‘This could be easiest time to increase number ofAMs’
THIS could be politically the “easiest” time to increase the size of the Assembly, one of Wales’ most influential political experts has argued.
Professor Roger Scully said he found the case for more AMs “utterly compelling” when he appeared before MPs looking at proposals which would lead to a dramatic reduction in the number of Welsh Westminster constituencies.
Increasing the number of people in the Assembly would require the support of two-thirds of AMs – but the professor said this could be done with “no net additional cost to the public purse”.
Last month a long-awaited report said the 60-person Assembly needed an extra 20 to 30 members to cope with the increased workload as more powers are transferred to the institution in Cardiff Bay. It also recommended a change in the voting system to the Single Transferable Vote.
The call for more AMs comes as uncertainty surrounds Conservative proposals to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600, which could result in the number of Welsh constituencies falling from 40 to 29.
There is also the prospect of Wales losing its four MEPs when the UK leaves the European Union and the case for reducing the number of councillors has been mooted.
Mr Scully told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs committee: “There are obvious cost implications for increasing the size of the Welsh Assembly. It was pointed out at the launch of the report, right at the moment we are going to be getting rid of for instance four MEPs from Wales – we’re maybe going to reducing the number of MPs – there’s also an argument certainly in Wales for reducing the number of councillors. Last year we actually elected slightly more councillors than Scotland did for no particularly obvious reason.
“You could increase the size of the Welsh Assembly significantly while introducing no net additional cost to the public purse in terms of more money being spent on politicians overall. If you’re going to do this thing in terms of increasing the size of the Welsh Assembly, for which I think there is an utterly compelling case, then right now might be the politically easiest time in which to do it.”
Newport West Labour MP Paul Flynn described the Conservative plans to cut the number of MPs as an “obvious act of chicanery and self-interest by the Government to press on with boundary changes that are piecemeal at best and corrupt at worst”.
Making the case for replacing the present system of first past the post which is used to elect MPs, he said: “[The] great distortion in our parliamentary system for the last century at least has been the gerrymandering by the Labour and Conservative parties in order to preserve their disproportionately high number of representatives here in Parliament. And any system of proportional representation would have given a fairer representation to the third parties and would have reflected public opinion.”
When asked to describe his preferred form of constitutional reform, Mr Scully said he would “personally prefer to have something more like the Single Transferable Vote alongside reform of the House of Lords,” joking that he was “not at all unrealistic or ambitious”.
Former Conservative Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan suggested the workload of MPs should be assessed as a result of devolution.
She said: “Devolution has produced this asymmetrical nature now of the job of an MP. So, an English MP who is not in, say, a Manchester or a Birmingham, does the job but covers a much larger range of subjects than an MP in Wales, Scotland or one of the devolved city regions.”
Mr Scully commented: “It’s quite true that certainly Members of Parliament from Scotland and Wales, particularly if they strictly keep themselves to involvement in issues which are non-devolved, in a sense do cover a smaller range of political subject matter than MPs from England do. On the other hand, it can also be argued that for instance, MPs particularly from the north of Scotland and rural West Wales have probably more travelling to do.”
Professor Jane Green of the University of Manchester raised concerns about the push to make constituencies of more equal size.
She said: “The goal of equal parity is based upon one set of figures, which is of course the Electoral Commission’s estimate of the number of register entries and the ONS’ calculations based on that for the mid-year estimates of the eligible population and it won’t surprise you to know that the accuracy of those figures is currently around about 90%... Of course, that means they are 10% inaccurate.”