The Regional Monitor

In September 1997, the people of Wales voted in favour of devolution by the smallest of margins. On a turnout of just 50.1 per cent, 50.3 per cent voted in favour of devolution compared to 49.7 per cent against.
The Welsh Assembly was created under the 1998 Government of Wales Act. There are 60 Assembly Members, 40 of whom are elected under the traditional first-past-the-post (FPTP) system to represent individual constituencies, the same as at Westminster. The remaining 20, however, are selected from ‘party lists’, and an additional member system is used to elect these AMs, four for each of the five electoral regions.
In the first elections to the Assembly in 1999, Labour won the most seats with 27 elected by FPTP, and one elected through the list system. Plaid Cymru came second with a total of 17 seats, while Liberal Democrats won a total six seats. Conservatives won one seat through FPTP, but won eight through the list system.
The 2003 election to the Welsh Assembly saw a number of seats change hands: the voters of Blaenau Gwent re-elected Peter Law, but he became an independent Assembly member, and John Marek took Wrexham from Labour as a Forward Wales candidate. Plaid Cymru lost one list member, as well as the Conwy, Islwyn, Llanelli and Rhondda constituencies to Labour. Conservatives gained two list seats but failed to build on the one constituency – Monmouth – they won in 1999. The Liberal Democrats saw no change at all to the numbers of seats held.
The list system itself has since come under fire, when it emerged that some candidates who stood in the traditional constituency elections also included their names in the party lists. In an amendment to the Government of Wales Bill, the government has sought to ban candidates from standing both in the constituency and regional list elections. However, in April this year, members of the House of Lords voted by 133 votes to 114 to retain the current system.
“The motive for the change is that Labour has no regional list members and its hold on the Assembly government is precarious,” said Conservative peer Lord Roberts of Conwy. “It is their wish to protect their own sitting members from attack not only from the regional list candidates, but [from] anybody else, because they are in something of a fix.”
But Wales secretary Peter Hain vowed to overturn the decision in the Commons.
“The government is 100 per cent committed to ending the abuse of the Assembly’s electoral system, putting the voters back in charge by stopping rejected constituency candidates getting into the Assembly by the back door,” he said.
But the Welsh Assembly will again hold elections next year, once again testing a system that has proved controversial.