Rolling review

[Adrian]

(From 2018 review thread)

Since the 2018 review seems dead in the water, I wonder if consideration is being given to changing the rules/procedures to try to ensure that proposals are enacted in future? It is bizarre that independent boundary commissions can be ignored by parliament, whatever the motivations of the latter might be. A suggestion: a new law that states that all seats that are 15% above or below the quotient (i.e. currently based on 650 seats) are illegal and must be resolved before an election in them can take place.



Edit: having an initial look at this, the current quotient in England is 71191 (approx), so the acceptable range would be 61193 to 82790 and there are 65 seats outside the range, excluding the Isle of Wight. It might be an interesting exercise to find the least disruptive way of getting the seats within range. Data: www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/elections/electoralregistration/datasets/electoralstatisticsforuk/2018/elec5dt1electoralstatisticsuk2018.xls
The figures are higher than used for the 2018 review, partly because of additional registrations and partly because they include attainers.


Too big:
Bridgwater and West Somerset
Horsham
Aylesbury
Bristol West
Mid Sussex
South Cambridgeshire
North East Cambridgeshire
Huntingdon
Taunton Deane
South Norfolk
South East Cambridgeshire
Mid Bedfordshire
East Devon
Poplar and Limehouse
Warrington South
Croydon North
Bermondsey and Old Southwark
Folkestone and Hythe
Manchester Central
Wantage
Bury St Edmunds
Banbury
North East Bedfordshire
Ashford
Milton Keynes North
South Northamptonshire
West Ham
Sleaford and North Hykeham
North West Cambridgeshire
Milton Keynes South

Too small:
Newcastle upon Tyne Central
Wirral West
Newcastle upon Tyne East
Blackpool South
Preston
Stoke-on-Trent Central
Wirral South
Wolverhampton South West
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Kensington
Northampton North
Middlesbrough
Leeds North West
Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle
Cities of London and Westminster
Nottingham East
Hexham
Wolverhampton North East
Aldridge-Brownhills
Putney
Warley
Workington
Bath
Liverpool, Wavertree
Chelsea and Fulham
Liverpool, Walton
West Bromwich East
Great Grimsby
Dudley South
Wolverhampton South East
Dudley North
Copeland
Easington
Wansbeck
Northampton South


Note: I've corrected "quota" to "quotient". Although I've sometimes used "quota" for this in the past, it makes no sense.

[Adrian]

Beds, Cambs, Suffolk

Bury St Edmunds is easy - add two wards to West Suffolk. Bedfordshire is a bit harder, I've jiggled the wards round to get the three mid/north seats to about the same size. Cambridgeshire has several oversize seats; the county gains a seat.

[Adrian]

There's several undersized seats in the Black Country so it loses a seat.

[greenhert]

As long as there are regular reviews 8-12 years (this will also be needed if we replace FPTP with AMS as we should have done by now) as was the case originally, no rolling review is needed. Britain's population is growing much more slowly than in the past.

[carlton43]

Probably best that HOC confines itself to defining the rules through legislation and the timescale, but all else is dependent upon the Commission doing the job and delivering and implementing the results on time and to time. If the HOC dislikes the result it is at liberty to enact new rules, terms and conditions, but it should have no say at all on the timescale or the implementation.

[Harry Hayfield]

According to the ONS In 2017, the median total Parliamentary electorate across constituencies was about 56,000 in Wales, 68,300 in Northern Ireland, 67,200 in Scotland and 72,200 in England, therefore could I ask when you say "the current quota in England is 71191" do you mean the MEAN electorate or the MEDIAN electorate?

[Adrian]

May 11, 2019 10:37:01 GMT Harry Hayfield said:

According to the ONS In 2017, the median total Parliamentary electorate across constituencies was about 56,000 in Wales, 68,300 in Northern Ireland, 67,200 in Scotland and 72,200 in England, therefore could I ask when you say "the current quota in England is 71191" do you mean the MEAN electorate or the MEDIAN electorate?

I divided the 2018 ONS total (38371414) by the number of seats (533). 

The national quotients according to that data set are:
England 71991
Scotland 66539
Wales 55753
N Ireland 69357

I think that if the law was changed, it would probably still reduce the number of MPs from Wales. I suggest cutting to 32 (giving a total of 642 MPs). The Wales quotient would then be 69691.

[Adrian]

Northants. The two Northampton seats are too small, and South Northants is too big. Rectifying this has had a knock-on effect as far as the Wellingborough area.

[Adrian]

Stoke Central is too small. On old rules this can be rectified within the city boundaries. And using new(ish) wards. 

[Adrian]

May 10, 2019 23:20:13 GMT greenhert said:

As long as there are regular reviews 8-12 years (this will also be needed if we replace FPTP with AMS as we should have done by now) as was the case originally, no rolling review is needed. Britain's population is growing much more slowly than in the past.

My suggestion is not only that parliament faces facts and scraps the 2011 changes, but also that we do away with regular reviews. Those regular reviews are costly and unnecessary. If we return to a system of greater tolerances, which is what MPs seem to want, we can go back to using the county as a unit of MP distribution, and if seats become too large or too small they can be dealt with within their counties. What's interesting from my list of 65 seats is that even though it's so long now since the last enacted review, there are quite a lot of parts of the country where the seats are still okay, and they can be left alone.

[Adrian]

Grimsby and Hull. The simple (yet not especially popular) answer to Grimsby's lack of electors is to add a Cleethorpes ward.
Increasing the size of Hull West invloves rejigging the entire East Riding.

[Foggy]

What if we were to do things Australian-style? i.e. when there isn't time for a full review before an election, and a county* has one seat too many, its two smallest contiguous constituencies by electorate are merged; and when a county* has one seat too few, its two largest contiguous constituencies are part-split into three.

You'd end up with some very odd and unsatisfactory boundaries and electorate sizes, but barring something extraordinary they would only be valid for one general election. Coming up with names for them could be interesting too.

*(All right, it's actually a state in the case of Australia.)

[Adrian]

May 14, 2019 5:59:17 GMT Foggy said:

What if we were to do things Australian-style? i.e. when there isn't time for a full review before an election, and a county* has one seat too many, its two smallest contiguous constituencies by electorate are merged; and when a county* has one seat too few, its two largest contiguous constituencies are part-split into three.

You'd end up with some very odd and unsatisfactory boundaries and electorate sizes, but barring something extraordinary they would only be valid for one general election. Coming up with names for them could be interesting too.

*(All right, it's actually a state in the case of Australia.)

Well, I think you've answered your own question. I don't think the time pressure is so severe that such unsatisfactory measures need to be taken. Once a rolling review is up to speed, there will only be a handful of changes every year. And if the process takes a couple of months, it will only ever hold a general election up by a couple of weeks.

[Adrian]

There's a couple of undersize seats in Liverpool.

[Adrian]

Chelsea, Kensington, CLW and Putney are undersize. According to the ONS data, Westminster North's electorate has gone up to 62,000 so it doesn't need changing. 

[Adrian]

Nottingham East is too small. The solution that takes the fewest electors from outside the city seems to be to add Bestwood village ward to the North seat.

[Adrian]

The Wirral famously has undersize seats. The area loses a seat.

Warrington South is oversize - this just requires a ward swap.

[Adrian]

Manchester Central is an example of a patch job: in order to avoid huge disruption, the Moston ward is added to a non-Manchester seat (Ashton). Not ideal by any means, but okay until a complete redraw is necessary.

[Adrian]

East London. Registration figures here are quite liquid. Poplar is currently above my 15% threshold (the electorate of both TH seats has shot up since the last review started) but it's possible that moving the seat boundary to the new ward boundary would just bring the two TH seats under the threshold.

East Ham's electorate has apparently plummeted in the last couple of years, but West Ham is still too big. Pairing Newham and Waltham Forest sorts things out nicely (?)

[Adrian]

Northumberland/Newcastle loses a seat. As we know from the zombie reviews, Ponteland is a problem. I suggest using Heddon to link Hexham with West Newcastle, ie. splitting a ward.