Government of Wales Bill

moved Amendment No. 5:"Page 4, line 36, at end insert—" ““(   )   The regional returning officer shall publish the list of candidates submitted by each political party for each electoral region.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, having discussed the STV and AMS systems, hopefully we can move forward with this simple amendment that we think is fundamental, whatever system of lists is put in, with whatever proportionality. It is very important that open lists are brought in for the Assembly. This amendment takes away the choice of the order of listing by numbers of preference by political parties. It gives the electors a great deal more power over who they choose to represent them. In fact that power is placed in the hands of the electors because they are not guided in who they will actually vote for on a list. Indeed, we believe one of the downsides of the AMS system is that the lists are chosen for the electors in the order by which they would be elected. The huge advantage of open lists is that a greater variety of types of candidate can be selected by the electors: women, young candidates, the retired, employed or unemployed candidates, Welsh speakers or non-Welsh speakers, housewives, professionals or members of unions. People may be in all sorts of situations. It may be felt appropriate in certain constituencies for a woman to be elected, but one would know the characteristics of the individual candidate and whether they were worthy of election. The open-list system would create more interest in the election process and far more enthusiasm to vote because of the far greater variety of candidates involved.