How big should a parliamentary constituency be?
Here, in the UK, currently we elect 650 Members of Parliament to the House of Commons on the basis of one MP per geographical constituency using the electoral system called first-past-the-post (FPTP).
But the Coalition Government has plans that could change this. It intends to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600. Currently the number of electors in each Parliamentary constituency varies quite considerably; the Government plans to legislate that no constituency should be more than 5% either larger or smaller than a national average of around 76,000 electors (which could eliminate some 40 Labour-held seats).
The Government proposes that these measures be included in the Referendum Bill on electoral reform which will include provision for the introduction of a new electoral system called the Alternative Vote (AV) in the event of a positive result in the referendum. Both parties in the coalition will whip their Parliamentary Parties in both Houses to support a simple majority referendum on AV but, when it comes to the actual referendum, the Conservatives will oppose AV and the Liberal Democrats will support it.
So we can expect heated debates as the Bill goes through Parliament and in the course of the referendum campaign. But the arguments have already started on the redrawing of constituency boundaries necessitated by the reduction in the number of Commons seats.
I was on the Isle of Wight recently which currently elects one MP. It is a huge constituency in terms of electors but it does not merit two MPs. So the proposal is that the western bit of the island be linked with part of the mainland to create a new constituency. This would give the electors of the Isle of Wight one and a bit MPs but they would no longer all have the same MP.
Believe it or not, there is a campaign to oppose this which already has over 10,000 signatures of support.
August 24th, 2010 at 11:54 am
I can believe it and I can understand why they do not want to change and if I was an ‘islander’ I would probably be joining in the campaign.
One size does not fit all and that includes stockings and tights.