Government of Wales Bill

Perhaps that question ought to have been addressed to the Secretary of State for Wales. I believe that a lot of regional Assembly Members work extremely hard. There are others about whom I am not quite so certain, but I am not going to name names. I have already told the Committee what I think about the proportional representation system in general. It is regrettable in the extreme that Labour wants to use its majority to tinker with that system and to change it in a way that will give it an electoral benefit. Of course that will be the result, because, by and large, the only people who get elected to the regions are members of the smaller parties—people who are not members of the Labour party. Any change that will affect the regional list candidates will be bad news for the smaller parties. That is really why the Secretary of State is so determined to introduce this change. Labour Members keep talking about the Electoral Reform Society. I am not sure whether they are confused and do not know the difference between the Electoral Reform Society and the independent Electoral Commission. I started off thinking it was just ignorance that led them to confuse the two organisations, but I am now starting to think that they are deliberately referring to the Electoral Reform Society because they are embarrassed about the fact that the Electoral Commission gave such damning evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee and said, more or less, that the change was being made purely out of political partisanship. I have already said that I do not like the proportional representation system. The Secretary of State for Wales does not like it, and a few years ago he published a good book entitled ““Proportional Misrepresentation: The Case Against PR in Britain””. I wish he had acted on that book before he set up the current system, but that is another problem. This change is driven purely by political expediency. It is a nasty, devious, partisan bit of gerrymandering. If the Labour party does not like the PR system, it should simply say so. Labour Members should move an amendment calling for the PR system to be abolished in respect of the Welsh Assembly and for a return to a first-past-the-post system. They would be surprised where they received support from.