Members appointed to the first Senedd committee

The Senedd has appointed members to the all-important business committee, bringing the it one step closer to resuming work as usual.

The second plenary of the seventh Senedd took place today (19 May), appointing members from each of the political groups to the business committee.

But what is the business committee and who has been appointed?

What is the business committee?

Following an election, the business committee is the first committee to be established due to its central role in organising Senedd proceedings.

Responsibilities of the committee include deciding how many plenary meetings there will be in a week, proposing committee remits and names, and recesses.

Membership of the committee must include the Llywydd, who will chair proceedings, and one member from each political group with more than five Senedd Members.

Who has been appointed?

Appointed last week as both trefnydd and chief whip, Heledd Fychan has responsibility for Welsh Government business within the Senedd.

As part of her role as trefnydd, Ms Fychan was responsible for tabling the motion to appoint members to the business committee.

She has also been elected as the Plaid Cymru member of the committee.

The official opposition party in the Senedd, Reform UK, have appointed Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni MS Llŷr Powell to the committee.

Former education secretary Lynne Neagle has been appointed for Welsh Labour, alongside former Welsh Conservatives leader Paul Davies.

Huw Irranca-Davies will also be part of the committee as Llywydd, with a responsibility for chairing proceedings.

What about the Greens and Lib Dems?

Notably, despite having members in the Senedd, the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Wales Green Party have not appointed a member to the committee.

With the parties having just one and two members respectively, they do not meet the requirements to nominate a member.

With the exception of the Llywydd, the members of the business committee are nominated by the political groups represented within the Senedd.

Each group puts forward one member – typically the business manager of their group.

But to form a political group in the Senedd, parties are required to have five members – a threshold the Greens and Lib Dems fail to meet.

Alternatively five or more members who are not part of a political group can join together and form a group for the purposes of nominating a member to the business committee – but with just three members combined, the two parties fall short of this requirement too.

But this does not mean the parties will have no representation on the committee.

According to the Senedd, when the number of members who are not part of a political group is too few for them to form their own grouping, each individual member is entitled to attend business committee proceedings and may vote.

However, unlike other committees, voting in the business committee is weighted according to the size of the political group each of its members represents.

Each member of the committee, with the exception of the chair, holds one vote for each member of the political group they represent.

This means that Heledd Fychan, for example, will hold 43 votes – equivalent to the number of Plaid Cymru members in the Senedd.

Each member who is not part of a political group, however, is able to cast only their own singular vote, meaning Anthony Slaughter and Paul Rock for the Welsh Greens, and Jane Dodds for the Lib Dems, will each hold just one vote.