The proposed increase in the number of Senedd members is unaffordable nonsense (County Times, September 11), as was any cost in considering it.

The population of Wales is 3.1 million. It has 60 Senedd members and 40 Westminster MPs – another 30 MSs would bring the total to 130.

England has a population of 56.2 million and 523 MPs, after deducting the 117 that represent Wales (40), Scotland (59) and Northern Ireland (18).

Assume each MS, MP, MSP etc costs £250,000 (oh yes they do) with their salary, office costs, staff wages, travelling and pensions, England’s 523 cost £131 million, a cost of £2.33 per head of population (including children). Wales’s 100 cost £25 million, £8.06 or £10.48 per head if we had 130 of them – some three to four times as much.

According to our TV screens most of them wear a Harry Potter cloak of invisibility, in both Cardiff and Westminster.

Russell George, MS, (County Times, September 11) is so right in his remarks about an expanding political class. We simply cannot afford it.

Devolved government is enormously expensive. In the new normal we must manage on less, not more, otherwise the whole Senedd could be swept away as a monument to wastefulness, in a country with a far lower average household income than England.

Bruce Lawson FCA

Montgomery