Let's vote for people, not parties

-and not too many of them at that.

I had originally headlined this item "Blatant troughing in the guise of improving government". It certainly looked like Labour and Plaid Cymru carving out more jobs for the favoured boys in their joint proposals for expanding the Welsh parliament. But let us be more forensic.

First, some history.  In 2004, the Richard Commission reported. It surveyed the governance of Wales and proposed further devolution. To cope with the increased responsibilities, they reckoned that more elected representatives would be required. They calculated that 80 was the right number. They would be elected by Single Transferable Vote (STV) the same system as has been used in the Republic of Ireland for around a century and in Scottish local elections for fifteen years. In the event, there was some further devolution but not to the extent proposed by the Commission, and there was to be no change in the composition of the Welsh Assembly (now Senedd). It should be emphasised that the Commission was truly cross-party, with some heavyweight Labour figures on it.

Now, with no increase in responsibilities, the Labour/Nationalist coalition is proposing to increase the Senedd by nearly twice that calculated by Richard. One presumes that they do not envisage a cut in the pay of Senedd members, nor in the size of support staff per member. Their reasoning is no doubt that it is simpler to take the Westminster-dictated future 32 parliamentary constituencies and multiply by 3 rather than conduct their own boundary review. 

Wales is about the same size as Slovenia, which is a fully independent nation. Slovenia's parliament has only 90 members, less than the 96 proposed for Wales. Before allowances etc., the basic salary of a Slovenian MP was 41,447 euro, an MS £64,000 (2016 figures). That is, in 2016, on basic salary alone, the Senedd's 60 MSs cost 4.6m euro while Slovenia totalled 3.7m euro. The Welsh government proposals would cost more than twice the Slovenian MPs' wage bill and for less responsibility. There is a case for cutting MS salaries even without the proposed expansion.

Then there is the method of election. One would have thought that, with experience of party lists used to provide some (but not enough) proportionality in topping up Senedd membership, leaders of the two parties would have abandoned this element. Instead, the desire for even tighter central control has moved them to opt for the party list as the sole means of election. There have already been instances of members of one party switching allegiance mid-term, confounding the intention of regional voters. There have been unfortunate situations when a party has been unable to fill a vacancy caused by a resignation.

More to the point, the system takes away the ability of the voter to decide between individuals. The parties say, these are the people we think should represent you. There is a variation, termed the "semi-open" list, which enables voters to move candidates up and down the basic list, but there is no indication that Labour favours this. They have also plumped for the d'Hondt method of allocating winners which - surprise, surprise! - favours large parties. (The major alternative is the Sainte-Laguë method - "Franklin method" in the US - which is fairer to small parties. There is more on the Electoral Reform web-site.) 

If the Labour/Nationalist coalition persists with this regressive and costly plan, I predict that the Westminster parliament will step in. There is even a risk that they will legislate to reverse devolution, a step which will find much support in Wales, and not just among Conservatives.