Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, we, too, have tabled an amendment about the committee system and are critical of the d’Hondt method of allocation. Our amendment is somewhat longer than the Conservative amendment, but it amounts to a similar conclusion. It states:"““The members of any committee established by the Assembly under section 28(1)—""(a) shall be elected by the Assembly from among the Assembly members, and""(b) shall, unless that committee exists solely to provide advice, be elected so as to secure that, as far as is practicable, the balance of the parties in the Assembly is reflected in the membership of the committee””." I say again that the Presiding Officer of the Assembly, the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, is unable to be with us this evening. This is the one amendment to which he would have spoken and supported. I want the House to know that that is the case. Provision for fair representation on the Assembly by removing the d’Hondt process is necessary. Essentially, d’Hondt is a very crude form of proportionality. The greater the number of parties, the greater the likelihood of distortion. The d’Hondt, or highest average, method of course originated in Belgium. Unlike the single transferable vote, it does not use a quota or formula to allocate seats or posts. Instead they are allocated singly, one after another. The basic idea is that a party’s vote total is divided by a certain figure, which increases as it wins more seats. That underlines what the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said. It favours the largest party considerably. As the divisor becomes bigger, the party’s total in succeeding rounds gets smaller, allowing parties with lower initial totals to win seats. We strongly believe that it is necessary to remove the d’Hondt process to achieve balance within the Assembly committees. As I said in Committee, it is significant that the Scottish Parliament has abandoned that system of allocation to committees on the basis that it was unfair and has come to an agreement whereby there is a fair allocation from all parties on the committees of the Scottish Parliament. There is a majority view that the d’Hondt method is not the best. We want to remove it and we will support the Conservative amendment.