber, and enabling effective government to take place during the four year term of each WAG. There is no such thing as a perfect electoral system – all the systems identified within your discussion paper have advantages and disadvantages. For example, the Israeli Knesset is absolutely proportional, with an effective threshold of 1%. This true proportionality has the effect of allowing the proliferation of a large number of splinter parties with narrow sectional interests each of whom gets 1-2 members in the Knesset. These small parties then exert an undue influence on each successive Israeli government.

4)    My feeling is that many of the problems which have been identified with the AMS as used in WAG elections could be overcome by moving to a single, Wales-wide list for the additional members.

5)    Is it important to maintain a link with Westminster constituencies? I would say yes. It is easy for electors to understand. It enables the Westminster MP and the AM to cooperate on issues affecting both levels of government very easily. Many MPs & AMs share accommodation and secretarial facilities which is a useful efficiency saving.

6)    How should the Assembly be enlarged? Despite having said earlier that I do not accept the need for any Assembly enlargement, clearly, it follows from my 5) above that if the Boundary Commission increase the number of Westminster MPs, the number of AMs should also increase. I would also say that for each additional constituency AM, there should be an additional 1-2 list AM. Thus if we have 41 MPs, we will have 62-63 AMs.

7)    Should the Commission decide that there is a strong case for enlarging WAG, with a Wales-wide list, it will be relatively easy to add extra list AMs to reach your target number of AMs. The percentage of constituency MPs in the present WAG is 66.6% which is at the top end of the desirable range. The percentage in Germany is 50%, which I consider to be at the bottom of the desirable range. Therefore, you could slot in an extra 10 AMs if you wish and still have a reasonable balance between constituency and list AMs.

8)    One advantage of adding extra list AMs would be that in future, it would be very unlikely that any one political party would achieve a majority. My view is that the adversarial system implicit in the Westminster model should be avoided if at all possible. Those countries with a long history of PR elections all have a political culture where parties are used to working together within parliaments to achieve efficient, effective government.

9)    Should the Commission decide that it will move to a Wales-wide list, you will also need to add a threshold value below which no AMs would be allocated. My opinion is that the threshold value should be somewhere in the region of 5%. Experience in Germany over the last 50 years has shown that the 5% figure has worked out well in practice.

1)    The Electoral Report Society has been campaigning for electoral reform for many years; and I support their view that we need to get rid of the FPTP electoral system for Westminster elections.

2)    It is unfortunate that they have persisted with support for STV when better systems have become available. My view is that they have a historical legacy of campaigning for STV because for a long time, STV and electoral reform were synonymous.

3)    STV is the best electoral system for the election of individuals, for example individuals to posts within an organisation. I am a member of the Royal College of Pathologists, and we use STV to elect our president and ruling council. This means that of the 30-40 candidates for posts, the 10 successful ones are those candidates who have the widest support within the College.

4)    Most voters voting at European, Westminster and WAG levels vote primarily for a political party, rather than for an individual. (This does not hold true at lower levels of government, where many voters vote for the individual rather than for the party.)

5)    STV is not the best system for the election of political parties, rather than individuals. It has several inherent defects which AMS doe not have.

1. The effective threshold is very high with STV. Using their figures, it would be 14.3% with 6-member constituencies, 20% with 4-member constituencies and rising to 25% for three member constituencies. These figures are far to high, even in 6-member constituencies to achieve anything like a reasonable proportionality between the parties. The only advantage would be that the Labour Party would lose its present majority – but that would happen anyway if the Assembly were to be enlarged with extra list AMs. Small parties would either not get in at all, or would have numbers of AMs well below their entitlement under a proportional system. As I mentioned earlier, my feeling is that the threshold figure of 5% is about the best compromise between allowing for the expression of a wide range of political opinion within the legislature and stopping undue splintering of political parties.
2. The constituency size would be too large. About two-thirds of Wales is rural. The Westminster constituency area is already large in these rural areas. If these existing constituencies are combined in threes or fours as the Electoral Reform Society proposes, the areas will be unmanageably large. There will not be any effective constituency link, as the constituencies will be too large.
3. Political parties need to know in advance what their level of support is to decide how many members to stand. For example, in a 6-member ward, a party such as the Labour Party may decide to stand two candidates or three. If they stand only two, they may lose the opportunity to get three people elected. If, on the other hand, they stand three candidates, they may end up with only one elected because of the way the votes are split between their candidates versus the other parties

The submission from the Electoral Reform Society is long and detailed. There are many areas where their submission is misleading or inaccurate. Some are detailed below:

i) The "problem" of two types of AM: there is no problem in other countries using AMS voting. This "problem" only exists in the minds of people who do not like this electoral system.

ii) Voter apathy due to AMS: there are many factors behind voter apathy. The idea that the AMS system has either caused or contributed to voter apathy has no factual basis.

iii) AMS causes wasted votes: it is true that the constituency vote suffers from the same problem of wasted votes as FPTP. That is the whole point behind the second vote – to ensure proportionality so that every vote counts! If the system is amended so that there is a Wales-wide list, the end result will be far more proportional than anything which could be achieved by STV.

iv) People do not understand AMS: are we to assume that the Welsh are less intelligent that the Germans? Once the system has been properly explained and people get used to it, there will not be any problem.

v) Tensions between constituency and list AMs: this is not a problem with the voting process – it is a problem of the way the Assembly members work once they have been elected. This is a quite separate problem which has to be addressed in other ways e.g. by amending the standing orders of WAG, rather than changing the electoral system.

vi) AMS can weaken links between members and electors: it has always been generally understood by both electors and MPs that the MP in Westminster represents all the electors within that constituency, whatever their political allegience. I do not see any reason why it should be any different with AMs in Wales. Those electors who are not happy with their constituency AM have list AMs to utilise as well. This argument is spurious.

vii) The outcome was a foregone conclusion: clearly, that is true for many constituency elections in Wales. The same does not hold true for the second vote. Once people get used to AMS voting, they will realise that there is no foregone conclusion to any WAG election – every vote will contribute to the final result.

viii) Wasted Votes: none of the second votes are wasted. If we move to a Wales-wide list, the result will be truly proportional and will produce an Assembly which reflects the overall votes of the electorate much better than an STV election could.

ix) No small parties gained representation: this would be solved by moving to a Wales-wide list.

x) Some candidates who lost in constituency contests were nevertheless elected as list AMs: what is wrong with that? The Electoral Reform Society wants to have it both ways. Nearly every elected constituency AM (and Westminster MP) is elected on a minority of the vote – a system which the Society says is wrong because the "winner" was actually rejected by the majority of the electorate. The only difference between the "winner" and the "losers" is that the losers were rejected by a larger majority than the winners. Therefore, nearly every AM is a loser – only those who got over 50% of the vote can count themselves as valid AMs; and if you look at turnout, then all of them are losers because none of them was elected by over 50% of the electorate!

Naturally, political parties make up their party lists from candidates who also stand in individual constituency ballots. Parties want their best people to stand and to be elected. I cannot see any problem with a candidate standing for both a list and a constituency.

xi) AMS did not assist in the election of women and ethnic minority AMs: the party lists are published in advance. It is clear that most parties did ensure that many women features on their lists. The ethnic minority population in Wales is much smaller than in England – it is not surprising that not many featured on party lists. If the percentage of ethnic minorities increased within Wales, I am sure that they will feature in party lists. Therefore, AMS did assist in the election of women.

The idea that STV will automatically increase the numbers of women and ethnic minority candidates is fallacious. Let us consider a 6-member constituency. Clearly, if a party is going to put up three candidates, they are likely to select at least one woman and maybe one candidate from an ethnic minority. But how often is a party going to be in the position of putting up three candidates? We know that if a party puts up too many candidates it can actually reduce the number of people elected. Therefore, in most cases, there will only be one or two candidates. In a four-member constituency, most parties will be putting up only one candidate. How will this assist in the election of women and ethnic minority candidates? Not at all, as the parties will play safe with a white, middle-aged male to maximise their chances of election.

xii) Candidate selection: the Society claims that STV and open lists are more democratic because it is the voters who decide which of the parties’ candidates will be successful. Whilst this is true of the open lists, it certainly is not likely to be so with STV.

Furthermore, the electoral system has to produce an effective, working parliament. Although it may be argued on theoretical grounds that the system which maximises the democratic input from the voters has to be the best, this is not necessarily so in real life. Governments are going to be made up of political parties either in isolation or within a coalition. The parties have an internal structure with leaders, spokespeople, experts in different fields etc. Therefore, the electoral system needs to allow parties to be fairly clear about who is going to be elected so they can assemble their best team.