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Post by andrew111 on Nov 30, 2017 23:17:56 GMT
How about this? services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/parliamentaryconstituenciesamendment.htmlSince the 2nd reading is less than 3 weeks away, we should find out what Afzal is proposing pretty soon. However, if you look at the list of supporters below I would say it is virtually certain to propose the end of the current review and a return to 650 seats. If the Tories and Labour leadership agree it could go through on the nod. Perhaps there is someone on here who is in the know?? Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Afzal Khan, supported by Joanna Cherry, Hannah Bardell, Mr Alistair Carmichael, Liz Saville Roberts, Lady Hermon and Caroline Lucas, presented a Bill to amend the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 to make provision about the number and size of parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom; and for connected purposes. . The main points: · 650 seats, not 600 · 18 seats for Northern Ireland is protected and its quota defined separately · Allowable variance up from 5% to 7.5% · Boundary review every ten years · Next review to report in autumn 2020 · Electorate to be used is that at the 2017 General Election Most of this is actually sensible except the last one. The register about to be released (1 December, annual turnover) would serve as well. Any hint as to the Government view of this Bill? |
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ricmk
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Post by ricmk on Dec 1, 2017 13:14:03 GMT
The Afzal Khan bill has passed 2nd reading - enough MPs there to force closure. Interestingly the Government didn't oppose the 2nd reading vote itself, although my guess is that was because they would lose heavily rather than agreeing with it.
Goes to committee now. I wonder if Jim McMahon will be tempted to table an amendment allowing votes at 16 on? Would be audacious if he did so, but might just get away with it?
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Post by simonc30 on Dec 1, 2017 13:19:50 GMT
I could be wrong but I don't think it will get to Committee as I'm pretty sure it needs a money resolution and that needs to be moved by the Government.
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Post by greatkingrat on Dec 1, 2017 16:12:09 GMT
The Afzal Khan bill has passed 2nd reading - enough MPs there to force closure. Interestingly the Government didn't oppose the 2nd reading vote itself, although my guess is that was because they would lose heavily rather than agreeing with it. Goes to committee now. I wonder if Jim McMahon will be tempted to table an amendment allowing votes at 16 on? Would be audacious if he did so, but might just get away with it? Such an amendment would almost certainly be ruled out of order by the chair as not in the scope of the bill. Even if it wasn't, adding a very controversial measure to a bill is hardly the best way to get it passed. |
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Post by An Sionnach Flannbhuí on Dec 1, 2017 20:37:15 GMT
That bill in full with some not-very-helpful notes. The main points: · 650 seats, not 600 · 18 seats for Northern Ireland is protected and its quota defined separately · Allowable variance up from 5% to 7.5% · Boundary review every ten years · Next review to report in autumn 2020 · Electorate to be used is that at the 2017 General Election Most of this is actually sensible except the last one. The register about to be released (1 December, annual turnover) would serve as well. I've been persuaded by the good people on here that "the electorate at the immediately preceding General Election" is a good enough rule. And what if the Government calls a snap election, say for next May 2018 (been done before!), while the boundary review gets underway this Christmas? It would mean a boundary review that starts in December 2022 while they have to use the figures the May 2018 election. They would already be 4 1/2 years out of date! And I thought (showboating) people opposed out of date registers. |
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Post by lancastrian on Dec 1, 2017 23:34:35 GMT
The trouble is you then get all these fly-by-night voters who tend to just register five minutes before the general election which would skew the figures. There also needs to be some way to ensure that individuals are only counted in one place for these purposes otherwise university areas and areas which send a disproportionate number of youngsters away to university end up being over-represented I agree you should be restricted to counting once for boundary reviews (maybe you should have to nominate one address for parliamentary elections of something). There may actually be a point in the voters showing up immediately before elections. If registers are generally tidied up in the autumn, does the register for a May or June election include lots of people who've moved and are unintentionally registered at multiple addresses, plus those who've died in the first half of the year? |
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YL
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Post by YL on Dec 2, 2017 6:58:08 GMT
Honestly having it so that a review is immediately triggered following a General Election based on the electorates at that election wouldn't be that bad a rule: although that might cause issues if there are early elections called like the last election... I think I'd suggest some rule for when a General Election triggers a review: either that it's some period of time since the last review was triggered (I would suggest 6 years, so you get a review more or less every other election) or something like what happens with local government reviews where a review is triggered if some number of constituencies have electorates out of range. However, frequent reviews with unchanging rules shouldn't actually be that bad: in most reviews, most areas won't need changes. I do think that the pattern we've seen since IER came in of big registration surges before major votes makes it very hard to justify the use of "off season" December electorate figures. |
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Post by andrew111 on Dec 2, 2017 7:04:09 GMT
The trouble is you then get all these fly-by-night voters who tend to just register five minutes before the general election which would skew the figures. There also needs to be some way to ensure that individuals are only counted in one place for these purposes otherwise university areas and areas which send a disproportionate number of youngsters away to university end up being over-represented I agree you should be restricted to counting once for boundary reviews (maybe you should have to nominate one address for parliamentary elections of something). There may actually be a point in the voters showing up immediately before elections. If registers are generally tidied up in the autumn, does the register for a May or June election include lots of people who've moved and are unintentionally registered at multiple addresses, plus those who've died in the first half of the year? In these days of easy postal voting there is not really any need for people to be registered in two places for parliamentary elections..But the right to vote twice in local elections could be preserved by letting people choose the "local only" status currently "enjoyed" by EU nationals in one of the places. I am pretty sure the biggest group that is registered in two places will be students, and other random people have little effect on quotas. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Dec 2, 2017 11:11:44 GMT
Honestly having it so that a review is immediately triggered following a General Election based on the electorates at that election wouldn't be that bad a rule: although that might cause issues if there are early elections called like the last election... I think I'd suggest some rule for when a General Election triggers a review: either that it's some period of time since the last review was triggered (I would suggest 6 years, so you get a review more or less every other election) or something like what happens with local government reviews where a review is triggered if some number of constituencies have electorates out of range. However, frequent reviews with unchanging rules shouldn't actually be that bad: in most reviews, most areas won't need changes. I do think that the pattern we've seen since IER came in of big registration surges before major votes makes it very hard to justify the use of "off season" December electorate figures. Certainly in Cambridge using the November register worked really badly, because a lot of the students (and other high-churn groups) who would be registered by May weren't by November, and hence the register was artificially shrunk by about 10%. If you use the May register, the individuals concerned may no longer be at that address by November, but it's a much better reflection of the approximate size of the electorate at election times. I'm quite keen on the Australian system of ordering reviews when one area loses a seat and another is entitled to an extra one. If you went back to forbidding cross-county seats (and presumably formalised treating North and South London as two separate review areas) then I think that's a system that could work quite well and would mean the process would be less of a mad rush. |
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Post by simonc30 on Dec 14, 2017 11:12:33 GMT
The Afzal Khan private members bill was just raised by a Conservative MP, Bill Wiggin, at Business Questions to the Leader of the House in the House of Commons. He said that there's no need to cut the number of MPs to 600, as with the UK leaving the EU we will be saving money on governance by not having MEP's and would the Leader ensure the bill gets the money resolution it needs. Andrea Leadsom said she will look at the matter very carefully...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2017 20:40:12 GMT
A Cambridge seat covering the entire city would surely have voted Conservative in 1992, and I imagine there would've been enough tactical votes for the LDs to win in 2015 on such boundaries.
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Post by greenhert on Dec 14, 2017 23:07:08 GMT
There would, @conservativeestimate-just. It would not have helped Julian Huppert in 2017, though. See also Leeds North West and Sheffield Hallam.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2017 23:10:16 GMT
There would, @conservativeestimate-just. It would not have helped Julian Huppert in 2017, though. See also Leeds North West and Sheffield Hallam. No he would obviously have lost in 2017. I wonder if with those two wards the seat might have been an LD-CON marginal in the 90s and won by the LDs in 1997 like Hallam. But would probably still have been gained by Labour a la Bristol West and Leeds NW. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Dec 15, 2017 21:25:55 GMT
Both Queen Edith's and Trumpington always tended to have better Labour votes in general elections than locals (in the case of QE, it would have been hard for it to be worse.) In addition to a lot of naturally Tory territory, both contained decent-sized council estates and some relatively cheap private rental properties (the former is still the case, nowhere in Cambridge is really cheap to rent these days). QE has also got Homerton College, which wouldn't have accounted for too many votes in 1992 but which has grown at a rate of knots in the past decade.
Mind you, Cambridge is too large for a single seat, and in a few years time that'll be the case even when you use a November electorate.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2017 21:53:59 GMT
True.
Doesn’t seem like a seat Labour will lose anytime soon.
A shame because my friend’s dad is going for the LD nomination.
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Post by lancastrian on Jan 10, 2018 23:35:13 GMT
How about this? services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/parliamentaryconstituenciesamendment.htmlSince the 2nd reading is less than 3 weeks away, we should find out what Afzal is proposing pretty soon. However, if you look at the list of supporters below I would say it is virtually certain to propose the end of the current review and a return to 650 seats. If the Tories and Labour leadership agree it could go through on the nod. Perhaps there is someone on here who is in the know?? Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Afzal Khan, supported by Joanna Cherry, Hannah Bardell, Mr Alistair Carmichael, Liz Saville Roberts, Lady Hermon and Caroline Lucas, presented a Bill to amend the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 to make provision about the number and size of parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom; and for connected purposes. . The main points: · 650 seats, not 600 · 18 seats for Northern Ireland is protected and its quota defined separately · Allowable variance up from 5% to 7.5% · Boundary review every ten years · Next review to report in autumn 2020 · Electorate to be used is that at the 2017 General Election Most of this is actually sensible except the last one. The register about to be released (1 December, annual turnover) would serve as well. Were this to pass, each region would be entitled to seats as follows: (assuming the Isle of Wight still gets 2) Northern Ireland 18 (no change) Scotland 56 (-3) (including the islands) Wales 32 (-8) South East 91 (+7) (including Isle of Wight) London 76 (+3) North West 73 (-2) Eastern 61 (+3) South West 58 (+3) West Midlands 57 (-2) Yorkshire/Humber 54 (+-0) East Midlands 47 (+1) North East 27 (-2) Compared to the Pat Glass amendment originally the subject of this thread, that's London +2, South East +1, South West +1, North West -1, West Midlands -1, Scotland -2. Trying to minimise cross-county seats, I'd take one each from Cumbria, Lancashire, Staffs and the West Mids Met county. The North East is awkward, might have to combine it all. Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent and the Isle of Wight definitely gain a seat. Going by some quick, not entirely accurate calculations I'd allocate new seats to Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Surrey, West Sussex, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and combine Rutland with Lincolnshire for one. Might cause problems in some smaller counties though. In the South West, Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Avon (if we still consider that relevant) all look to have at least half an extra quota, but there's only three seats to go around. |
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Post by greenhert on Jan 11, 2018 0:20:15 GMT
The Somerset parts of Avon should be treated separately (just shuffle around), and as for the Gloucestershire part of Avon, just add it to Gloucestershire so that Thornbury & Yate adds a few villages in the Stroud district. Bristol/Gloucestershire then gets just one extra seat in the form of Bristol North East. As I have said before, the Thornbury & Yate area should not be part of South Gloucestershire as it is too far from Bristol, and should be a separate district in its own right. A constituency known as Stroud & Thornbury existed from 1950-55, so precedent exists.
The allocation of those extra seats would result in quite a few rather awkward and unbalanced constituencies....
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Post by lancastrian on Jan 11, 2018 17:18:36 GMT
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Jan 11, 2018 22:47:36 GMT
Trying to minimise cross-county seats, I'd take one each from Cumbria, Lancashire, Staffs and the West Mids Met county. The North East is awkward, might have to combine it all. Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent and the Isle of Wight definitely gain a seat. Going by some quick, not entirely accurate calculations I'd allocate new seats to Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Surrey, West Sussex, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and combine Rutland with Lincolnshire for one. Might cause problems in some smaller counties though. In the South West, Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Avon ( if we still consider that relevant) all look to have at least half an extra quota, but there's only three seats to go around. We most certainly do not. |
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Post by greenhert on Jan 14, 2018 15:15:40 GMT
Allowable electorate ranges on 2017 figures with this amendment would be 66,824 to 77,660.
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