Government of Wales Bill

No, I have only a limited amount of time to respond to the debate, so I need to answer the points that were made. We should start with the facts. Interestingly, the National Assembly for Wales does not support the Opposition proposals for preventing a ban on dual candidature. That is fact No. 1. The second fact is that, yes, I was one of the Ministers responsible for bringing in the Government of Wales Act 1998 and thus the electoral system. I never imagined, and could not have anticipated, the widespread and systematic abuse that has subsequently occurred. It has undoubtedly occurred. We have heard the evidence, some of which I shall cite, from many Members this evening, on Second Reading and in questions. This is a matter not of party politics, but of ensuring that we have a system of integrity in the National Assembly for Wales. Thirdly, the ban on dual candidacy was a manifesto commitment. That is an important point. Are Opposition Members inciting the House of Lords to breach the Salisbury convention on manifesto commitments? The manifesto commitment was that"““we will prevent candidates from standing on both the list and in a constituency in order to make all candidates genuinely accountable to the electorate and to end Assembly Members being elected via the backdoor even when they have already been rejected by the voters.””" That is a clear manifesto commitment and we won convincingly in Wales, as we did elsewhere in the country. The amendments would not only reinstate the status quo with regard to dual candidacy but also, in the case of amendments Nos. 52 and 10, go beyond that by removing restrictions that already exist in the Government of Wales Act 1998 and have not been challenged or subject to serious consideration. The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) questioned whether the measure complies with the European convention on human rights in terms of free and fair elections. I am absolutely satisfied that the measure is compliant. He made the specious claim that we are preventing electors from having the right to choose candidates. On the contrary: we are insisting that electors should have the right to choose the candidate they want. Those candidates when elected should stay elected and not be subject to defeated candidates popping in through the back door. Far from being partisan, the proposals in clause 7 to prevent candidates from standing both in a constituency and on a regional list will strengthen the integrity of the system, and the legitimacy of regional Assembly Members. They put voters in charge—an important point—by enabling them to reject a candidate who can currently get in through the back door despite being rejected by the voters. The ban on dual candidacy will end confusion with respect to the Assembly’s current electoral system, especially following the Assembly election in the Clwyd, West constituency in 2003, when three of the four losing candidates, who were kicked out by the electorate, became AMs as additional Members elected from their parties’ regional lists. As Members have noted, that practice resulted in 15 of 20 list AMs setting up in the constituencies where they were defeated to target them next time. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) said that our changes would not prevent that from happening, but actually the Bill’s provisions will prevent it. Furthermore, subsection (6) of clause 36, which covers the code of conduct that will be established and the Standing Orders to be considered by the Assembly, will impose the necessary restrictions. If we were in any doubt as to the need for them, we have only to look at the way that Leanne Wood, a Plaid Cymru Assembly Member on the list system, was caught red-handed advocating just such systematic abuse, which taxpayers would not stand for if they knew that it was occurring. Voters do not understand how defeated constituency candidates can be elected through the backdoor on their party’s regional list. The new provision will restore voters’ democratic right to reject a constituency candidate, as well as to elect one. The current system undermines—