Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill - Clause 19 - Advice of the Electoral Commission
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, amendment No. 73 would remove the discretionary power of the Secretary of State in clause 19(4)—that is, the power to specify, in a direction to the Electoral Commission seeking advice on electoral areas and total numbers of assembly members, the numerical parameters within which the commission is to give its advice under clause 19. Our policy, which was set out in the White Paper, ''Your Region, Your Choice'', is that elected regional assemblies should be of a size that ensures that they are inclusive and representative, yet small and streamlined, effective and efficient. It is right that the Secretary of State should be able, if he so wishes, to take a view on what that might mean for the size of an assembly, and to reflect that in a direction to the commission.
In the White Paper, we said that elected regional assemblies should have between 25 and 35 members, of whom about a third—specifically between 33 per cent. and 35 per cent.—would be from a top-up list. In terms of precedence, the proportion of top-up to directly elected members is equivalent to the arrangement in the Welsh Assembly.
The amendment would replace a discretionary power about numbers of members with an obligation for the direction to specify that as far as it is ''reasonably practicable'' to do so—I shall return to the interesting linguistic question of what that means—the Electoral Commission shall ensure that the number of electors in each electoral district is approximately equal in all regions. In other words, electoral districts should have the same number of electors in one region as in another. That directly contrasts with our view that 25 to 35 members is right for any of the eight regions. It would be a matter for the Electoral Commission to decide how many members an assembly should have. Within the provision, the number should be related to the number of electors. The effect on the size of the assembly in each region would depend on exactly which figure we used for the number of electors in each district.