The Staggers

The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog

Boundary changes will hit Welsh Labour MPs hardest

There is a clear political dimension to the way that the coalition’s proposed boundary changes will be implemented.

By Caroline Crampton Published 26 October 2010 19:20

Today during Deputy Prime Minister's Questions, the shadow Treasury minister Chris Leslie raised the matter of House of Lords reform, asking Nick Clegg whether the proposed reduction in the number of MPs, accompanied by new coalition appointments to the Lords, was intended as a political move against Labour.

Clegg responded by confirming that the Labour-instituted method for appointing peers will remain in place until a full review of the second chamber has taken place, and also pointed out that a number of Labour peers have just joined the Lords, appointed as part of the Dissolution Honours list in May.

However, the Deputy Prime Minister did not really address the main point of Leslie's question: under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill 2010-2011, which is now making its way through the House, 50 MPs's seats will be scrapped, and it looks as if a significant proportion of them will be in Labour-supporting areas.

Yesterday, the House of Commons Welsh affairs committee published a report which concluded that not only does the coincidental clash of the referendum with the next Welsh Assembly election raise concerns, but that Wales would be affected disproportionately by the cut in the number of constituencies. The report reads:

The reduction in the number of Members of the House of Commons proposed by the bill would affect Wales more than any other part of the UK; the evidence we have received suggests that Wales would lose at least ten of its 40 MPs, a 25 per cent reduction (in comparison to a 17 per cent reduction for Northern Ireland, 16 per cent for Scotland and 5 per cent for England).

Of the 40 Welsh MPs, 26 are Labour, eight are Conservative, and the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru have three each. Reducing this total by a quarter would inevitably impact more on Labour than any other party, purely as a result of it being the largest political grouping.

The new boundaries would be drawn in order to create constituencies of roughly equal size – each consisting of roughly 76,000 voters. The rights and wrongs of the changes themselves will no doubt still be debated at length before the final vote on the bill. But, without doubt, the boundary changes will have a heavier bearing on the opposition than the government, and clearly there is a strongly political dimension to the way the coalition has gone about delivering its "new politics".

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20 comments

Thu, 2010-10-28 12:12 — Stuart Eels (not verified)

The simple way to do this would be to give England it's own Parliament and then break up the UK.

Think about it, there would be no more debates about "our place in the world", none of the independent coutries would be able or strong enough to blindly follow the USA in it's "policing of the world."

There would be no need of Trident or it's successor and the various countries would be able to negotiate it's own mwmbership of the EU.

Tue, 2010-10-26 19:36 — Steve in Somerset (not verified)

So what's the problem with that?

Over represented parts of the UK will loose their over-representation. So my vote will become more equal to theirs. And this is supposed to be a problem?

Tue, 2010-10-26 19:50 — Lox (not verified)

@Steve, clearly it's a problem for the NS if a few Labour placemen/women lose their jobs for life. Which in a lot of parts of the UK is what a Labour seats equates to-irrespective of the quality(?) of the holder.

Tue, 2010-10-26 20:09 — mike (not verified)

Whats the problem, over-representation is being corrected.

Rather than argue against equal constituencies, can anyone give me just one argument FOR unequal constituencies apart from "I like labour and it helps them win" ?

Tue, 2010-10-26 20:15 — ang (not verified)

Slightly off the point, but at deputy pms questions today Clegg was accused of social cleansing and said that it was insulting to those who had been ethnically cleansed.
The fact is that his actions are social cleansing and nothing to do with ethnic cleansing, floundering again cleggy.

Tue, 2010-10-26 20:36 — Lox (not verified)

@ang, I don't see why it's social cleansing to correct over-representation? Seriously, have I missed something?

Tue, 2010-10-26 20:49 — ang (not verified)

Lox: OOPs, I forgot to say that I was referring to a question re the housing benefit cap, sorry! It just really got to me and I had to post about it somewhere.

Tue, 2010-10-26 21:09 — Steven (not verified)

If we have equal constituencies then maybe it about time the UK started thinking about compulsory voting. This seems to work in Australia.

Tue, 2010-10-26 22:23 — Greg (not verified)

+1 to what Steven said

Tue, 2010-10-26 23:09 — bonk (not verified)

Have to agree with Stephen voting should be compulsory

Tue, 2010-10-26 23:11 — jeremiah

There are several million people in this country who are not registered to vote.

If it was compulsory to register we would largely remove the disparity in the size of constituencies, and have a much better idea of turnout in elections.

I am not sure about compulsory voting, but compulsory registration sounds a lot better than this gerrymandering nonsense.

Wed, 2010-10-27 02:14 — Peter (not verified)

Why are the comments here dimly asking, "What's the problem?" Where does the article say it's problem? Right-wingers at every level seem increasingly intent on building straw men to argue with.

Anybody would think they feel a need to compensate for a lack of justification in coalition policies and arguments. Surely not.

Wed, 2010-10-27 09:01 — Lox (not verified)

@Peter, it's you who's building a straw man. Given that the article argues that there's a political dimension to the changes, then I think it's fair to see it as identifying a problem, issue, call it what you will.
Anyone would think that you feel a need to compensate for a lack of justification in the the argument presented by the article. Surely not.

Wed, 2010-10-27 09:34 — swatantra nandanwar

Earl Attlee sitting on the Conservative Benches in the Lords? You couldn't make it up.
When the Lords becomes an elected body thank goodness we'll get rid of all that nonsense. At the same time abolish all hereditaries, and let everyone be Citizen XYZ.

Wed, 2010-10-27 09:57 — Bill M. (not verified)

But it's not just redrawing boundaries, it's cutting the number of MP's to an arbitrary number, and which will benefit the Tories.

Anyway, the problem for the Tories isn't really constituency size, but difference in turn-outs...

Wed, 2010-10-27 10:46 — Andy King (not verified)

Presumably, as Steve, Mike, et al, are so concerned that their votes should carry equal weight to everyone elses, they are in favour of proportional representation. This Tory tinkering with the the first-past-the-post system is blatant gerrymandering - akin to the social cleansing which the Tories are so keen to carry out through their housing benefit chnges. There can be no doubt that if Labour had introduced changes to the boundaries which favoured them, the Tories would have been the first to complain.

New Politics? More like a banana republic

Wed, 2010-10-27 11:10 — mrme (not verified)

I see no one answers the point about voter registration. The coalition propose to reorganise constituency sizes according to voter registration and NOT eligible voters. This disproportionately targets people in poorer constituencies, ie Labour-voting areas. Of course, Labour weren't exactly chomping at the bit to correct this, but if we're going to do this, let's do it in the fairest possible manner. After all, we're all about fairness now, aren't we?