Plaid Cymru MP, Hywel Williams has really got his knickers in a twist today over an amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, due to be debated next week.
He alleges that proposals by the Liberal Democrats to reduce the number of MPs would ’slash Welsh representation in Westminster by 30 per cent – much more than any other part of the UK’.
He continues: “This is a very dangerous plan to be bandied about and shows immense disregard for the effect on the Government of Wales Act.
“The Government of Wales Act 2006 states that Assembly constituencies are the same as parliamentary constituencies, so this would also cut 12 seats from the Assembly. This is a fatal technical flaw which shows how little Lib-Dems really understand about devolution.
“No connection has been made with the call for greater powers for the National Assembly – supposedly a key manifesto pledge for the Lib-Dems.
“The Lib-Dems are clearly following Tory lines of cutting Welsh representation and have gone further by announcing the specifics of where they would cut.
“Ultimately, the Lib-Dems are trying to weaken Welsh voices at Westminster and are giving mixed signals to voters in Wales and England.”
Unfortunately, for him Mr. Williams could not be more wrong. The Liberal Democrats of course, have the most comprehensive constitutional reform agenda of any political party. Not only do we understand devolution but we have advocated it for longer than anybody else and have been consistently praised for producing fully costed General Election manifestos that take account of devolved responsibilities at every General Election since the Welsh Assembly was established.
We are very clear in our policy. We want a proper Parliament for Wales, so the reduction in MPs would be linked to those extra powers as they are in Scotland where the different constituency boundaries pose no problem. Remember also that the Welsh regional seats are based on European constituencies that do not exist. Also we want Proportional Representation so Wales’ 28 MPs (if that is the number) would be elected by the single transferable vote ensuring party balance in accordance with voters’ choices on multi member constituencies.
Plaid’s problem here is that they are incapable of seeing past their own nose in looking for issues that are not there. The proposals we are putting forward are very different to those suggested by the Tories for all of those reasons and because the Conservatives just want to save money whereas we want to improve representation, acccountability and transparency.
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