My Lords, I want to say a word or two in support of my noble friend Lord Anderson. The principle that party-political candidates stand as individuals should not be ignored. People are not simply representatives of their parties: they are individuals and characters. Electors form judgments about their individual suitability to represent them in the Assembly. That is why I think that the permission to offer dual candidacy is wrong in principle.
Happily, the National Assembly for Wales has not been subject to the same pressure of scandal and disgrace as the House of Commons in respect of expenses, but there can be no doubt at all that when electors voted in the 2010 general election they formed their judgment, in the case of certain candidates, on the basis of those candidates’ personal records. That is the background to the introduction of the recall legislation. It is against that spirit to say that a candidate is no more than the representative of a party and that if that candidate does not win the first past the post part of the election that same individual candidate can acceptably come back on the list.
Even if it was not for that consideration, voters feel that it offends against an instinctive sense of political propriety that people should run as candidates under first past the post, lose the election and then turn up an hour or two later elected on the list system. That was offensive, and it was absolutely right that the previous Labour Government remedied the error that they had made in the original devolution legislation. The Government of Wales Act 2006 removed the possibility of people standing as candidates twice in the same election. It is regrettable that the coalition—here it is a coalition not just of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, but also of Plaid Cymru—is seeking to restore a system that is designed by them to be advantageous to minority parties. It is entirely acceptable that under the electoral system we have for elections to the National Assembly for Wales extra provision is made to ensure that minority parties are represented
there. However, we must avoid what was generally taken in Wales to be an abuse, whereby defeated candidates come back and reappear, contrary to the clearly expressed wishes of electors.
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