Welsh Parliament

Senedd Reform

With only 60 MSs, Welsh democracy is overstretched. Due to Cabinet and official appointments, the Welsh Parliament/ Senedd Cymru has barely 42 backbenchers available to scrutinise the government. There are simply not enough backbench MSs to fill all the committee seats and develop the specialist knowledge they need to do the job properly. We need more Members of the Senedd so our Parliament can better deliver for the people of Wales.

Size Matters, written in 2013 jointly with the UK’s Changing Union project (a partnership including Cardiff University Wales Governance Centre and the Institute of Welsh Affairs), set out the case for increasing the number of MSs from 60 to 100.

Our 2016 report, Reshaping the Senedd, looked at how these additional members might be elected. It recommended that the Single Transferable Vote or a particular version of Open List would best provide the basis for a stable and lasting electoral system for the Welsh Parliament.

Since then calls for reform have gathered steam, with an Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reformrecommending 80-90 members, elected through the Single Transferable Vote, with strong diversity measures in place.

A Committee of politicians also endorsed this in 2020, publishing their report Senedd Reform: the Next Steps.