UK parliamentary boundary review 2016-2018

[Gary J]

Are they still reducing the number of seats to 600? Boy this is gonna suck.

Yes this boundary review is for a 600 member House of Commons, reduced from the existing 650 seat House.

[Gary J]

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Full press release:-
https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2018_09_05_Final_recs_news_release.pdf

The next stage may take some time. In the last completed review it was more than a year between submission of the report and it being laid before Parliament.

The UK government is currently focused on the Brexit negotiations, so it would probably not welcome renewed arguments about parliamentary boundaries any time soon.

[IceAgeComing]

The reasons for the year delay in the publication of the last boundary reviews in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland was hurriedly finished before the 2005 election to fill a Labour manifesto commitment to reduce the number of Scottish MPs to make them equal with England post-devolution so a special case) were a little complex: the English and Welsh reviews were finished in late 2004 so realistically couldn't be published immediately since the government planned a 2005 election and so forwarding them to parliament before it was dissolved would be incredibly silly since it'd be binned as soon as parliament was dissolved and hurriedly passing a boundary review and then immediately calling an election would cause a massive procedural mess; both in the political parties and also in the Electoral Commission and Local Authorities when it comes to procedural stuff.  After the election you had a very short term before the summer recess, then Conference season and by then you are in November so December isn't actually that late.  Also Northern Ireland were very late in finishing their work in the last review (not until 2008) and generally there is a precedent that the reports of all four Commissions should be considered at once and so publishing the thing many years before you need to act on it may not be necessary.

This time all four Commissions have finished on the same day and there's no election upcoming so publishing the reports quickly would make sense - there's no timescale on how quick a vote has to be after all.  The expectations I've seen as that they might publish them next week, although that's not certain.  Not definite that the reports even get through Parliament: all of the opposition bar the DUP are united in opposition; and even with the DUP (who are by no means guaranteed; depends on the final Northern Irish boundaries and what they can get for their votes) a small Tory rebellion by dissatisfied MPs who're having their seats abolished (going from 650 to 600; that's a lot more than usual) or made into marginal or safe Labour seats would defeat the review.  If that happened then surely there'd need to be some sort of compromise on the review rules towards a set that everyone generally can agree with: both reviews on the new rules would have been defeated in Parliament and the last review would have taken place in the mid 2000s on twenty year old electorates, so some kind of boundary changes are really needed.  The government were hostile towards changes proposed by backbench MPs earlier in the year; although I think that if the review goes down then they might have to reconsider that.

[Gary J]

My suspicions of delay were unjustified. The government has announced its intentions. Extract from today's Hansard.

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[IceAgeComing]

The Boundary Commission for England has put their final recommendations on their website: from a quick glance unsurprisingly it seems that there are no major changes from their revised recommendations: a few wards switching hands here and there; and a few seats renamed.  There might be bigger changes in certain areas but I haven't seen any yet.

Nothing yet from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland; I expect to see them up today as well.

[EPG]

The NI recommendations are quite a bit different to the final draft, though nothing of obvious importance to alter the partisan balance leaps out. The best guess is still net -1 Independent Unionist to leave 10 DUP, 7 SF.

[catographer]

someone explain to me the logic behind calling a cross-county constituency "undemocratic." since when is combining two adjacent communities under one district violates the spirit of democracy?

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is exactly why axing 50 seats was such a terrible, no good, very bad idea.

[catographer]

Cornwall and devon are both historic counties,
Cornwall particularly with a unique Celtic heritage different from the Anglo Saxon one in Devon and the rest of England, long established independent councils,
We both like to do things differently to irritate each other lol 😜
most people across the country won't understand the rivalry between both counties until they come here in the west country and experience it first hand 😎

see here in 'murica, we put rural hillbillies into districts with urban hipsters and call it a day

[Former President tack50]

Well, the new map has lower inequality from what I can see, plus you could argue that having communities of interest together and not split is a better goal than perfect equality

[Oryxslayer]

Don't use the island consituencies as examples. Even though they are both extremes: Wight too large, Hebrides too small, islands are clear communities of interest. Cutting them both makes the map more messy and abuses water continuity. Hawaiian state districts don't hop islands for example, even though the US has 1 man, 1 vote.

[Tintrlvr]

The new map in England is not bad at all. Other than the two Wight seats,* all of the seats are I believe in a relatively narrow range between slightly over 70,000 and slightly under 80,000, which is pretty reasonable, and the overall pattern on the map doesn't show any strong regional or urban/rural preferential treatment that could be indicative of trying to skew to benefit one party.

*Which is really unreasonable - it's fine that they don't want to be paired with the mainland, but then you should just get one oversized seat, as in the past, as an alternative, and it's especially ridiculous/obvious Torymandering that they're getting an extra seat at a time when the overall number of seats is being reduced. And the Western Isles or Orkney/Shetland are a different case - they're much, much more distinct from the mainland, culturally and in terms of connectivity, than the Isle of Wight is. Plus, they're not in England, and the UK has always treated each constituent country separately for purposes of constituency-drawing.

I do agree that Wales should not have the super undersized seats. Oh well.

[Hatman 🍁]

Many people wanted the number of MPs cut after the expenses scandal, it was part of the lib Dem 2010 manifesto to cut the number of MPs down to 500

It is bonkers for a third party to want to reduce the number of seats in a legislature. Of course, they didn't see their complete collapse in 2015. A 500 seat legislature could've given them as little as 1 seat maybe?

[Tintrlvr]

Many people wanted the number of MPs cut after the expenses scandal, it was part of the lib Dem 2010 manifesto to cut the number of MPs down to 500

It is bonkers for a third party to want to reduce the number of seats in a legislature. Of course, they didn't see their complete collapse in 2015. A 500 seat legislature could've given them as little as 1 seat maybe?

The Lib Dem manifesto in 2010 also included PR, which presumably went hand-in-hand with a reduction in seats. With PR, you could cut the number of seats down to 200 or so without losing anything of value, which ought to really be the populist argument in favor of PR.

[Hatman 🍁]

Many people wanted the number of MPs cut after the expenses scandal, it was part of the lib Dem 2010 manifesto to cut the number of MPs down to 500

It is bonkers for a third party to want to reduce the number of seats in a legislature. Of course, they didn't see their complete collapse in 2015. A 500 seat legislature could've given them as little as 1 seat maybe?

The Lib Dem manifesto in 2010 also included PR, which presumably went hand-in-hand with a reduction in seats. With PR, you could cut the number of seats down to 200 or so without losing anything of value, which ought to really be the populist argument in favor of PR.

Still a dumb ideal politically. With PR, people are going to lose a little bit in terms of local representation already without reducing the number of seats to go with it.

[Gary J]

The long running soap opera of the UK parliamentary boundary review has had another twist.

The government has issued a written statement, strongly implying that the 2018 boundary review will not be implemented.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2020-03-24/debates/20032433000010/UKParliamentaryBoundaries

The most important developments seem to include:-

a) the plan to reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies from the existing 650 to 600 has been dropped.
b) future boundary reviews will take place on an eight year cycle instead of five, so a set of boundaries will probably be used for at least two general elections instead of just one.
c) the government want to leave the plus or minus 5% average registered electorate rules as they are, although they may legislate to alter some of the details of the boundary review process.
d) as a historic change, Parliament will no longer be required to approve the new boundaries, before the Privy Council brings them into legal effect.

The plan seems to be to legislate later this year, to change the rules the boundary commissions have to work to. The next boundary review could then start in 2021 with the new boundaries emerging by 2023 so they can be in place for a 2024 general election.

[CumbrianLefty]

As I said in another thread, IMO there's a good chance of the 5% variance limit being tweaked just a bit.

[Oryxslayer]

Supposedly leaded boundaries of the new Welsh constituencies. We all know from personal experience that drawing these lines sensibly would be a challenger, and even though the lines appear orderly, you still have to have things like B&R now getting a good chunk of former Neath.