Changes to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986

[robert1]

YL is correct in his interpretaton.

The LGBCE (excellent) website shows how many councils are having reviews at any given time. The site includes those which have been completed recently. It is quite a few more than Greenrobinhood suggests.

[belvoir]

May 19, 2020 18:45:31 GMT J.G.Harston said:

The Bill seems to have omitted:

"In Schedule 2 replace U/596 with U/646"

in setting the quota.

That's not omitted but hidden in the schedule somewhere.

As for local ward boundaries, I gather the two great problems are a) 3/4 of London and b) all of Wales, where new wards are about to come in but not until 2022. There are a few other places, but these are the two big issues. As London is the centre of the commentariativerse you would have got any number of journos resident in Camden/Islington complaining that the BCE was using old wards when, goodness, new wards are coming in in five months time (and if new wards are coming in in journo-packed North London it must be the same all over the country, right?)

[kevinlarkin]

For there to be any meaningful consultation councils will have to provide electorates for wards to be, as well as existing wards. Other provisions in the bill curtail the timetable for consultations.

[J.G.Harston]

May 19, 2020 21:11:48 GMT kevinlarkin said:

For there to be any meaningful consultation councils will have to provide electorates for wards to be, as well as existing wards. Other provisions in the bill curtail the timetable for consultations.

I also didn't spot the specified date of electorate to use.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Speaking as a resident of an area where the wards are about to be changed and we know exactly where, but they won't take effect until after the PBCE starts, I'd like to say that this change to take into account agreed but unimplemented ward boundaries is a very sensible one.

[greatkingrat]

May 19, 2020 23:28:17 GMT J.G.Harston said:

I also didn't spot the specified date of electorate to use.

It's in Clause 7. December 2020 electorates for the 2023 report.

[J.G.Harston]

May 20, 2020 0:37:39 GMT greatkingrat said:

May 19, 2020 23:28:17 GMT J.G.Harston said:

I also didn't spot the specified date of electorate to use.

It's in Clause 7. December 2020 electorates for the 2023 report.

Ta. Does it then roll on, Electorate in December Year X-3 for Report in Year X? (and implied election in year X+1). That is an improvement on previous reviews - the 2010 election used the 2000 electorate.

[greatkingrat]

Yes, although if we no longer have fixed term parliaments it will presumably get out of sync again sooner or later.

[YL]

May 20, 2020 1:09:36 GMT J.G.Harston said:

May 20, 2020 0:37:39 GMT greatkingrat said:

It's in Clause 7. December 2020 electorates for the 2023 report.

Ta. Does it then roll on, Electorate in December Year X-3 for Report in Year X? (and implied election in year X+1). That is an improvement on previous reviews - the 2010 election used the 2000 electorate.

It would really be better to use an actual electorate from a General Election, especially in light of the tendency since Individual Electoral Registration was introduced for there to be electorate surges during election and referendum campaigns.

That could be done in conjunction with some sort of trigger system for a review: if you have a General Election and some percentage of constituencies are more than 10% from average a review is triggered.

[greatkingrat]

Higher doesn't necessarily mean it is more accurate. Where people have moved and registered at the new address for the election, they may not have been removed from the old address so will be double counted until the annual canvas happens in December.

[islington]

Jan 12, 2020 13:10:27 GMT islington said:

Let us assume that, as reported, the Government intends to jettison the 2018 review and launch a fresh review with 650 seats instead of 600.

The current legislation governing this is the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, as amended (including the substantial amendments effected by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011).

Assuming that the next GE has been pencilled in for 2024, either in May or in the autumn, the Government will have to get its legislative skates on if it wants new boundaries, with 650 seats, to be in place.

In the first place, the existing legislation mandates the Government to lay the 2018 review before Parliament. And secondly, it requires a new review to start, with 600 seats based on the electorate as at 1 December 2020. Both these things make no sense if it is now intended to retain 650 seats.

If I had the ear of Government, because of the need for urgency I’d recommend keeping the legislation as simple as possible. I’d suggest the following.

• Remove the requirement to lay the 2018 review before Parliament. Yes
  
• Keep the trigger date of 1 December 2020 for the first review under the amended Act, but amend s3 of the Act to reduce the frequency of reviews so that the future trigger dates are 1 December 2030, 2040, &c. This means that each set of boundaries would be in place for a minimum of two GEs. The Commissions would be required to submit their first report after 1 September 2023 but before 1 October 2023 (i.e. the same timetable as currently applies). Not quite, but more or less. The trigger dates are 2028, 2036, &c. The report date is 1 Jul 2023 for the next report but 1 Oct 2031, &c, for subsequent ones.
  
• Change Rule 1 to specify 650 seats instead of 600  Yes
  
• Change Rule 2 so that the electoral quota is obtained by dividing the UK electorate (less the islands) by 646 instead of 596. Yes
  
• Also, change Rule 2 to allow some latitude on the 5% limit. I’d suggest keeping it, but allowing a Commission to propose one or more seats within 7% of the quota if, and only if, it is satisfied that no reasonable pattern of boundaries is possible within the 5% limit.  No. The Bill sticks to 5% and I think this is a mistake. I've been 'wargaming' different parts of the country using 2015 electorates and with a 5% tolerance it turns out it's a lot harder to do 650 seats than 600; the 8.4% reduction in the average electorate makes a big difference in areas with relatively large wards. I'm reluctant to suggest an easing of the tolerance because I support near-equal electorates, but I'm even more reluctant to see the widespread ward-splitting that a 5% tolerance is likely to require. I therefore suggest an easing to 7.5% (some have suggested 10% but this allows too much variation in my view). 
  
• Remove Rule 5(2), which allows the BCE to take account of constituencies for EU elections. In practice I’d envisage that the BCE would have regard to counties, UAs, metropolitan boroughs, &c, treating these separately where possible but otherwise treating two or more together to achieve a combination reasonably close to a multiple of the electoral quota. I’d probably add a rule that no constituency should cross the boundary of greater London.  What I'd missed here is that the 1986 Act has already been amended to refer to 'English regions' that just so happen, by a remarkable coincidence, to be identical to the former EU constituencies. No further change is proposed, meaning that N Lincs and NE Lincs remain part of Y&H, and MK stays linked to Bucks even if it might fit better with Beds or Nhants. In theory this rule is not absolutely binding but I imagine BCE will respect it having been given such a clear Parliamentary steer.
  
• Perhaps most controversially, I’d require the Home Secretary, within a strict time limit of maybe two months, to prepare an Order in Council implementing the Commissions’ recommendations and I’d remove the necessity for Parliamentary approval of this Order. It would take effect automatically at the first GE after a specified date, which I’d suggest should be 1 March of the year following the submission of the final reports (i.e. 1 March 2024). Yes, although not quite in the manner I suggested.
  

Would that meet the case?

 

Now that we've seen the Bill, I've looked back at the post with which this thread began.

The most pressing need here is to relax the tolerance.

[Pete Whitehead]

Any amendments in the pipeline along the lines of what Afzhal Khan put forward in the last Parliament? I suppose the one downside of a large Conservative majority is that such an amendment would go nowhere if the government choose to stop it, though there's no particular partisan advantage in it either way

[ClevelandYorks]

I have a feeling that if MPs were to see the kind of boundaries a strict 5% variance would produce, a consensus would emerge for increasing it to 7.5%. However I doubt they’ll realise the implications until it’s too late.

[Pete Whitehead]

MPs (with a few exceptions) seem to be surprisingly clueless about such matters. robert1 should educate them a bit

[ClevelandYorks]

May 20, 2020 15:00:11 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

MPs (with a few exceptions) seem to be surprisingly clueless about such matters. robert1 should educate them a bit

Perhaps we could set up a single-issue party

[Deleted]

May 20, 2020 15:03:12 GMT ClevelandYorks said:

May 20, 2020 15:00:11 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

MPs (with a few exceptions) seem to be surprisingly clueless about such matters. robert1 should educate them a bit

Perhaps we could set up a single-issue party

That's been suggested before...

[edgbaston]

May 19, 2020 10:44:08 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

May 19, 2020 10:12:51 GMT kevinlarkin said:

There are a number of dubious assertions in this article by Chloe Smith about the bill to be introduced today.

www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/your-vote-matters-wherever-it-is-cast-in-the-uk

Still going with the 5% variance then, "as has been the case under governments of all colours" apparently.

What a terrible lack of brief knowledge. I hope they consider replacing her with Clarko

[islington]

May 19, 2020 23:28:17 GMT J.G.Harston said:

May 19, 2020 21:11:48 GMT kevinlarkin said:

For there to be any meaningful consultation councils will have to provide electorates for wards to be, as well as existing wards. Other provisions in the bill curtail the timetable for consultations.

I also didn't spot the specified date of electorate to use.

The electorate is as at 1 Dec 2020.

I completely agree with Kevin Larkin about publishing electorates for proposed wards where relevant.

[Harry Hayfield]

Questions to Chloe Smith:
1) "Moving forward, each constituency will have a near equal number of eligible voters so that every vote counts the same" Define "near"?
2) "We will also still preserve the four protected constituencies – Orkney and Shetland, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, and the Isle of Wight – whose boundaries must remain as they are out of geographical necessity" And why not Ynys Môn (which you risk losing to a Labour or Plaid MP if you combine it with Bangor)?
3) "Now is the time to get it done" Is it, is it really?

[johnloony]

May 20, 2020 18:07:20 GMT Harry Hayfield said:

Questions to Chloe Smith:
1) "Moving forward, each constituency will have a near equal number of eligible voters so that every vote counts the same" Define "near"?
2) "We will also still preserve the four protected constituencies – Orkney and Shetland, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, and the Isle of Wight – whose boundaries must remain as they are out of geographical necessity" And why not Ynys Môn (which you risk losing to a Labour or Plaid MP if you combine it with Bangor)?
3) "Now is the time to get it done" Is it, is it really?

1. Within 5%
2. Because Ynys Môn is closely connected to the mainland in a way that Wight isn't
3. Yes, because it's already badly out of date. It should have been done years ago.