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July 19, 2006
A fight against time
The government reversed a Lords defeat on moves to ban so-called "dual candidacy" in Welsh assembly elections. Tory peers had voted to preserve the status quo whereby defeated first-past-the-post constituency candidates can become AMs by standing on regional lists under the proportional representation system. The Welsh secretary, Peter Hain, said scrapping dual candidacy would counter the problem of AMs being "elected by the back door" when they had been rejected by voters.
This thing has been ping-ponging for a while now. If the Lords hold out until Tuesday (when Parliament goes to recess), they win, because there won't be enough time to get everything sorted before the Welsh Assembly elections.
Come on chaps.
UPDATE: Stuart Stoner from the Electoral Reform Society suggests prospects aren't great:
The Bill now returns to the Lords in ‘ping pong’. Sadly, the chances of it pinging (or ponging??) back to the Commons seem remote as the Lib Dems appear to have done a deal with the Government not to insist on the Lords amendment in order to get the Bill through.
Posted by pauldavies on July 19, 2006
