P-06-1424 Senedd Reform Bill to be amended to include provisions for constituency approval of MS pay increases – Correspondence from the Petitioner to the Committee, 03 June 2024

The argument made by Mick Antoniw AS/AM;

"However, it is important in a representative democracy that a Member can express their opinion, including when it may be unpopular, without fear or favour. I would wish to avoid any circumstance in which different Members could feel that they had different levels of freedom to express their political opinion, by dint of their personal financial situations.!

This is simply a way of saying Assembly Members should not be held accountable for their actions! This gentleman clearly doesn't grasp that the most important word is representative and demonstrates he clearly subscribes to the Polticial theory of "I am not here to do what my voters WANT but what I believe is best for them"!

The whole point of a Representatice Democracy is that the Representative is Democratically elected to Represnt the constituents who elected them and their wishes as their representative! It is not to choose an Oligarch who then proceeds to advance his own beliefs in preference to those of his constituents. As such AMs are the employees of their cosntituents and as such my amendment simply introduces "performance related pay" why should AMs be able to ignore or overrule the desires of their constituents and still automtically receive any financial increment that's going! In any other job if you do a bad job you don't get a raiseand no-one in the Senedd is in such financial straits that the refusal of an annual increment is going to cause them excessive hardship!

"I also note that the provisions in the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill will increase the frequency of elections to the Senedd, thereby providing more opportunities for democratic renewal, and increasing the accountability of Members by allowing the electorate to more frequently express their opinion on Members’ performance."

The above is a very poor substitute for the provisions of my Amendment!