As you’ll probably know by now, in the last few weeks the (at least) second Senedd committee set up to consider electoral reform reported back (pdf).
The headline recommendations were:
- The number of Senedd Members should be increased from 60 to 96.
- All MSs should be elected using closed list proportional representation via the D’Hondt method (at the moment only the 20 regional list members are).
- The Senedd should have 16 constituencies based (initially) on pairing together the proposed 32 new UK Parliament seats. Each new Senedd constituency would elect 6 MSs. The constituency boundaries will be reviewed again by 2031.
- There should be a statutory gender quota, which would likely mean minimum numbers of male and female candidates in each constituency. It’s also recommended that candidate diversity monitoring is improved.
- More work should be undertaken to pave the way for future job-sharing and quotas for defining characteristics other than gender (i.e. race, disability).
On Wednesday, the Senedd backed the principles of the committee’s report by 40 votes to 14 meaning work can start on the necessary law changes.
With Labour and Plaid Cymru having a supermajority (two-thirds of MSs) between them – and a political mandate from the 2021 election to make changes to the Senedd – as long as there are no hitches, reforms ought to be in place by the next scheduled election in 2026.
The issue now is whether some of these recommendations, if enacted, could end up causing more problems than they aim to solve.
I’m as tired of never-ending navel-gazing talk from the Senedd about the Senedd as most of you are, but if these proposals become a reality it won’t be the end of it.
Once the Bill is introduced there’ll be opportunities for amendments and such – which unless both Labour and Plaid agree would be unlikely to pass. But if flaws aren’t addressed this term then it won’t provide a lasting solution because the conversation will just move on to switching to STV, more boundary reviews and introducing job-sharing or some other reform.
All of the political parties have done their best to drag this out for an unnecessarily long time. Now that we’ve reached a point where reforms can be introduced, it makes no sense to come up with weak justifications to abandon some of the key recommendations of the Richard Commission, McAllister Review and all the other independent reports on this that have come out down the years.
Politics is often the art of compromise. In most cases, that’s the reasonable thing to do. In this case though it either works the first time and lasts so they can get on with the day job, or it should be called off.
