Boundary-drawing policy issues

[islington]

I've been prompted to start this thread by minionofmidas's request, in the London thread, for an explanation of why triborough constituencies should be avoided.

But it occurs to me that anyone engaged in drawing boundaries will almost inevitably develop a certain approach, trying to generate some outcomes and avoid others. This goes for the BCE itself, of course, as well as for everyone contributing to this discussion.

So I'm going to kick off by setting out my approach to triborough seats and I encourage others to respond with their own thoughts, either on that issue or on any other boundary-drawing issue.

I'd also like to make it clear that I'm speaking only for myself and others are likely to have a different approach.

First of all, what is a triborough seat? I feel it is a seat in Gtr London or one of the former met counties that includes parts of three boroughs. The rule against doing this - to the extent that it is a 'rule' - definitely does not extend to districts within shire counties. This is logical because these districts tend to be smaller, and there are several existing constituencies that include parts of three shire districts (and in at least one case, four). I'm less clear about whether the anti-triborough 'rule' also extends to UAs outside London and the met counties. My feeling is that it doesn't, but I'd be interested in views on this; I should have thought it would be hard to draw constituencies in Berkshire, for instance, without at least one seat with parts of three UAs.

Minion acknowledged that triborough seats are 'suboptimal' but asked why it is felt that they should be avoided 'at almost any cost'. My own view is that they should be avoided, but 'at almost any cost' is putting it far too strongly. If I were to propose a triborough seat it would have to be on the basis that I could find no reasonable alternative: in other words, that avoiding it would involve something worse such as breaking the quota rules, crossing a regional boundary, splitting a ward, or creating a seat that was so ungainly in shape or so unnatural in composition as to be unacceptable.

In the specific case that prompted minion's query, namely his triborough Leyton seat that very neatly solved the problem of the oversize Newham seats by hiving off Forest Gate into a seat containing parts of Waltham Forest and Redbridge, I'd say that a number of workable schemes have been put forward that produce Newham seats within range without requiring a triborough constituency. They may not be as elegant as minion's proposal, but they do the job without creating any monstrosities or absurdities, so I feel they should be preferred.

There's a similar issue in Gtr Manchester, where Andrew Teale has suggested, and strongly defended, a triborough seat, and I've put forward an alternative avoiding it (although at the price of creating a 'Stretford and Irlam' seat that I feel is acceptable although others may not).

Likewise in W Yorks, Pete Whitehead proposed an ingenious solution assigning 20 seats to the county including a triborough, but I preferred hullenedge's alternative which avoided this (and had other solid virtues as well).

But I'm sure other contributors will have their own approach to this (and other issues, e.g. ward splits), so comments welcome.

[Harry Hayfield]

It could be argued (as Alastair Meeks does on Political Betting.com) that this whole exercise may not even make it to a general election:

"Many Conservatives gleefully note that the Boundary Commission is due to draw up new boundaries for a smaller 600 seat Parliament, believing that this is likely to favour them substantially, particularly given that it will be based on the new electoral register (which is thought to have fewer registered voters in previously Labour areas). So it might, if it happens. But the government needs to get the relevant legislation through Parliament. It has a wafer thin majority in the House of Commons and is a minority in the House of Lords. If Conservative backbenchers of a right wing Leave persuasion feel that the boundary changes might be used for internal party control purposes, they might sabotage the legislation. The House of Lords is likely to reject the legislation so the House of Commons will need two bites at the cherry. There has to be a substantial chance this legislation fails!"

[Davıd Boothroyd]

It's not legislation, of course. It's an affirmative instrument.

Regardless of the issues, I would say the spectacle of the Lords voting down a boundary review affecting the composition of the Commons would raise significant constitutional/democratic issues.

[Adrian]

The historical perspective ought to be mentioned here. There are borough and county constituencies, and until relatively recently the (county, met and London) borough constituencies were single-borough constituencies: even if the constituencies were tiny or huge, the Commission treated borough boundaries as sacrosanct. Sometimes they would split them into 2 or 3 parts - or more cf. Leeds), but pairing them was virtually unheard of, in England at least. So it was with great reluctance that the Commission started pairing boroughs (in the 5th review, starting in 2000).

Fast forward to 2011 and a new law, dreamed up by a Tory thinktank, that changes the redistricting philosophy entirely, in order, it believes, to help the Tory Party win elections. A culture shock for the Commission, but the law's the law. It would be nice if some Tories tried to amend the law, now that they've seen it in operation, to force the Commission to go back to using borough boundaries as its starting point. I still try to do this as much as possible, and believe that it's almost always better to split a ward than to leech a neighbouring borough to get the numbers to work.

Back to the initial question, there are many things that don't really impede representation, but crossing boundaries does impede representation. If a constituency crosses a boundary, that immediately doubles the LA paperwork that the MP has to deal with. It also creates an issue of how effectively the MP can represent orphan wards, since his time and energy will focus mainly on the rest of the seat, and the media will largely ignore the orphan wards. And the problems are multiplied if the seat covers 3 or even 4 boroughs.

p.s. Some nice maps www.londonancestor.com/maps/maps-england.htm

[greatkingrat]

I can see some argument for respecting county boundaries, but borough boundaries are fairly modern inventions and are often somewhat arbitrary anyway. No-one feels affinity to Tameside, Sefton, Sandwell or Brent.

Of course, representing a constituency of 80000 when the one next door is 60000 probably causes a lot of extra paperwork as well.

[YL]

Apr 10, 2016 22:34:01 GMT Adrian said:

The historical perspective ought to be mentioned here. There are borough and county constituencies, and until relatively recently the (county, met and London) borough constituencies were single-borough constituencies: even if the constituencies were tiny or huge, the Commission treated borough boundaries as sacrosanct. Sometimes they would split them into 2 or 3 parts - or more cf. Leeds), but pairing them was virtually unheard of, in England at least. So it was with great reluctance that the Commission started pairing boroughs (in the 5th review, starting in 2000).

It started earlier than that: e.g. the 4th review's Barnsley East & Mexborough crossed the Barnsley/Doncaster boundary, and both the 3rd and 4th reviews had a Tyne Bridge (Newcastle/Gateshead). There was an odd feature of the old rules that London boroughs (and, in the 5th review, non-Berkshire unitaries) were treated as equivalent to counties whereas metropolitan boroughs, with similar powers, weren't.

[Deleted]

I don't believe in hard and fast rules. As mentioned, some county boroughs are more uncrossable than others. But the lines drawn in the 70s mean little now, why continue thinking of them as sacrosanct?

If villages or housing developments on other sides of the border look towards a main town, let's not deliberately ignore that.

[minionofmidas]

Apr 11, 2016 7:04:13 GMT YL said:

Apr 10, 2016 22:34:01 GMT Adrian said:

The historical perspective ought to be mentioned here. There are borough and county constituencies, and until relatively recently the (county, met and London) borough constituencies were single-borough constituencies: even if the constituencies were tiny or huge, the Commission treated borough boundaries as sacrosanct. Sometimes they would split them into 2 or 3 parts - or more cf. Leeds), but pairing them was virtually unheard of, in England at least. So it was with great reluctance that the Commission started pairing boroughs (in the 5th review, starting in 2000).

It started earlier than that: e.g. the 4th review's Barnsley East & Mexborough crossed the Barnsley/Doncaster boundary, and both the 3rd and 4th reviews had a Tyne Bridge (Newcastle/Gateshead). There was an odd feature of the old rules that London boroughs (and, in the 5th review, non-Berkshire unitaries) were treated as equivalent to counties whereas metropolitan boroughs, with similar powers, weren't.

There were also (a choice few) crossborough constituencies in the old GLC.

---

A single orphaned ward is always going to be a little left out in the cold, affecting the quality of its representation. (It's less of an issue with the shire districts precisely because they share a county council, and a lot of stuff is going to be organized on that basis rather than the district.) But that should not logically become better because the remaining 90% of the district are all one authority - if anything it might make it worse. (Somehow, no one's complained about my one Ealing ward in a Hounslow constituency - to me that is the problematic feature of that proposal.)

The MP might have more different authorities to deal with, but they volunteered for the job and are well paid for it. I have little sympathy for that line of argument.

I find those alternative resulting East London seats  - not the West Ham and East Ham seats themselves, but the Barking and Havering seats - quite "ungainly in shape and unnatural in composition". Though my Dagenham & whatever and Romford & Chadwell aren't perfect on that count either, of course. If the issue could be helped by one ward split, it should probably be done. But I don't think it solves the issue there - multiple ward splits might (hey, 3.86 times the quota. Can totally fit in 4 districts, right?), but that's quite an unlikely outcome of the review.

---

Since this thread is about policy issues in general... unless the law gets changed again, most of the seats resulting from the review will last a long time. Since split wards are now on the agenda, and there's a review every five years and most regions' totals will be unchanged at every review, future reviews will probably largely consist of tweaking the boundaries of those seats that have grown or shrunk out of tolerance - a rolling review in practice though not in theory. Except where a seat has to be added or removed, major wrenches will be unlikely (compare, say, the history of Australian constituencies.)

Which means its extra important to get it right this time... and extra important that the zombie review was squashed. Best thing the Lib Dems did in government.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Apr 11, 2016 8:25:15 GMT minionofmidas said:

There were also (a choice few) crossborough constituencies in the old GLC.

Not in the Second Periodical Review (1969) there weren't. Only City of London and Westminster South because the City of London was too small, and in the few areas where borough boundaries had been altered and the constituencies had not yet picked up on it.

[minionofmidas]

Apr 11, 2016 8:32:21 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Apr 11, 2016 8:25:15 GMT minionofmidas said:

There were also (a choice few) crossborough constituencies in the old GLC.

Not in the Second Periodical Review (1969) there weren't. Only City of London and Westminster South because the City of London was too small, and in the few areas where borough boundaries had been altered and the constituencies had not yet picked up on it.

Uh... that was after it was ...

Oh wait. My mistake. I meant to say "there were also (a choice few) crossborough constituencies in the old LCC". Sorry about that.

[islington]

A few points to pick up here - 

It's true that there were cross-borough seats in the LCC, but not many. And from 1918 to 1950, none at all - even the City had its own seat (and technically, of course, the LCC did not cover the City). After 1950, declining electorates meant that some cross-borough seats were needed, but it was done sparingly and no more than two boroughs were involved in any seat. But I'm not sure how germane this is to present circumstances.

I used the expression "ungainly in shape or unnatural in composition" to define the type of seat that, even if contiguous and within quota, I might consider as justifying a ward split or a triborough seat. I ought to be clear here that I intend this to be a very high bar. Certainly nothing in the alternatives for East London begins to qualify. And looking at the boundaries as they currently exist - so I'm taking about actual seats, not proposals - I don't think I'd say that horrors like Lancashire & Fleetwood are quite bad enough, although certainly I'd go to a lot of trouble to try to avoid such a seat. There are other existing seats that are certainly clumsy or convoluted (Mid Sussex, Wythenshawe & Sale W, doubtless others), but I don't think I'd split a ward to avoid them.

In the context of the current view, I'd cite 'Tyne Bridge' as a seat I'm highly anxious to avoid, because it fails to respect the identity of Newcastle and Gateshead as distinct areas each large enough to form the basis of at least one Parliamentary seat. I can accept that towns that are too small to form a seat may have to be yoked together is some less-than-ideal union; and I can see that it may sometimes be necessary to deprive a town of some of its suburban or fringe wards to achieve a satisfactory fit. But places of the size and importance of Newcastle and Gateshead ought not to have their central areas rammed together and, as a personal view, I'd put up with a triborough seat (although maybe not a split ward) in order to prevent it.

But, of course, others will have their own views both about the acceptability, or not, of a 'Tyne Bridge' seat and how far they might go to prevent it. And I'm not aiming to start a debate specifically about Tyne Bridge (which in any case would belong in the North East thread); I'm simply trying to show how very bad I feel a seat has to be before I'd start thinking about triborough or split ward solutions. 

But in the end, every proposed scheme has its strengths and weaknesses; it's a series of compromises as one factor is balanced against another. Provided we stay within the rules, each of us decides how much weight to give the various factors; which is what this thread allows us to discuss.

[minionofmidas]

The obvious way to avoid Tyne Bridge in this review doesn't involve a triborough seat though, and in fact involves one fewer UA split. It is to avoid the bridge and create "Newcastle E & Jarrow". (I don't think anyone's actually proposed it in the NE thread, which just goes to show how bad the idea is. Though... seeing how at the zombie review they snuck random bits of Blaydon into the Hexham seat... can't be much worse.)

[Adrian]

One rule I find highly problematic is the Minimum Change (MC) rule. Now, if we are really going to have 5-yearly reviews, MC is important most of the time to avoid regular upheavals. But MC has serious negative consequences over time. Firstly, it has typically meant that smaller seats have stayed small and larger seats have stayed large, but the 5% rule has largely put paid to this problem. Secondly, it continues to mean that the composition of seats largely stays the same from decade to decade, thereby meaning that marginals stay marginals and safe seats stay safe. It means that certain places have disproportionately many wasted votes, and Labour/Tory/LD voters who never have a Labour/Tory/LD MP, and so on. Therefore voters deserve a fundamental redrawing of the boundaries - ignoring MC - every 15 years or so, eschewing sentiment and ignoring party convenience. Democracy is not about sentimentality or convenience.

[greenchristian]

Apr 25, 2016 20:55:51 GMT Adrian said:

One rule I find highly problematic is the Minimum Change (MC) rule. Now, if we are really going to have 5-yearly reviews, MC is important most of the time to avoid regular upheavals. But MC has serious negative consequences over time. Firstly, it has typically meant that smaller seats have stayed small and larger seats have stayed large, but the 5% rule has largely put paid to this problem. Secondly, it continues to mean that the composition of seats largely stays the same from decade to decade, thereby meaning that marginals stay marginals and safe seats stay safe. It means that certain places have disproportionately many wasted votes, and Labour/Tory/LD voters who never have a Labour/Tory/LD MP, and so on. Therefore voters deserve a fundamental redrawing of the boundaries - ignoring MC - every 15 years or so, eschewing sentiment and ignoring party convenience. Democracy is not about sentimentality or convenience.

The thing is that some areas are going to have plenty of safe seats unless you deliberately gerrymander the boundaries to prevent it. For example, the only way to draw an electoral map including Coventry without including at least one Labour safe seat is to break Coventry up into lots of pieces that are combined with various bits of Solihull and Warwickshire (but not Nuneaton and Bedworth), none of which would be coherent in terms of things like community ties. And if you're going to take that kind of approach to drawing boundaries, why would you still be using a FPTP system where this kind of thing matters?

[greenhert]

Apr 25, 2016 20:55:51 GMT Adrian said:

One rule I find highly problematic is the Minimum Change (MC) rule. Now, if we are really going to have 5-yearly reviews, MC is important most of the time to avoid regular upheavals. But MC has serious negative consequences over time. Firstly, it has typically meant that smaller seats have stayed small and larger seats have stayed large, but the 5% rule has largely put paid to this problem. Secondly, it continues to mean that the composition of seats largely stays the same from decade to decade, thereby meaning that marginals stay marginals and safe seats stay safe. It means that certain places have disproportionately many wasted votes, and Labour/Tory/LD voters who never have a Labour/Tory/LD MP, and so on. Therefore voters deserve a fundamental redrawing of the boundaries - ignoring MC - every 15 years or so, eschewing sentiment and ignoring party convenience. Democracy is not about sentimentality or convenience.

Indeed, and minimum change is not really possible in many areas given the current parameters the Boundary Commission has to operate with for the Sixth Review:

1. The Cornish constituency map will have to be completely redrawn, with one Cornish constituency crossing the Tamar

2. Most of Greater London's constituencies will have to be redrawn from scratch, even if they end up looking similar enough to current constituencies.

3. The Leeds/Bradford area faces substantial upheaval, as does Birmingham in terms of large cities.

4. No existing Welsh constituency can survive intact.

5. Only one current constituency in Northern Ireland at most can survive intact.

6. Only the already protected constituencies in Scotland are likely to keep their current boundaries.

7. Unavoidable cross-county constituencies in some areas will have problematic knock-on effects that cause otherwise unnecessary change to in-quota constituencies.

[timrollpickering]

Apr 11, 2016 12:50:28 GMT islington said:

(and technically, of course, the LCC did not cover the City).

I thought the City was part of the LCC (and indeed all London local government bodies going right back to the Metropolitan Board of Works) but the Corporation retained a lot of powers elsewhere exercised at county level.

It's the Lord Lieutenancies where the City is a clearly separate entity from the wider London.

[Adrian]

Well, Wales is a special case. In the other cases, my point still holds: the main principle the Commission holds to (apart from the 5% rule) is MC. Boundaries will change, but as little as possible. And I think that's wrong.

Of course there are many places where there are few or no sensible options to radically redraw the boundaries, but often when there are options, the Commission and/or the parties go out of their way to achieve MC. The first thing that comes to mind is the obsession with keeping North and South Derby seats, as though having West and East Derby seats would somehow be undemocratic.

Edit: I'm not actually in favour of really radical change. The most radical option would be to respect no community, administrative or natural boundaries at all in the redistricting process. Back in 2004, when the BCE were showing me their computer software, I asked why they didn't just program it to start at Land's End and put the nation's wards together into 650 blocks of near-identical electorate.** Most of the resulting seats would look and feel like gerrymanders but wouldn't be, since they'd been created by computer. (Of course in fact it would be a massive kind of gerrymander since I believe that such nationwide "cracking" of towns and cities would favour the Tories.) Of course the response from the BCE was that it wasn't a numbers game.

Since those days, my opinion and that of the BCE and have moved in opposite directions: they now espouse amorphous blobbism, while I want them to respect LA boundaries.

**Perhaps Kevin or A.N.Other could do this? I'd be fascinated to see the result.

[greatkingrat]

Apr 25, 2016 22:32:00 GMT Adrian said:

Well, Wales is a special case. In the other cases, my point still holds: the main principle the Commission holds to (apart from the 5% rule) is MC. Boundaries will change, but as little as possible. And I think that's wrong.

Of course there are many places where there are few or no sensible options to radically redraw the boundaries, but often when there are options, the Commission and/or the parties go out of their way to achieve MC. The first thing that comes to mind is the obsession with keeping North and South Derby seats, as though having West and East Derby seats would somehow be undemocratic.

Is that the same commission that proposed Derby West and Derby East seats in the aborted review?

[East Anglian Lefty]

Obviously minimum change is a lot less minimum this time round, but there's also the issue of how to quantify it. Ordinarily the Commission has done it through measuring the number of electors moved, but a) that becomes a much less useful metric when you've deleted large numbers of seats, because it's sometimes arbitrary what gets counted as a successor seat and b) with the 5% rule forcing odd constituencies, too much adherence to minimum electorate movement might actually stop necessary rationalisations to fit seat alignments.

More broadly, I think there's the question of whether it's better to keep most seats unchanged but have major changes in a few, or have slightly more major changes across the map but with fewer huge disruptions. It strikes me this is basically a judgement call. Similarly when it comes to crossing local authority boundaries - without context, it's hard to say whether a seat all in one district and one covering three is better than both seats covering two districts.

[Adrian]

Apr 25, 2016 22:44:42 GMT greatkingrat said:

Apr 25, 2016 22:32:00 GMT Adrian said:

Well, Wales is a special case. In the other cases, my point still holds: the main principle the Commission holds to (apart from the 5% rule) is MC. Boundaries will change, but as little as possible. And I think that's wrong.

Of course there are many places where there are few or no sensible options to radically redraw the boundaries, but often when there are options, the Commission and/or the parties go out of their way to achieve MC. The first thing that comes to mind is the obsession with keeping North and South Derby seats, as though having West and East Derby seats would somehow be undemocratic.

Is that the same commission that proposed Derby West and Derby East seats in the aborted review?

Ha yes. I'm an old man - I was thinking about the previous review. At the last (aborted) review the Commission were more radical, but the parties and others (e.g. most of the people on this forum) still espouse MC, and in several cases got the Commission to reduce the amount of change in the revised proposals.