Wales Bill

Debate between Nia Griffith and Pete Wishart

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith]

Amendment 13 would remove a clause which would make it possible for people to stand both on the regional list and in the constituency. A bizarre argument is put forward in favour of dual candidacy—if dual candidacy is not allowed, the smaller parties in Wales may struggle to find sufficient candidates of any quality—but if such parties expect the electorate to take them seriously as parties that could help form a Government in Wales, they need to demonstrate that they can find enough additional candidates to field on each of the five regional lists.

Could this problem of finding candidates be something to do with which parties we are talking about and what they believe in? Could it be that young people in Wales are not rushing to put themselves forward as Conservative candidates because they know that the Conservative party in Westminster abolished the education maintenance allowance, while the Labour Welsh Government have retained it, or because the Conservative Government here did away with Labour’s future jobs fund, whereas the Labour Welsh Government have launched a similar programme, Jobs Growth Wales, focusing on the private sector? There is also the issue of university tuition fees.

Could it be that people are not coming forward as candidates for Plaid Cymru because they do not want an independent Wales, or because they do not want to support cutting tax for the better off, as Plaid Cymru’s economic adviser, Adam Price, has confirmed is its policy? People have realised that Plaid Cymru is not the progressive party it pretends to be, but a reactionary party.

Perhaps people do not want to put themselves forward as Lib Dem candidates as they are somewhat confused. One minute we hear that the Lib Dems are in favour of a reserved powers model, yet we struggled to see any of them in the Lobby with us, supporting our amendment. I am not sure where they are now.

People simply do not like to think that they have bothered to go out to vote, only to find that although their preferred candidate won, the candidate or candidates they rejected also got in. We all remember the Clwyd West scenario where the Labour candidate won the constituency—

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

What advice has the hon. Lady had from her colleagues in Scotland on this issue, given that they are now almost totally dependent on the list for their membership in the Scottish Parliament and have reviewed their whole attitude towards dual candidacy? It is a democratic good, according to Scottish Labour.

[Nia Griffith]

I am not casting aspersions on any individual list candidates. We have two excellent Labour list Assembly Members in west Wales—Rebecca Evans, who champions disability issues, and Joyce Watson, who champions human trafficking issues. They are doing an excellent job, because they are focusing on topics, not sitting like some great cuckoo on one constituency out of eight and making that their sole focus of attention, ignoring what is happening in important aspects of the other seven constituencies that they represent.

We have seen such abuse in Wales before. I am sure my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) will remind us again, as he has done many times, of the blatant abuse of the list system. He has quoted frequently from the leaked memorandum from Leanne Wood, the leader of Plaid Cymru, in which she gives explicit instructions to her party’s list Assembly Members to direct their time and resources, paid for by the taxpayer, to Plaid Cymru’s target seats.

Some people say that putting into the 2006 Act the clause that prevents an individual from standing for both the constituency and the list was a partisan move by the Labour Government, but we knew full well that it would also prevent our candidates from standing for both. We had at least four sitting constituency AMs who we knew were likely to be vulnerable to electoral change in the 2007 Assembly election and who could have hedged their bets by standing for both. That might have been very cosy for them, but as a matter of principle we knew how much the electorate hated it. On the doorsteps we heard people ask, “What difference will it make if we go out and vote?” It was extremely difficult to convince people after the Clwyd West scenario, because whoever the constituents voted for, all four parties were elected.

It was extremely important to us to stand by our principle, rather than making some sort of cosy situation for our AMs. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in some circumstances, depending on the specific arithmetic for the region, a candidate who could stand for both the constituency and the list could be pretty much guaranteed to be elected on one or other of them. That could breed a certain complacency, which would not serve the electorate well at all. We take issue with the accusation that this is a partisan point, because it is a point of principle. We strongly oppose clause 2, which seeks to turn the clocks back and allow dual candidacy. Our amendment therefore seeks to remove that clause from the Bill.

Our view is that the Assembly’s electoral arrangements should be decided in Wales, so we have also tabled an amendment proposing that an order should be laid in the Assembly by the Welsh Government before any change on dual candidacy can be implemented. I hope that Members will vote for our amendments.