Wales: National Assembly Elections

Debate between Lord Roberts of Conwy and Lord Wigley

Monday 18th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Roberts of Conwy]

My Lords, first, I will compliment the Secretary of State, my noble and learned friend, and those who drafted the Green Paper. It is a model of clarity in its presentation of the choices before us and the arguments for and against them. As noble Lords said, the choices were consequential on earlier parliamentary legislation.

The choices that I make are governed by the principle that the best choices are those that bring the National Assembly and this Parliament closer together, rather than those that tend to drive apart these institutions. Therefore, it will come as no surprise that I favour the proposal that Assembly constituencies should be aligned with their parliamentary equivalents, and that we should follow the 30:30 model of 30 directly elected Assembly Members to complement the 30 Members of Parliament, and 30 Assembly Members elected by STV from five regional combinations of six parliamentary and matching Assembly constituencies. The pattern will lead to less confusion and more clarity among electors, and will appeal to local party organisers; I think that we all know that that is true. It will make life simpler for them—and for Members of Parliament and of the Assembly, who will be able to sort out between them the constituency cases that will belong appropriately to each of them.

I also favour the five-year term for the National Assembly, which will match the parliamentary term. Same-day elections should assist turnout. Its decline over the years has concerned us all. It should not be beyond the wit of most electors to handle three ballot papers simultaneously, especially if they have been warned in advance about what to expect.

[Lord Wigley]

Does the noble Lord not accept that if the elections for the National Assembly and the House of Commons were on the same day, inevitably the overwhelming attention of the press and media would be on the Westminster election? The paucity of our independent press in Wales underlines that. It would lead to a situation where there was no proper scrutiny of the programme being put forward for government in Wales—something that should be basic to democracy.

[Lord Roberts of Conwy]

Yes, of course there is a case to be made along those lines. At the same time, I urge the noble Lord to consider the low turnout at Assembly elections. The fact that there is a higher turnout for parliamentary elections could be combined and taken advantage of in order to secure more consideration by the individual elector when he gets to the ballot box of what else there is for him to choose. In practical terms, it may well be that United Kingdom politics would get more attention than local Assembly politics. However, I am not so sure that electors might not have a different view in each case. The fact is that they would be attracted to vote, which is what concerns me, and would make their decisions in the privacy of the voting booth.

I will return to my first principle: that we should endeavour to bring the National Assembly and Parliament closer together. Both institutions are, after all, part of the same democratic state, and one derives its power from the other. I said in the debate on the Queen’s Speech that there had been a strong tendency for the institutions to drift apart. Some would say that that divide has been deliberately promoted and a wedge driven, largely from the National Assembly side, but I would say that wouldn’t I? If so, it has not been particularly beneficial to Parliament, the Assembly or Welsh electors—quite the opposite.