Let the great boundary rejig commence

[Gary J]

There has been a major development in British politics today, even though it does not seem to have been generally recognised yet, which may prevent the current boundary reviews taking effect for the 2015 general election.

Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, has announced that House of Lords reform is being dropped due to backbench Conservative opposition (and Labour opportunism). He regards this as a breach of the coalition agreement and will ask Liberal Democrat MPs (including Ministers) to vote against the draft Orders in Council, which need to be passed to give legal effect to the boundary reviews when finalised by the boundary commissions.

Without Liberal Democrat support there will not be a Commons majority for the boundary changes, so the next general election will have to be contested for the existing 650 seats and not the re-drawn 600.

The boundary commissions will continue with the review. They are due to report by October 2013. The vote in Parliament is likely to be in late 2013 or early 2014.

[Gary J]

The information I have seen, is that the Boundary Commission for England will ignore the political activity and will continue with the review.

The four national commissions are obliged to carry out reviews, as required by law. What the government and Parliament does with the eventual reports, is not a matter for the commissions.

The present political crisis may be compromised, before the parliamentary vote needs to be taken.  I agree the review is not definitively dead unless and until the changes are voted down.

[Gary J]

Under the present law there is to be a boundary review every five years, using the rules laid down by Parliament before the current review. The fixed term Parliaments law provides for a normal five year term. Therefore if the changes, currently being drawn up, are not adopted in the current Parliament they are unlikely ever to be implemented (even if the Conservatives have a majority in the next Parliament).

The whole boundary change exercise will have to be done anew in the next Parliament. A Labour majority, will presumably want to legislate to change the criteria the boundary commissions have to work to. A Tory majority would want to use the existing legislation.

[Gary J]

Altering the boundary drawing rules, to make constituencies more equal in size of electorate, is not in itself a gerrymander (as the term is normally understood).

The reason why Labour MPs call it a gerrymander, is because it will cancel out part of the systematic bias in favour of Labour which has existed in recent decades (as Labour seats, on average had smaller electorates than Tory ones). The rest of the bias (because Labour voters are more advantageously clustered in particular geographical areas) will remain, as the Conservatives are not prepared to abandon single member constituencies and first past the post voting.

On this issue politicians speak in terms of principle, but what they are really doing is making marginal adjustments for the advantage of their own side. The detailed rules have been changed several times since the Second World War. Labour has preferred longer periods between reviews, the Conservatives shorter, because the general movement of population has been for people to move out of Labour inclined urban areas and into more Conservative suburban and rural districts.

As to political involvement in boundary changes, you have to consider the history. Before the 1950s boundary changes were infrequent and made by primary legislation, which could be and sometimes was amended by Parliament. Changes were implemented in this way before the elections of 1832, 1868, 1885, 1918, 1945 (to split some seats with more than 100,000 electors as an interim measure) and 1950.

The reviews since 1950 have been implemented by statutory instrument, not subject to amendment by Parliament. All have been approved apart from one instance, when the Labour government invited its Commons majority to reject the Orders in Council, so the 1970 election was held using the boundaries introduced in 1955. The Conservative government finally introduced the changes, before the February 1974 election.

Since 1974 general reviews of Parliamentary boundaries have become a bit more frequent, with changes effected in 1983, 1997, 2005 (Scotland only) and 2010 (UK except for Scotland). It is remarkable that there have only been ten rounds of general changes since 1832 (excluding 1945 as a partial change only and treating the 2005 and 2010 redistributions as one). The United States has reapportioned Congressional seats eighteen times over the same period (every ten years, except in the 1920s) and is about to implement the nineteenth apportionment in the period.

[Gary J]

Some bias is an inevitable feature of the electoral system the UK uses. There have been times, in the past, when the net bias favoured the Conservative Party.

As I mentioned before politicians argue in terms of principle, to try to gain advantage for their own side.

[Gary J]

I have had a look at the revised proposals for my part of the world. I live in Slough and used to live in Spelthorne.

The Boundary Commission originally treated Berkshire and Surrey as distinct sub-regions.  In Berkshire the only change was to transfer one extra ward of Slough Borough, from the old Slough constituency to the new Windsor one. The ward chosen was Foxborough, in the east of Slough Borough. In Surrey there was some shuffling of wards, mostly caused by the need to expand Spelthorne south of the River Thames (the traditional boundary between historic Middlesex and historic Surrey). The ward selected to join the new Spelthorne constituency was Weybridge North, which I would have said had zero community ties with Spelthorne Borough.

The revised plan treats Berkshire and Surrey together. In Berkshire the only changes is to the Slough Borough wards, to be excluded from the new Slough constituency. The eastern ward of Foxborough remains with the Slough constituency. The southern Slough Borough ward of Cippenham Meadows, is now the one to be transferred to the new Windsor constituency. The easternmost Slough Borough ward (Colnbrook with Poyle), currently in the existing Windsor constituency, is proposed to be added to Spelthorne to create a cross-county new constituency. As a result fewer changes are needed in the rest of Surrey and more existing seats are left unchanged.

From my point of view the revised plan is an improvement from the original proposals. Cippenham Meadows does have slightly better transport links, with the town of Windsor, than the eastern Slough Borough wards do. Foxborough residents, who were confused by the prospect of living in Slough Borough but becoming part of the Windsor constituency, will be happier with the change. Cippenham Meadows voters will, of course, inherit the confusion but it is unavoidable given the numbers that some part of Slough Borough has to be added to the new Windsor constituency.

The  new cross county Spelthorne is a distinct improvement on the earlier version with its expansion south idea. Given that Spelthorne had to be expanded somewhere, to make the electorate a suitable size, I think the transport links and community ties are much stronger in the new proposals than in the old. Indeed, Poyle was part of Spelthorne Borough until the mid 1990s, so I think the people of Staines will be much happier with this addition to Spelthorne constituency, rather than with having the boundary cross the Thames.

All in all, should Parliament ultimately approve the current revised proposals, I think they would not be a disaster for the Berkshire/Surrey border area.

[Gary J]

What kind of animal? How about a sea horse?

[Gary J]

Labour had a number of arguments against equalising the electorates of constituencies. Most were nonsense, being concerned with preserving unfair partisan advantage.

On the other hand the Conservatives were also creating a system which they hoped (perhaps wrongly) would enable them to gain a partisan advantage, against both Labour and Liberal Democrat opponents.

The Liberal Democrats were prepared to put up with a potential loss of seats through the boundary review, if it was offset by the Alternative Vote system (which they thought, perhaps wrongly, would help them to win more seats). With the AV idea dead, the Liberal Democrats self interest was to kill the boundary review. Petulance was not involved, just political calculation.

All parties were pursuing partisan self interest, cloaked with appeals to principle. That is what tends to happen in such debates. 

It would be better to equalise each constituency, using the census population rather than the registered electorate. This does seem to be the approach most countries follow.

The real problems are the single member constituency and first past the post elections. Unfortunately we seem further than ever from addressing those issues.

[Gary J]

I should extend the argument from my last post, slightly.

The reason, or at least the ostensible reason, why the Liberal Democrats withdrew support from the boundary review was the failure of House of Lords reform. A House of Lords, largely elected by a system of proportional representation, would have also provided some compensation to the Lib Dems for the Commons seats thought likely to be lost as the result of the boundary review.

Having failed to get compensation, either through AV for the Commons or PR in the Lords, there was no longer any advantage in the Liberal Democrats supporting a boundary review which was contrary to their party interest.