My Lords, in moving this amendment that stands in the name of my noble friend Lord Wigley and myself, I can summarise the situation very briefly. The case for adding to the present 60 Members of the Welsh Assembly is irrefutable, because the Assembly is already badly understaffed as regards membership. That was the situation from the very start, but it did not matter a very great deal because in the first instance,
in 1998, the Assembly was not essentially a legislature, as has already been mentioned in this debate. It dealt only with delegated legislation and spent only 4% of its time reviewing legislation; it had a tangential function with regard to legislation—but things are very different now. Since the referendum of March 2011, a wholly new situation has been developed.
Without wishing to overstate my case, I would say that it was ludicrous to consider that the small number of Members that constitute the membership of the Welsh Assembly can possibly be able to carry out the task of scrutinising legislation properly. Put in other words, if we wish to limit the Assembly to nothing much more than an Executive and a talking shop, all we have to do is nothing. We will emasculate the possibilities of it being a legislature because it does not have the critical mass to be that.
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The figures speak for themselves. The Scottish Parliament has 129 Members, the Northern Ireland Assembly has 108 Members and the Welsh Assembly has 60 Members. However, it is not the gross membership that matters but the number of Members who are free to deal with the scrutiny of legislation. If we take out the Scottish Ministers and those who are not available for scrutiny, that leaves a figure of 113. If we take out the same persons from the Northern Ireland Assembly, apparently that leaves a figure of 92. If we take out the same persons again from the Welsh Assembly, it gives a figure of 48. It could be argued that if we included two or three persons who are chairmen of committees, and the party leaders, who do not normally take part in scrutiny, we would have only 42; this is not part of my case, but is merely a footnote, as it were. That is well below the critical mass necessary to be able to deal competently with legislation.
The problems concerning primary legislation in the Welsh Assembly are considerable. They constitute a huge challenge. It means that the Cardiff Assembly—the Cardiff parliament, as that is essentially what it is—in very few years will have to acquaint itself with the problems, immerse itself in the experience, and gain the expertise that this House and the other place have enjoyed for centuries. That is a huge task, and one that is all the more complicated and difficult if only a small number of Members are available. The situation can be worse under a coalition Government. If two fairly big parties join, it means that opposition Members—they, after all are the persons who day in, day out, challenge legislation most effectively by way of scrutiny—are very reduced in number. For those reasons it is essential that if the Welsh Assembly is to succeed and continue as a credible legislative body, an increase in the number of Members should be made very swiftly.
In my amendment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has attached his name, I have suggested the figure of 80. It could not be less than that. The Richard commission, which reported in 2004, recommended then that it should be 80. That was before the Government of Wales Act 2006, which considerably added to the powers of the Assembly by way of Schedule 3, which enabled salami slices of authority in respect of legislation to be brought about. We could not have anticipated the detail of that Act. The 2006 Act, of itself, suggests
that membership should be more than 80. In addition to that, the Silk commission commented on the very problem that I have described. More than anything, a very small review in detail and depth by the Welsh Electoral Commission was published in March this year. That study entailed a scrutiny of some 42 regional bodies—in Europe, North America and Australia. Those 42 bodies were in some way reasonably comparable with the situation in Wales. That body came to the conclusion that the least that it would recommend in the circumstances would be a membership of 100. If one considers the curve of development of the Welsh Assembly from 1998 to today—the 16 years of its existence—one does not need a great deal of imagination to consider how that curve might continue. One very much hopes that that will be the case. Therefore, before very long, reasonable people would be considering a membership of not 100 but even 120.
In Committee some weeks ago, my friend—indeed, he has been my friend for many decades—the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, said that this process would look like an auction with cries of, “80, 100, any advance on 100? 120”. It is not an auction. However, I believe that it is reasonable to consider this issue in the context of the track record of the Welsh Assembly’s development.
A figure of 120—we would not come to that for quite some time—would be very attractive for the simple reason that it would nearly double the membership. Doubling the constituencies might be a very simple exercise. However, there is one huge snag: even to mention an advance on the 60 current Members would be regarded almost as blasphemy in some parts of Wales. There would be very little popular support for it. That is where public leadership comes into play. Those who advocate it would not be popular. It would be extremely difficult for elected Members of Parliament to support it without risking their futures. It would be difficult, indeed, for Members of the Welsh Assembly to support it without running the same risk. However, it is essential that people who take part in public life should be prepared to run such risks and to adopt moral stances which are absolutely necessary. Such a stance is very necessary in this case to secure the future of the Welsh Assembly.