Great Western Coffee Shop

How much difference does your MP make? 
How much difference does the way his/her area is drawn up make?
How do the changes proposed look for your area?

Boundary Commission - proposed constituency changes for 2023 - out for consultation - ((here)) (https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/2023-review/south-west/)
BBC overview - ((here)) (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57384795)
Some of my own thoughts for my own area ((here)) (https://www.facebook.com/graham.ellis.5055/posts/10159281311427094)

There is a thin line between preserving / enhancing democracy and gerrymandering, lets hope the government objective is the former

A quick look from home suggests that there are similarities with the 2018 review, that was killed off.
https://www.bcereviews.org.uk/node/6488 (https://www.bcereviews.org.uk/node/6488)
In that traditional county boundaries are being increasingly ignored.
Be able to get a better understanding with the files at work.

I tend to also think of gerrymandering, but the various boundary commissions are independent aren't they?

Isn't this just a sticking plaster on a broken outdated system?

If you wanted to introduce fairness you would change the method of allocating the seats.

After all what is fair about:
2019 Johnson 56% of the seats from 43% of the vote.
2019 SNP 7.4% of the seats from 3.9% of the vote
2019 Greens  0.2% of the seats from 2.7% of the vote.
2005 Blair 55% of the seats from 35% of the vote.

As far as my local area is concerned it looks bonkers; a large chunk of the eastern part of the Exeter City Council fiefdom was moved from Exeter to East Devon at the last review accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth, mainly because it served to change Exeter from a marginal to the last remaining 'socialist' encampment in SW England. The new proposal moves another slice of the eastern Exeter urban area to East Devon which constituency is cut in half so that, if this proceeds, I would be voting (or not) for an MP for Exmouth! (The other half of East Devon becomes a modified Honiton constituency). At the time of the consultation I wrote to the BC expressing the view that, on the basis of population growth, the Exeter constituency should be slightly expanded around the margins and divided into two. They obviously did not agree.

The whole UK Parliamentary system needs the next evolution.  The Westminster village, certainly the English part needs to wake up to the devolved Governments and establish a purely English parliament / assembly.  The House of Lords needs to move towards an elected upper house which should have responsibility for the UK wide matters, Defence, Foreign policy and trade, overall Tax maters.

But the pomposity of Westminster clique are unlikely to change things very much  

Some of the new boundaries run very close to the edges of towns. Gloucester, Cirencester and Cheltenham are examples.

Looking at the wards within the proposed Bristol Central constituency, there is currently one Lib Dem councillor, two from Labour, and eleven Greens... maybe Caroline Lucas will be getting some company?

The Commission wanted a joint North Devon and North Cornwall ward with one M.P.
All the local MP's objected, as did many voters.
The Commission have now relented and agreed the existing arrangements should stay

Same with Taunton. Large villages/new developments to the west of the town that are naturally aligned to Taunton, will, in future, be represented by the MP for Tiverton & Minehead.

Staplegrove, Norton Fitzwarren, Cotford St Luke, Bishop's Lydeard, Kingston St Mary - all dormitories of Taunton that will not be represented by Taunton's MP.

Of most interest to this forum, I would have thought, is that Melksham will now feature in a constituency name (for the first time ever I believe), and as the first named in a new Melksham and Devizes constituency. As Melksham is central to the constituency, and Devizes right on the edge, and that it also includes Bradford on Avon and Corsham, maybe just calling it Melksham would be more sensible.

On the wider issue, the Boundary Commission has a thankless task, as whatever constituencies they come up with will cause grief in many localities. They are having to work within strict guidelines regarding population size, so inevitably many compromises will have to be made.

And on the widest issue, personally I support having a proportional voting system which, whatever method was used (and there are many) would inevitably have to be based on much larger constituencies.

Melksham is also the larger town.  So there is sense in the idea.  However, I suspect that noses would be very much out of joint on that right edge.  It would be akin to a seat that included both Slough and Windsor being called just "Slough".

Similar re-naming has happened in Didcot.

Didcot is currently the largest town in what is currently called the 'Wantage' constituency and under these proposals the ‘new’ constituency is now called 'Didcot and Wantage'.

Although based on the previous logic it should surely just be called 'Didcot' although that would presumably upset some of those who live in and around Wantage.

My house is in Bristol's gritty inner urban Ashley ward, but cross the road and you're in lovely leafy Redland. It's a funny old game.

That reminds me of a second-year student discussion way back in the 80s, when the grit was grittier. My friend Alyson said she'd found a flat just off Ashley Road "but luckily it doesn't say St Paul's on my map, so my mum won't be worried".

[big smile] - brings a memory to me too.   My wife's from the USA - over over in 1998 after several years of long distance courtship. Here  brothers and a sister over there (and her mum was still with us too when she moved to the UK) looked up my address online and came up with a map looking something like this - but in those days with the red hatched zone marked "Danger Area".  The asked a few questions!

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/eastdanger.jpg)

For those who weren't around at the time, here is a taste of the gritty grit on offer:

Both the current and previous MP have often referred to the constituency as "Didcot and Wantage" as have most other parties for 10+ years. This is the BC finally catching up with local usage.

As this is a thread on the boundary commission, and part of that is names, there's a possible point in there about "erasure" of names deemed to have negative connections. Not only was St Paul's not marked on that 1980s map, the ward is still called Ashley and even now that the area is distinctly "gentrifying", a lot of its residents prefer to refer to St Agnes and St Werburgh's and other, sometimes hyper-specific, names. I guess that is in itself a feature of this "gentrification" process.

By the same measure, Melksham is clearly a rising star!

Looking at London, South East and South West, they all show a potential increase in constituencies. I'm sure the last review proposed an overall decrease.

Yep, 7 less in Wales, 2 less in Scotland, a couple more in the South West and a whole bunch more in the Home Counties. The number of MPs remains at 650, not cut to 600 as suggested at a previous review.

Anyone got a quick explanation as to why Wales has historically had so many of the apparent excess of MPs, as compared to say Scotland? 

Is it just about gradual depopulation that no-one had accounted for over a long period?   ::)

Paul

It's a combination of factors:

• It's been easier for people to justify grossly undersized constituencies in parts of Scotland (which was mainly sorted in 2001) and Wales than it has been in England, because of a greater concentration of smaller counties (e.g. Powys having two small constituencies being less bad than one large one) and because of the greater ease at which special geographical considerations could be invoked (e.g. how Gwynedd ended up with tiny constituencies)
• That each of the four Commissions worked out their own quota – the average electorate of a constituency that they would use to work out how many constituencies each county was entitled to – separately. This had two major effects: (1) the "ratchet effect", that undersized constituencies in one of the four constituent countries would drag down that country's average and cause its counties to be awarded extra constituencies at the next review (e.g. how Dyfed went from 4 constituencies to 5); and (2) that England's population growth relative to the rest of the UK would allow its constituencies to become generally oversized (and it's worth remembering it's that way round – constituencies started out at around 55,000 electors after the war)
• The English Commission made a conscious effort to apply the rule that there should be "not substantially more than 523" constituencies in England, becoming extremely reluctant to award counties extra constituencies (e.g. the Isle of Wight)

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51285402720_d0885d9eee_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2m8V6to)Totnes constituency (https://flic.kr/p/2m8V6to) by Robert (https://www.flickr.com/photos/revupminster/), on Flickr

The MP for Totnes has asked for a name change to South Devon as his constituency covers a vast area either side of the River Dart including Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and Salcombe and confusingly Brixham and South and West Paignton who think that as they come under Torbay Council they come under the Torbay MP.

Torbay constituency should also have it's name changed to Torquay and Central Paignton to reflect the area the MP covers.

Under the latest proposals, North Cornwall will remain a parliamentary constituency without any Network Rail stations, although Roche & Bodmin Parkway stations are just across the boundary in SE Cornwall and stretches of the Plymouth-Penzance and Par-Newquay lines do run through the constituency. It does have the Bodmin & Wenford railway, though.

I wonder how many other constituencies without a NR station there are in GW-land.
 

I wonder about Swindon North.  The boundary between Swindon North and Swindon South seems to run along the railway line, with the main public exit into South and the private exit to the research council into the North.

Similarly, Bristol North East may contain the second entrance only to Stapleton Road, but not the main entrance nor any (other) station.

The nearest entrance to Stapleton Road station would be over 100m outside the boundary of Bristol North East, so that's an urban constituency of 69,793 people with no railway station!

Depending on where they draw the line, Ashley Down station may or may not affect this. This new station will be accessed from Bristol Central (which already has three stations). If the boundary is drawn in the middle of the railway (between the reliefs and the mains) then the new station will be wholly within Bristol Central.

Temple Meads isn't one of the three stations in Bristol Central, of course; it is in Bristol East.

It's addictive ... how about new constituencies without a railway station.
Oxford East
West Isle of Wight

And while we are are it Witney - Only Ascott under Wychwood

Handy though. Means you can legitimately invite both the town’s MPs to an event at the station unless they are going to argue about which platform!