Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, I am sorry that I was a little hesitant in rising, but I thought that other noble Lords still wished to participate in the debate, although to be fair we considered these issues extensively in Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Livsey, will recognise that he is not winning any greater support today than he did when he put forward these propositions in Committee. As to the question of whether the numbers should be increased, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and my noble friend Lord Rowlands that when the Richard commission referred to 80 it was, of course, looking at the development of much greater powers for Wales, Part 4 of the Bill being enacted and a much fuller responsibility for the Assembly than will exist when this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament in the not too distant future. We do not see a case for the additional numbers. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, is absolutely right. Much as we respect the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, and regret the fact that he is not in his place to participate in these discussions today, we do not regard his representations as those of holy writ; and when he indicates that he does not think the size of the Assembly needs to be increased, we do not have to take that as a complete conclusion to the position. He emphasised that the National Assembly is not unduly stretched in regard to its working hours and he mentioned that it works two afternoons a week, which is a fairly modest contribution. Of course we recognise that there is an appetite for work, and we have no doubt at all that additional Members would participate fully, but we cannot see at this point that additional Members are justified, which is one of the crucial parts of the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, particularly in regard to Amendment No. 1. As to the question of STV, I am grateful to the noble Lord who made his first intervention in our deliberations today. We welcome him for that. I think we would have appreciated had he been here at Committee stage because he would have done his demolition job on STV much earlier. It is not for me to add any more to these issues, except to say that all electoral systems can be manipulated. I think we would all confess that all electoral systems have imperfections built into them. There is no such thing as a perfect representative electoral system—that is why these debates rage—but, by the same token, no one can advocate a new electoral system, such as STV, and make the automatic presumption that it is bound to be an improvement on first past the post. As the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, identified—and my noble friend Lord Rowlands also reflected on this point—STV has got imperfections. The Government do not see that it would improve the position. It was noticeable that in the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, there was no reflection at all about what STV meant in terms of the relationship between the Member and the constituency or how large such constituencies would be. That is an important point. One of the great virtues of the concept of representative democracy as it has evolved in Britain—certainly with regard to the United Kingdom Parliament—is the link between the elected Member and constituents. Of course, STV, with its very large constituencies and with Members of Parliament from different parties claiming that they represent exactly the same constituency, raises all sorts of real issues with regard to representation and we do not think that the case has been made out. It has been an interesting debate which has ranged almost as widely as it did in Committee. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken—particularly those who, like the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, have spoken about their direct experience of STV. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, indicated that she has got direct experience of the preparation for STV. I give way to the noble Lord.