Petition calling for referendum on Senedd reforms reaches almost 10k signatures

Did they call for a referendum to decide on Wales losing 8 MP's? No? Where were they then? There's no constitutional change here. Same old anti-Wales tub thumpers thumping away.

Where are the Welsh petitioners for getting rid of the House of Lords? We need more scrutiny of the Senedd and the increase in numbers of members is vitally important.

We are getting a referendum in 2026.

'We don’t feel that more money should be wasted on Members of the Senedd when we need improvements to NHS , Education and Social Care.' I don't accept that it is a 'waste'. A functioning democracy comes at a cost, and it's a simple fact that the Senedd currently has, proportionate to Wales's population, a smaller number of elected members than is the case in respect of its counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland. One defect in the present situation which I haven't seen mentioned is the relatively small number of Labour 'back-benchers which are left once the first minister has formed her government. The late Frank Field - so independently minded a Labour MP at Westminster that he lasted less than a year when Blair briefly appointed him into government - is surely significant. In terms of a healthy democracy, a government is well served if it has critical friends on its own side alongside its political opponents in the Siambre. However, having made that defence I'm a deal less enthusiastic about electing the Senedd on a 'closed list' system.

Again look at Scotland bigger population but with more members of Scotish Parliament to show for it Northern Ireland a Million and a half less population than Wales but with more members than Wales in their Parliament and now anti Welsh banging the table no more members of Welsh Parliament get lost better still get out of the DISUNITED KINGDOM they always put us down hold us back and rob us short change us

Clearly there won't be a referendum because it's obvious what the result would be. Winning a referendum on any proposal to create more politicians would be an uphill task even if the plans were well thought out; let alone the complete dog's breakfast the current administration has come up with, which even many supporters of expansion are deeply dissatisfied with.

Replacing a bunch of unelected party placemen, bishops and a selection of the Great and the Good whose faces fit (and who all get 300 plus pounds a day 'attendance allowance') with elected representatives who we can get rid of seem to me to be a democratic necessity.

Stop our wealth going into UK coffers. ....and spent on London vanity projects.

So, according to the economic illiterate who wrote this petition the price of 36 MS's is equivalent to the thousands of millions required to adequately fund local authorities, fix the NHS, fix schools, and fix social care... Basically it is the same old story, people on the right and people who dispute Wales' right to exist, always seem to come up with the same irrational argument, it goes something like this... "why are you giving me this apple I didn't want, for that price you could have given me a Ferrari"... Also, just for the record, there has never been a case in the Senedd where the largest opposition party has enough members to shadow all the ministers in the government, never mind insufficient members in total to ensure proper scrutiny, if people are genuinely concerned about how money is spent in Wales (and is capable of counting accurately) then they should be welcoming this move (despite the badly designed process)...

The map is revealing. Seems most support is from wealthy migrant retirees who swapped their semi in Surrey for a detached VoG mansion, and the economic migrant workers priced out of North West England.

Again the Welsh Tories with the aid of their English masters machine in London are trying to demote the Senedd by interfering with Welsh democracy using social media as a vehicle as done with the 20 mph default speed limit blanket ban falsehood to whip up hostility. Just look at recent remarks by Andrew RT Davies who suggested a referendum on abolishing the Senedd. This from a man who said to Remainers how we should respect the Brexit vote, the very same hypocrite & Tory party who have been fighting lost devolution battles since 1997. It's do as we say not as we do. It seems the Welsh Tories love demanding referendums for Wales but fail to call for one when it comes to matters concerning England and its Monarch King Charles, who I might add recently had a £49m Sovereign Grant increase from £83m to £132m, this during the height of austerity too. Who can recall when Conservative PM Margret Thatcher sold thousands of council houses in the 1980s. The money accrued was sent not to local authorities to invest in new stock but returned to the English Treasury. No referendum was called. What about the selloff of Royal Mail. There was no public referendum when the then Conservative government undersold it losing tens of millions? The Welsh Conservatives argue cost and how there's no need for any expansion of the Senedd, but fail to mention the voting public were aware of Welsh Labour's policy of increasing the Senedd from 60 to 96 as it was part of their manifesto in 2021. In fact, it went out for public consultation in 2018, not forgetting Welsh Labour won the Senedd election which in a way was a defacto referendum because if the voting public was hostile to the idea would have elected a Conservative Welsh Government. They didn't.

£17.5 million is not a huge increase. As stated in the article the increased expenditure amount to 0.07% of the annual budget. This is peanuts. If people are going hungry, that's the result of Westminster's mismanagement, not the Welsh Government's or the Senedd's responsibility. The Senedd needs to have an increased number of members because of the increased responsibilities placed upon it to scrutinise legislation, which involves far more than it did at the inception of devolved government under the Welsh Assembly. Someone may well have started a petition, but that in and of itself does not guarantee that there will be a referendum, and in any case even should a referendum be held the result wouldn't be legally binding. In any case a referendum wouldn't be a good choice in a situation that is binary in nature. In any case, as someone else pointed out in a comment on this thread, there will be a referendum in 2026 anyway: The Senedd Elections. Rather than rallying to the Tories anti-devolution trumpet calls, those genuinely concerned about the state of public services should maybe shift focus and throw their weight behind campaigns to get the Westminster government to start taxing the real culprits in all of this, the obscenely rich. Those who are aware of current affairs will know that an open letter has been sent to the Labour leader demanding that the rich are made to pay their share. The letter was signed by every Plaid Cymru MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP and many others. Maybe starting a petition to demand that the Welsh Government grow a backbone and demand a needs based financial settlement in place of the current Barnett Formula that leaves us short changed would have been a more positive action rather than the current petition which appears to be little more than a thinly disguised attack on the whole idea of devolution.

If Nanette (who?) is so deeply concerned about public sector spending, perhaps she might question the need for 22 Local Authorities? No, cheap anti-Welsh politics.

Was expansion of the Senedd put into the Labour and Plaid Cymru manifestos in 2021? Don't we get another vote in 2026, where we can vote them out if we don't like them. Scottish Parliament - 129 MSPs Northern Ireland - 90 MLAs Yet again why is Wales the outlier?

Everyone is forgetting that these reforms are happening as a result of the 2011 referendum. Voters approved the Assembly getting full law making powers, creating the Senedd with more powers and now we need to staff it appropriately. Additionally, reforming the Senedd was a manifesto commitment at the last election. In just the same way that Westminster cancelled a reduction in the number of MPs because of Brexit workload, Wales needs more politicians to cope with the workload of full law making powers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52036168

Won't do any good, 1/2 Million voted against the blanket 20mph zones, and the WG could not care less.