Tag Archives: votes at 16

Wales needs a larger Senedd, but a closed list system is not the best way to achieve it

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The Senedd in Wales recently voted to support plans to increase its membership, following the report of a special committee, which endorsed proposals put forward by Labour and Plaid Cymru. Laura McAllister argues that the need to enlarge the Senedd is clear, but that proposed changes to the voting system are flawed and could undermine public support for reform.

That the Senedd marked its twenty-first ‘coming of age’ birthday by seeking to recast itself with a fundamentally altered institutional shape should surprise few familiar with devolved politics. Wales is often referred to as the land of commissions and inquiries. Each of these inquiries into the most ‘unsettled’ devolution settlement has recommended that the Senedd should increase from its current 60 Members (MSs) to a figure between 80 and 100. The story of these inquiries can be found on the Senedd website.

I chaired the Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reform in 2017, which was charged with looking at the size of the Senedd, its electoral system and extending the franchise to younger voters. Our Panel’s recommendations were that:

  • The number of members should be increased from 60 to at least 80, and preferably closer to 90. We concluded that this was needed because the Assembly (its name was changed to ‘Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament’ in 2020) had acquired a much greater role than the one it had in 1999, and also that its powers were expected to expand further. We concluded that the Senedd could not be expected to continue functioning optimally and delivering for the people of Wales if it remained at its current size.
  • That a new electoral system should be introduced to accommodate this increased size and to make the relationship between votes cast and seats won more proportional. Our favoured system was Single Transferable Vote (STV) accompanied by prescriptive, legislative gender quotas, though the Panel also regarded a Flexible List system of proportional representation (PR) as a viable alternative.
  • That the minimum voting age in Senedd elections should be reduced to 16 as a means of boosting democratic participation.  We regarded it as essential that the lowering of the voting age should be accompanied by high-quality education about politics in schools and other places of learning. This last recommendation was enacted through the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act 2020 and came into force for the 2021 Senedd elections.

There was deemed insufficient political consensus to advance our first two recommendations around size and electoral system change in time for the 2021 election, despite a report from the Senedd Committee on Electoral Reform chaired by Labour MS Dawn Bowden, which almost exactly replicated our report’s recommendations. This committee did acknowledge that time had effectively run out and instead called for legislation early in the Sixth Senedd to increase its size to between 80 and 90 Members from the 2026 election, with all MSs elected by STV.

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Wales has put effective legislation in place to make the Senedd polls COVID-safe

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For the sixth time since devolution in 1999, voters in Wales have the opportunity to participate in a Wales-wide election, with all 60 seats of the Welsh Parliament in play. Elections across the UK were postponed last May due to COVID-19, but the ones set for this spring look like they will go ahead. Toby James and Alistair Clark argue that Wales has taken significant steps to ensure that voters are able to participate in a safe and fair election.

To postpone or not to postpone? That has been the question facing elections scheduled for May across the UK. All of these contests are important, but those being held in Wales have a special importance for Welsh citizens. They will have the opportunity to elect all 60 members to the Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament). It will be the sixth general election since devolution in 1999 – but the first time that 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to take part.

The pandemic, however, has led to arguments about whether elections should be postponed. There is a health argument for postponement. Restrictions have been put on many aspects of life in order to prevent the spread of the virus. But the quality of the election can also be compromised by the pandemic. Restrictions on campaigning might be in place, such as bans on leafleting, which smaller parties have complained are unfair on them. So what should be done?

The evidence from around the world

As part of an ESRC-funded research project, we have been tracking how elections have been run around the world since the pandemic began, in collaboration with International IDEA and the Electoral Integrity Project. We have published case studies that have described the experience on the ground, alongside data on the measures put in place to make elections COVID-safe.

Many countries did postpone for a while. Elections have been postponed in at least 75 countries since last February. But at the same time, over 100 eventually held their contests. Proposals to postpone elections are at first glance associated with undermining the democratic process and denying citizens their right to vote. Postponements, as was shown in a recent article in Election Law Journal, are not all just power grabs by would-be dictators or incumbent governments. They can be for multiple different reasons, and there is a humanitarian case for postponement where there is a threat to human life. 

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Moving Westminster into a multi-parliament world: the Commons takes a fresh look at devolution

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The UK’s devolved institutions in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales celebrated their twenty-first anniversary this year. Their powers have changed several times since their creation, but much of this has occurred in an ad hoc way, without deep consideration at UK level of the overall devolution framework. Paul Evans explains how a new Procedure Committee inquiry into how the House of Commons should adapt to the ‘territorial constitution’ presents an opportunity to give some key devolution issues the attention they deserve.

Devolution in the UK turned 21 this year, and watching it grow has been a fascinating study in making up the constitution as you go along. The Scotland Act 2016 and the Wales Act 2017 (each of them the third major reworkings of the statutory basis of devolution in those nations in less than 20 years) declared the devolved legislatures there, along with their governments, to be a permanent part of the UK’s constitutional arrangements, which could be abolished only with the consent of the people in a referendum. 

In both those nations 16- and 17-year olds have been newly enfranchised and will participate in the elections of their parliaments next year. The Northern Ireland Assembly restarted (once more) in January after a three-year absence, and in May the Welsh Assembly renamed itself the Welsh Parliament (or Senedd Cymru if you prefer to use the UK’s – so far – only other official language). 

All in all, the journey towards a pragmatic form of de facto federalism in the UK has been a remarkably peaceful and generally good-natured velvet revolution. So perhaps it’s not so surprising that the House of Commons Procedure Committee has not felt the need to have a major review of the implications of devolution for the workings of the Commons since 1999.

Watching its progeny develop their own values and make their own decisions has, nonetheless, been a challenging learning experience for Westminster. The assertions of devolution’s permanency and its implication of equality of esteem between the four legislatures of the UK has often appeared more rhetorical than real. Whitehall seems never to have fully come to terms with the loss of centralised control which devolution necessarily entails. But, collectively, the elected members of the four legislatures have done little better in opening up and sustaining channels of communication – though some good work has been done at the margins. 

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