Wales Bill

Baroness Gale Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, perhaps I might reply to my great colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, by saying that if you have only one vote as against two, the whole composition of the Assembly, including the one that is to make the further arrangements, will be totally distorted.

[Baroness Gale (Lab)]

My Lords, once again we have had a very interesting debate on how big the Assembly should be and how many seats it should have. I think that this debate has been going on since 1999, when the first Assembly sat. We know that many changes have been made in the Assembly that give it greater responsibilities, with increased powers to make decisions in Wales for Welsh people.

Many calls have been made about the number of Assembly Members. A number of reports have been published saying that 60 Members are insufficient to deal with holding the Executive to account. Increasing the number of Assembly Members has been endorsed by the Electoral Reform Society Cymru and by the Richard commission in 2004. In addition, we know that the current Presiding Officer, Dame Rosemary Butler, has endorsed this. The Richard commission said that there should be 80 seats. Silk 2 argued for the same and stated:

“The size of the … Assembly should be increased”.

In October 2013, the Electoral Reform Society and the Changing Union project published their report Size Matters and argued that there should be 100 Members, based on examination of legislatures across Europe and the competences for which the Assembly is now responsible.

As other noble Lords have said, there are only 42 Back-Benchers, which means that the ability to scrutinise legislation is severely curtailed owing to the capacity issues experienced by those Back-Benchers. We have noted that other noble Lords said earlier in the debate that the Assembly is small in relation to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and other legislatures across the world. As the legislation becomes more complex, there is a necessity for our politicians in Wales to develop areas of specialist expertise. That is difficult for most Back-Bench AMs, as they are members of more than one committee and it is difficult to build up expertise. In debating this Bill, we will be discussing tax legislation—a new and complicated area where it will be essential that adequate scrutiny takes place. If the recommendations of the areas to be devolved from Silk 2 are taken up, there will obviously be still further pressure on Assembly Members.