The current boundary review under the old rules

[afleitch]

I’ve decided to re-run the current review under the old rules. One because I am bored, and two to see what the partisan effect would be; would it be more favourable to the Tories than the current review?


The electorate of England was 38,443,481. Divided by the number of seats (533) gives us a quota of 72,127.

PART 1: The Mets.

London.

London has specific rules. Boroughs can only be grouped together if the average number of electors per constituency was more than +/- 10,000 of the national quota. The seats should not be greater than the sum of the seats to which each of the paired boroughs were respectively entitled and groupings should not cross the Thames below the Borough of Richmond.

I retained the groupings that exist if the numbers required it, or split groupings and created new ones. I have went over the system twice and hopefully haven’t messed up

Havering, Barking – 4

Redbridge  (decoupled) – 3

Waltham Forest (decoupled) - 2

Newham, Tower Hamlets – Coupled – 5 (an increase, collectively of 1)

Greenwich, Bexley – 5

Southwark, Lewisham, Bromley – 8

Lambeth – 3 (decoupled from above group)

Croydon – 3

Sutton – 2

Merton – 2

Wandsworth – 3

Richmond, Kingston – 3

Hounslow – 2

Ealing – 3

Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea – 2

Westminster, City of London – 2

Hillingdon (decoupled) – 3

Camden (decoupled) – 2

Islington – 2

Hackney – 2

Haringey – 2

Enfield – 3

Barnet – 3

Brent, Harrow – 5

So some of the groupings have been broken or shrunk. The only increase that would take place in Greater London is in Newham/Tower Hamlets which together would be entitled to 5 seats, up 1. No part of London would loose seats. Some seats would be up for abolition however as a result of some of the changes. Tessa Jowell’s Dulwich and West Norwood would be a likely casualty. In terms of North West London, the situation in Hillingdon and Camden would return to how it was pre 2005. Likewise in Brent and Harrow (with some changes)

Greater Manchester

Entitled to 27.146 seats = 27 same as last time (though the entitlement is down a notch) There are minor changes to entitlements to each of the boroughs, but when grouped together as they were there is no change to the entitlements

Bolton, Wigan – 6
Bury – 2
Manchester, Salford, Trafford - 6
Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside – 7
Stockport – 3

Merseyside and Cheshire

Merseyside’s entitlement would be 14.01; down 1 seat since the last review.

Wirral would have an entitlement of 3.32 seats giving it 3 seats with an average electorate of 79,800. The rest of Merseyside has a quota of 10.694. Ideally, a constituency could cross the Wirral to ensure that the Wirral seats are not too large. However despite transport links, such a proposal would not be welcomed. The alternative would be for the first time since reorganisation, combining the Wirral with Cheshire. Doing so would give Cheshire/Wirral a quota of 14 seats exactly. 

So;

Merseyside less Wirral – 11
Cheshire, Wirral – 14 (collectively down 1)

South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire would be entitled to 13.51 seats, down a little since the last review. It would be entitled to 14 seats, so no change. What makes this difficult is that while Doncaster is entitled to 3 seats (with a quota of 3.056), the remainder of the old Met is entitled to 10.454 seats which is technically below the Commissions ‘rounding up point’ (10.476). So the whole Met would loose a seat. I doubt that they would adopt this approach and would plump for having below quota seats

So:

Barnsley, Rotherham, Sheffield – 11
Doncaster - 3

West Yorkshire

Last time, the old met was allocated 22 seats (though an argument was made that it should be 23) The electorate has now fallen (21.856) giving an entitlement of 22 seats. Treating each borough separately and rounding up would give the whole area 23 seats

Bradford’s electorate has fallen, going from an entitlement of 4.95 to just 4.58. Calderdale would be entitled to exactly 2 seats. Continuing to pair Leeds and Wakefield gives 11 seats. By reviewing Bradford and Kirklees together (although they could be looked at separately if you follow the rounding up rule), you get an entitlement of 8.798 or 9 seats giving 22 seats.

So

Leeds, Wakefield – 11
Bradford, Kirklees – 9
Calderdale - 2

The Bradford, Kirklees pairing depends on what constituencies can be created.

West Midlands

Entitled to 27 (26.931) seats. This is a reduction of 1 seat. The question is, where is this seat to be lost from?

Birmingham (10.145) would be entitled to 10 seats as at present. Coventry would be entitled to 3 so also steady. Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton were grouped at the last review. Doing so again would entitle them to 9 seats (8.792), 1 less than was allocated at the last review. Indeed, Sandwell (3.046) could be granted 3 full seats on it’s own. So the loss would be one of the Wolverhampton/Dudley seats. Solihull would be entitled to 2 seats and Wallsall to 3 seats.

So

Birmingham – 10
Coventry – 3
Wolverhampton, Dudley – 6
Sandwell – 3
Wallsall - 3
Solihull - 2

Tyne and Wear

This is probably one of the most difficult

Tyne and Wear would be entitled to 11.483 seats. Last time the area was allocated 12 seats. Allocating 12 again is closer to the quota than allocating 11 but only by 63 electors. In situations like these, there is some discretion awarded to the commission; how can they best create a pattern of 12 seats? If treated separately, the combined boroughs would also have 12 seats.

Gateshead would get 2 (2.043) and Sunderland 3 (3.003). Newcastle would be entitled to 2.681 which if combined with North Tyneside would give 5 seats (4.883) The awkward borough is South Tyneside, entitled to 1.604. Two seats would be far under quota. There is no where else for it to expand. Sunderland is bang on quota. North Tyneside is across a natural boundary. The only option is to continue it’s linkage with Gateshead giving the grouping an entitlement of 3.647 or 4 seats.

So

Newcastle, North Tyneside – 5
Gateshead, South Tyneside – 4
Sunderland - 3

[doktorb]

Count me very much IN to this thread.

[afleitch]

Count me very much IN to this thread.

Thanks The electorate in England has jumped significantly since the last review meaning that the average electorate (n/533) would be higher today at any post-war review IIRC. My feeling is that depending on how some of the seats were drawn and given how stark the result was in som, growing parts of the countrry, the Tories could have a stronger advantage under the old system than they do under the new.

For example;

East of England, South East

Bedfordshire – If treated as a preserved county - 5.991 – 6 seats
Hertfordshire – 11.25 – 11 seats
Cambridgeshire – If treated as a preserved county – 7.799 – 8 seats (+1)
Norfolk – 9.027 – 9 seats
Suffolk – 7.521 – 8 seats (+1)
Essex – If treated as a preserved county – 17.75 - 18 seats

Berkshire – 8.439 – 8 seats
Buckinghamshire - If treated as a preserved county – 7.502 – 8 seats (+1)
East Sussex - If treated as a preserved county – 8.169 – 8 seats
Kent - If treated as a preserved county – 17.13 – 17 seats
Hampshire - If treated as a preserved county – 18.203 – 18 seats
Isle of Wight – 1.53 – 2 seats (+1) (Having two seats over one is closer to the electoral quota)
Oxfordshire – 6.591 – 7 seats (+1)
Surrey – 11.470 – 11 seats (11 seats is closer to the quota by 104 electors)
West Sussex – 8.351 – 8 seats

So we have 5 new seats created here, with one being added to the Isle of Wight. Given the patterns of support across the affected counties, particularly at the last election it is possible that all 5 created seats would be notionally Tory. The marginality of other seats would be in question, but not too much given how stark the results were here.

[afleitch]

Here is a re-jigging of Greater Manchester. I've marked out the only change to the Manchester seat; the transferral of one ward. Major changes to the east creating Oldham, Royton and Shaw, Hyde, Stalybridge and a substantial redrawing of the other seats.

[afleitch]

Bristol - 4.221 – 4 seats
Cornwall – 5.807 – 6 seats
Devon - If treated as a preserved county – 12.104 – 12 seats (+1)
Dorset - If treated as a preserved county – 7.978 – 8 seats
Wiltshire - If treated as a preserved county – 6.984 – 7 seats

Note – Avon has ceased to be a preserved county

Gloucestershire – 6.408
South Gloucestershire – 2.796
Combined – 9.204 – 9 seats

Somerset – 5.695 – 6 seats (+1)
Bath and North East Somerset – 1.875
North Somerset – 2.177
Combined – 9.747 – 10 seats

(No change to ‘Avon’ entitlement)

Herefordshire – 1.914 – 2 seats
Worcestershire – 6.046 – 6 seats
Shropshire - If treated as a preserved county – 4.851 – 5 seats
Staffordshire -  If treated as a preserved county – 11.66 – 12 seats
Warwickshire -  5.657 – 6 seats

Derbyshire - If treated as a preserved county – 10.751 – 11 seats
Leicestershire with Rutland -  If treated as a preserved county – 10.466 – 10 seats (closer to the quota than 11 by 141 electors)
Northamptonshire – 7.024 – 7 seats
Nottinghamshire - If treated as a preserved county – 10.942 – 11 seats
Lincolnshire – 7.416 – 7 seats

Cheshire (see Merseyside)
Cumbria – 5.412 – 5 seats (-1)
Lancashire - If treated as a preserved county – 15.414 – 15 seats (-1)

North East and North Lincolnshire – 3.333 – 4 seats
East Riding and Hull – 6.211 – 6 seats
North Yorkshire - If treated as a preserved county – 8.439 – 8 seats

Durham - If treated as a preserved county – 6.71 – 7 seats
Hartlepool – 0.971
Middlesbrough – 1.394
Redcar and Cleveland – 1.461
Stockton on Tees – 1.967
Northumberland – 3.353 – 3 seats (likely to remain divided into 4?)

[doktorb]

If you can give me what you think the quota would be I could try and give you a 15 seat Lancashire

[afleitch]

If you can give me what you think the quota would be I could try and give you a 15 seat Lancashire

72,127 voters per seat is the national quota. In Lancashire we're looking at seats of about 74,118 voters each. Looking at the map, I think we would see Wyre and Preston North dissappear again. Preston is 13,000 voters short and Blackpool South is 10,000 voters short. So it would be a Tory seat down; however the tranferral of voters elsewhere could hit some of the marginals.

I couldn't model West Yorkshire very well as the wards are so out of date. Leeds Central has an electorate of 81,000 and it's hard to dissipate that anywhere in the Leeds area.

[doktorb]

Cheers squire. I'll work on a map with Lancashire seats working between 71(ish) and 75(ish),  see how I get on, and upload it here.

[doktorb]

....Yeah, turns out it's not that easy  =/

So far:

Blackpool South - 75,023
Blackpool North & Fleetwood - 77,937
Fylde - 78,304
Lancaster and Wyre - 78,819
Morecambe and Lunesdale -  77,898
Preston - 77,987
West Lancashire - 79,038
Chorley - 79,827
South Ribble - 79,257
Pendle and Ribble Valley - 73,694
Blackburn - 76,468
Rossendale and Darwen - 78,033
Burnley and Hyndburn - 75,139
Burnley North and Nelson - 71,797
{{Left Over Bits)) - 32,571


I've got this completely wrong  :facepalm:

[YL]

South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire would be entitled to 13.51 seats, down a little since the last review. It would be entitled to 14 seats, so no change. What makes this difficult is that while Doncaster is entitled to 3 seats (with a quota of 3.056), the remainder of the old Met is entitled to 10.454 seats which is technically below the Commissions ‘rounding up point’ (10.476). So the whole Met would loose a seat. I doubt that they would adopt this approach and would plump for having below quota seats

So:

Barnsley, Rotherham, Sheffield – 11
Doncaster - 3

Yes, they used to use county entitlements -- see the West Midlands last time -- so South Yorkshire would have retained 14 seats.  I suspect there might have been no changes at all; the low electorate of the Rotherham seat might have been a concern, but any simple way of dealing it would have brought another seat's electorate down to similar levels.  I'd probably have suggested moving Sitwell ward from Rother Valley to Rotherham, on the grounds that (a) that's where it (or most of its electorate, at any rate) ought to be anyway (b) it looks like the lowest electorate in the county (now Rother Valley) is slightly higher that way.  The presumption in favour of the status quo might have worked against that, and would probably have made suggesting any other changes a waste of time.

[doktorb]

I always look at this the wrong way

I'm going to use the 2010 boundaries and take it from there. Starting from scratch is always my downfall!

[stepney]

This is a very interesting thread so far, so I'm going to ruin it by nit-picking. Just some points:

London has specific rules. Boroughs can only be grouped together if the average number of electors per constituency was more than +/- 10,000 of the national quota. The seats should not be greater than the sum of the seats to which each of the paired boroughs were respectively entitled and groupings should not cross the Thames below the Borough of Richmond.

I don't think this was a Rule but was the Commission's policy. Same effect unless a blindingly good reason is evidenced to breach it.

Newham, Tower Hamlets – Coupled – 5 (an increase, collectively of 1)

I don't have the numbers to hand but the fact the two Tower Hamlets seats are in the 72,810-80,473 range suggests this would mean probably only one Tower Hamlets ward in a West Ham seat. This would be a bit daft and I suggest in practice the link would be broken and Newham given three seats, and the larger disparity accepted.

Southwark, Lewisham, Bromley – 8

Commission's policy was to pair London boroughs but not group. The exception was City/K&C/Westminster in 1995 but the City was too small to count as a borough; somewhere I have the Fourth Periodic Report and will see what the justification was. I'd bet it was something on the lines that for Parliamentary representation the City was effectively an added-on ward of Westminster now.

If you look at the Assistant Commissioner's Report for Islington last time, he rejected the Tory plan to link Islington/Hackney/Tower Hamlets, largely on the grounds you couldn't group three boroughs.

Merseyside and Cheshire

Merseyside’s entitlement would be 14.01; down 1 seat since the last review.

Wirral would have an entitlement of 3.32 seats giving it 3 seats with an average electorate of 79,800. The rest of Merseyside has a quota of 10.694. Ideally, a constituency could cross the Wirral to ensure that the Wirral seats are not too large. However despite transport links, such a proposal would not be welcomed. The alternative would be for the first time since reorganisation, combining the Wirral with Cheshire. Doing so would give Cheshire/Wirral a quota of 14 seats exactly. 

So;

Merseyside less Wirral – 11
Cheshire, Wirral – 14 (collectively down 1)

Haven't got the old rules to hand but pretty sure you can't cross a met county boundary. Wirral would just have to go down to three.

South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire would be entitled to 13.51 seats, down a little since the last review. It would be entitled to 14 seats, so no change. What makes this difficult is that while Doncaster is entitled to 3 seats (with a quota of 3.056), the remainder of the old Met is entitled to 10.454 seats which is technically below the Commissions ‘rounding up point’ (10.476). So the whole Met would loose a seat. I doubt that they would adopt this approach and would plump for having below quota seats

You're right to doubt; if I remember right, it wouldn't work like that. The county is entitled to 14 so 14 it gets, regardless of whether the individual borough entitlements add up to something else.

West Yorkshire

Last time, the old met was allocated 22 seats (though an argument was made that it should be 23) The electorate has now fallen (21.856) giving an entitlement of 22 seats. Treating each borough separately and rounding up would give the whole area 23 seats

Bradford’s electorate has fallen, going from an entitlement of 4.95 to just 4.58. Calderdale would be entitled to exactly 2 seats. Continuing to pair Leeds and Wakefield gives 11 seats. By reviewing Bradford and Kirklees together (although they could be looked at separately if you follow the rounding up rule), you get an entitlement of 8.798 or 9 seats giving 22 seats.

So

Leeds, Wakefield – 11
Bradford, Kirklees – 9
Calderdale - 2

The Bradford, Kirklees pairing depends on what constituencies can be created.

Do you have the individual borough entitlements? I wonder if it's possible to take Leeds down to 7 and restore the Wakefield/Kirklees link, and leave Bradford alone.

Tyne and Wear

This is probably one of the most difficult

Tyne and Wear would be entitled to 11.483 seats. Last time the area was allocated 12 seats. Allocating 12 again is closer to the quota than allocating 11 but only by 63 electors. In situations like these, there is some discretion awarded to the commission; how can they best create a pattern of 12 seats? If treated separately, the combined boroughs would also have 12 seats.

11.483 is above the harmonic mean, so they have discretion to keep it at 12, and as leaving it at 12 allows no change (and avoids having to bring back Tyne Bridge). I'd lay odds that if they were faced with this in reality they might try for a complete no change in Tyne & Wear.

[stepney]

Cheers squire. I'll work on a map with Lancashire seats working between 71(ish) and 75(ish),  see how I get on, and upload it here.

No need to impose those bounds, is there?

[YL]

West Yorkshire

Last time, the old met was allocated 22 seats (though an argument was made that it should be 23) The electorate has now fallen (21.856) giving an entitlement of 22 seats. Treating each borough separately and rounding up would give the whole area 23 seats

Bradford’s electorate has fallen, going from an entitlement of 4.95 to just 4.58. Calderdale would be entitled to exactly 2 seats. Continuing to pair Leeds and Wakefield gives 11 seats. By reviewing Bradford and Kirklees together (although they could be looked at separately if you follow the rounding up rule), you get an entitlement of 8.798 or 9 seats giving 22 seats.

So

Leeds, Wakefield – 11
Bradford, Kirklees – 9
Calderdale - 2

The Bradford, Kirklees pairing depends on what constituencies can be created.

Do you have the individual borough entitlements? I wonder if it's possible to take Leeds down to 7 and restore the Wakefield/Kirklees link, and leave Bradford alone.

Seven Leeds seats on December 2010 electorates would have an average electorate of 77,905.  Which is OK, except that as Leeds has 33 wards (and I think we can assume no split wards for the purposes of this thread) I expect some of the seats would have to be considerably bigger than that.

Five Bradford seats would have an average electorate of 65,991.  Bradford has 30 wards, so that might work out reasonably well, though they'd probably all be a bit small.  (EDIT: of course we can just keep the existing seats if we're doing this.  None of them are horrendously small, so that's OK.)

Eight seats covering Kirklees and Wakefield would have an average electorate of 69,579.

I wonder about pairing Leeds and Bradford for twelve seats with a cross-border seat in the north, which might be called "Otley and Ilkley"?

[afleitch]

I always look at this the wrong way

I'm going to use the 2010 boundaries and take it from there. Starting from scratch is always my downfall!

This is my attempt. The only way to do this is to vary the electorates a little. Shifting a few ward around would probably even things out a bit



West Lancashire - 74717
Chorley - 71333
Preston - 72904
South Ribble - 79104
Blackpool South -73611
Blackpool North and Fleetwood - 79864
Fylde - 75956
Morecambe and Lunesdale - 72904
Pendle - 75840
Burnley and Bacup - 75186
Ribble Valley - 66015
Blackburn - 76468
Rossendale and Darwen - 72728
Lancaster and Wyre - 66538
Hyndburn and Ribble -78623

So yeah, two under quota rural seats that could be fixed with a few wards and an interesting extension to Hyndburn...

[doktorb]

Wow that Hyndburn seat is amazing!

Great work, I'll finish mine today, honest.

[doktorb]

Right, I've got stuck in East Lancs but this is what I've got so far:




1      Blackpool South   74816   
2      Blackpool North and Cleveleys   74817
3      Fylde   78304   
4      Lancaster and Ribble Valley   72850   
5      Morecambe and Lunesdale   77898   
6      Preston   75164   
7      Clitheroe and Preston North   74774
8      West Lancashire   74717   
9      Chorley   77306   
10      South Ribble   78992
11      Blackburn   76468   

[afleitch]

Right, I've got stuck in East Lancs but this is what I've got so far:

I found East Lancs a nightmare too. Extending Pendle towards Clitheroe (and having Burnley extend towards Nelson) worked, as did everything else until I got to Blackpool. I see you've divided Preston; that would probably be more welcomed than my Hyndburn seat

[doktorb]

Constituency   Electorate
Pendle   68,943
Burnley   69,137
Hyndburn   71,167
Blackburn   71,893
Lancaster and Ribble Valley   72,850
Clitheroe and Preston North   73,676
West Lancashire   74,717
Blackpool South   74,816
Blackpool North    74,817
Preston   75,164
Chorley   77,306
Morecambe and Lunesdale   77,898
Fylde   78,304
South Ribble   78,992

[Pete Whitehead]

Count me very much IN to this thread.

Thanks The electorate in England has jumped significantly since the last review meaning that the average electorate (n/533) would be higher today at any post-war review IIRC. My feeling is that depending on how some of the seats were drawn and given how stark the result was in som, growing parts of the countrry, the Tories could have a stronger advantage under the old system than they do under the new.

For example;

East of England, South East

Bedfordshire – If treated as a preserved county - 5.991 – 6 seats
Hertfordshire – 11.25 – 11 seats
Cambridgeshire – If treated as a preserved county – 7.799 – 8 seats (+1)
Norfolk – 9.027 – 9 seats
Suffolk – 7.521 – 8 seats (+1)
Essex – If treated as a preserved county – 17.75 - 18 seats

Berkshire – 8.439 – 8 seats
Buckinghamshire - If treated as a preserved county – 7.502 – 8 seats (+1)
East Sussex - If treated as a preserved county – 8.169 – 8 seats
Kent - If treated as a preserved county – 17.13 – 17 seats
Hampshire - If treated as a preserved county – 18.203 – 18 seats
Isle of Wight – 1.53 – 2 seats (+1) (Having two seats over one is closer to the electoral quota)
Oxfordshire – 6.591 – 7 seats (+1)
Surrey – 11.470 – 11 seats (11 seats is closer to the quota by 104 electors)
West Sussex – 8.351 – 8 seats

So we have 5 new seats created here, with one being added to the Isle of Wight. Given the patterns of support across the affected counties, particularly at the last election it is possible that all 5 created seats would be notionally Tory. The marginality of other seats would be in question, but not too much given how stark the results were here.

True for the most part.  I've played with various likely boundaries before (when I expected the next review would be on this basis) and in Suffolk at least you would tend to find that the creation of an extra safe Tory seat could well result in pushing two existing seats (Ipswich and Waveney) into the Labour column on 2010 figures. Oxford W & Abingdon would probably go back to the LDs as well given the nature of the changes which would be necessitated there

[doktorb]

This was my first draft of East Lancs:








Then I zoomed in and realised some wards were clearly not a good fit so I rejigged all that and got:

[dadge]

Haven't got the old rules to hand but pretty sure you can't cross a met county boundary. Wirral would just have to go down to three.

I got the impression at the last review that the Commission would've been willing to consider pairing Merseyside and Cheshire. They mentioned the possibility but dismissed it because no-one was interested in the idea. Part of the problem was that Cheshire was reviewed 2 years before Merseyside!

[YL]

Haven't got the old rules to hand but pretty sure you can't cross a met county boundary. Wirral would just have to go down to three.

I got the impression at the last review that the Commission would've been willing to consider pairing Merseyside and Cheshire. They mentioned the possibility but dismissed it because no-one was interested in the idea. Part of the problem was that Cheshire was reviewed 2 years before Merseyside!

I think the fact that they reviewed Cheshire 2 years before Merseyside indicates that they didn't want to pair them.  I'm pretty sure there was nothing in the rules which absolutely stopped a Met county being paired -- I think all administrative counties, whether shire, Met or unitary, formally had the same status, and a lot of unitaries were paired with their neighbours -- but the Commission largely continued to work with the 1974 counties, including H*mb*rs*d*.

Of course their idea of how to get round Wirral's awkward entitlement last time involved a ridiculous cross-Mersey seat which no-one wanted (sound familiar?) and they'd effectively ruled out the Cheshire option, which is why Wirral ended up with four undersized seats. 

[stepney]

Haven't got the old rules to hand but pretty sure you can't cross a met county boundary. Wirral would just have to go down to three.

I got the impression at the last review that the Commission would've been willing to consider pairing Merseyside and Cheshire. They mentioned the possibility but dismissed it because no-one was interested in the idea. Part of the problem was that Cheshire was reviewed 2 years before Merseyside!

I think the fact that they reviewed Cheshire 2 years before Merseyside indicates that they didn't want to pair them.  I'm pretty sure there was nothing in the rules which absolutely stopped a Met county being paired -- I think all administrative counties, whether shire, Met or unitary, formally had the same status, and a lot of unitaries were paired with their neighbours -- but the Commission largely continued to work with the 1974 counties, including H*mb*rs*d*.

I think under the old rules anything was theoretically possible because of Rule 7 (and I quote "It shall not be the duty of a Boundary Commission to aim at giving full effect in all circumstances to the above rules...") but it's pretty clear that they ought to respect M*rs*ys*d*, H*mb*rs*d*, etc. if they can, so long as nothing completely potty happened. Would an 85,000 electorate Wirral West be completely hatstand? There's a 91,000 electorate East Ham now.

Of course their idea of how to get round Wirral's awkward entitlement last time involved a ridiculous cross-Mersey seat which no-one wanted (sound familiar?) and they'd effectively ruled out the Cheshire option, which is why Wirral ended up with four undersized seats.  

Well, and the fact there was such an excellent proposal on the table from the Tory Party. It's a bit like Labour getting the review they want in Surrey...

[stepney]

Just out of interest, I thought I'd quote the old Rules in full:

RULES FOR REDISTRIBUTION OF SEATS
(Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986)

The Rules

1. (1) The number of constituencies in Great Britain shall not be substantially greater or
less than 613.
(2) – repealed by the Scotland Act 1988.
(3) The number of constituencies in Wales shall not be less than 35.
(4) The number of constituencies in Northern Ireland shall not be greater than 18 or
less than 16, and shall be 17 unless it appears to the Boundary Commission for
Northern Ireland that Northern Ireland should for the time being be divided into 16 or
(as the case may be) into 18 constituencies.

2. Every constituency shall return a single member.

3. There shall continue to be a constituency which shall include the whole of the City of
London and the name of which shall refer to the City of London.

3A. A constituency which includes the Orkney Islands or the Shetland Islands shall not
include the whole or any part of a local government area other than the Orkney Islands
and the Shetland Islands.

4. (1) So far as is practicable having regard to rules 1 to 3A-
(a) in England and Wales,-
(i) no county or any part of a county shall be included in a constituency
which includes the whole or part of any other county or the whole or part of
a London borough,
(ii) no London borough or any part of a London borough shall be
included in a constituency which includes the whole or part of any other
London borough,
(b) in Scotland, regard shall be had to the boundaries of local authority areas,
(c) in Northern Ireland, no ward shall be included partly in one constituency and
partly in another.
(1A) In sub-paragraph (1)(a) above “county” means in relation to Wales, a preserved
county (as defined by section 64 of the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994).
(2) In sub-paragraph (1)(b) above "area” and "local authority" have the same meanings
as in the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.

5. The electorate of any constituency shall be as near the electoral quota as is practicable
having regard to rules 1 to 4; and a Boundary Commission may depart from the strict
application of rule 4 if it appears to them that a departure is desirable to avoid an
excessive disparity between the electorate of any constituency and the electoral quota,
or between the electorate of any constituency and that of neighbouring constituencies
in the part of the United Kingdom with which they are concerned.

6. A Boundary Commission may depart from the strict application of rules 4 and 5 if
special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and
accessibility of a constituency, appear to them to render departure desirable.

General and supplementary

7. It shall not be the duty of a Boundary Commission to aim at giving full effect in all
circumstances to the above rules (except rule 3A) but they shall take account, so far as
they reasonably can-
(a) of the inconveniences attendant on alterations of constituencies other than
alterations made for the purposes of rule 4, and
(b) of any local ties which would be broken by such alterations.

8. In the application of rule 5 to each part of the United Kingdom for which there is a
Boundary Commission -
(a) the expression “electoral quota” means a number obtained by dividing the
electorate for that part of the United Kingdom by the number of constituencies
in it existing on the enumeration date,
(b) the expression “electorate” means-
(i) in relation to a constituency, the number of persons whose names
appear on the register of parliamentary electors in force on the enumeration
date under the Representation of the People Acts for the constituency,
(ii) in relation to the part of the United Kingdom, the aggregate electorate
as defined in sub-paragraph (i) above of all the constituencies in that part
(c) the expression “enumeration date” means, in relation to any report of a
Boundary Commission under this Act, the date on which the notice with respect
to that report is published in accordance with section 5(1) of this Act.

9. In this Schedule, a reference to a rule followed by a number is a reference to the rule
set out in the correspondingly numbered paragraph of this Schedule.