'Far too elaborate about so little': New Parliamentary constituencies for England

Parliamentary Affairs

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 4-30

  Johnston, Ron ^a   Rossiter, David ^a   Pattie, Charles ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 37849023814     PISSN: 00312290     EISSN: 14602482     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pa/gsm053     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. In the Commission's Annual Report for 2006-2007, a letter from the Deputy Chairman to the Secretary of State, dated 16 May 2007, reports that 'The Local Government Boundaries Commissioner recently published recommendations for restructuring local government districts in Northern Ireland and their constituent wards. It is important for the organisation and conduct of elections and to avoid confusion among voters that elections in Northern Ireland are conducted on common ward boundaries. Accordingly, the Commission placed under review their published. (May 2006) Revised Recommendations and will shortly decide how best to bring a speedy conclusion to their present review'. The Commission's website (http://www.boundarycommission.org..uk/: the Annual Report referred to here is available on that website) in early September 2007 carried the message 'Fifth Review of Parliamentary Constituencies. Latest Developments. The Commission are to defer consideration of revised constituency boundaries'. They were finally announced on 3 October 2007.
2. Boundary Commission for England, Fifth Periodical Report Volume 1 Report, The Stationery Office, Cm 7032, 2007a, p. 2.
3. A full discussion of these changes can be found in D.J. Rossiter, R.J. Johnston and C.J. Patrie, The Boundary Commissions: Redrawing the UK's Map of Parliamentary Constituencies, Manchester University Press, 1999.
4. See L.R. Handley and B. Grofman (eds), Redisricting in Comparative Perspective, Oxford University Press, 2008.
5. 1983 2 W. L. R. 484
6. On these see R.J. Johnston and C.J. Partie Mntra-local conflict, public opinion and local government restructuring in England, 1993-1995', Geoforum, 27, 1996, 97-114,
7. and 'Local Government in Local Governance: The 1994-95 Restructuring of Local Government in England', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 20, 1996, 671-96.
8. Boundary Commission for England, The Review of Parliamentary Constituencies in England, Boundary Commission for England, 2000, p. 12.
9. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., pp. 14-5.
10. A report of its meeting with the political parties is in Boundary Commission for England, Fifth Periodical Report Volume 2 Appendices, The Stationery Office, Cm 7032, 2007, pp. 137-48.
11. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., n. 2.
12. A full list is in Boundary Commission for England, Fifth Periodical Report Volume 2 Appendices, The Stationery Office, Cm 7,032, 2007b, pp. 4-23. Local government reviews continue, however, and in July 2007 the Commission announced that it was undertaking further, interim, reviews of the boundaries of nine constituencies (across four counties) to bring them in line with new ward boundaries: in Northamptonshire, this involves moving 1,834 electors between, two constituencies; in Northumberland, moving 1,237 between three; in Somerset, moving 1,796 between, two; and similarly in Wiltshire, moving 1,015 between two constituencies.
13. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., p. 144, n. 11.
14. Note that nineteenth century Commissions took nothing like as long. Under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, three-person Commissions were established for each of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland to define the boundaries of the new constituencies. Aided, by officials and Assistant Commissioners who knew the relevant areas, they toured the country and held numerous public meetings at which local authorities were invited to present schemes. The Commission for England and Wales started its work on 29 October 1884, held 81 meetings between 11 November and 5 February 1885, and reported on 11 February 1885. The membership of those Commissions and their working practices were the basis for the work of later Commissions established under the Representation of the People Act, 1917 - which took even less time; the England and Wales commission started work in May 1917, held 120 Local Inquiries relating to 465 constituencies, and reported on 27 September 1917-and the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Acts, 1944 and 1949.
15. Rossiter op. cit., n. 3
16. C. Railings and M. Thrasher, Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies, Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre, 2007.
17. Use of the harmonic mean - on which see note 29 - would allocate the Isle of Wight two seats.
18. Boundary Commission, for England, op. cit., pp. 480-.9, n. 2.
19. In this the Commission differs from the Local Government Boundary Committee, which does take such projections into account: see Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., n. 7.
20. In Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., n. 11.
21. It is usually assumed that population decline occurs in inner city areas and growth in smaller towns and the countryside, but two of the constituencies experiencing most growth over this period were in east London: East Ham (12,710 electors) and nearby Poplar and Limehouse (9,885). Such change may indicate a reversal of the long decline in inner London's population but it might reflect, at least in part, greater numbers of people registering as electors in an area dominated by people of Bangladeshi ethnicity.
22. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., p. 31, n. 2.
23. Boundary Commission for England op. cit., p. 20, n. 2.
24. M. Chisholm and G. Dench, Community Identity: Literature Review and Analysis for Periodical Electoral Reviews, The Electoral Commission, 2005. Available at http://www.electoralcommission. org.uk/tem.plates/search/document. cfm/13469.
25. R.J. Johnston, C.J. Patrie and D.J. Rossiter, 'The organic or the arithmetic: independent commissions and the redrawing of the UK's administrative maps', Regional Studies, 31, 1997, 337-49.
26. Boundary Commission for England, p. 20, n. 2.
27. As illustrated, in Rossiter et al. op. city., n. 3.
28. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., pp. 257-60, n. 2.
29. The 'existing' Normanton seat was created by the Third Periodic Review, when the original recommendation of 22 seats for West Yorkshire (against a theoretical entitlement of 22.92) was changed to 23 after the Local Inquiry: Rossiter op. cit., p. 169, n. 3.
30. The Assistant Commissioner's report is available at http://www. statistics.gov.uk/pbc/review_areas/ West_Yorkshire_Boroughs/download5/ AC_Final_Version.doc
31. On which see I. McLean and R. Mortimore, 'Apportionment and the Boundary Commission for England', Electoral Studies, 11, 1992, pp. 293-309:
32. Iain. McLean gave evidence on this point to the Inquiry on behalf of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council. Under the arithmetic mean, the number of seats allocated is the area's electorate divided by the electoral quota and rounded to the nearest integer. Under the harmonic mean, the rounding takes place at a figure below 0.5, depending on the nearest integer number. Thus with a quota of 50,000 and an electorate of 74,000, the entitlement is to 1.48 seats which would be rounded to 1; the one scat allocated would be 24,000 voters from the electoral quota. However, if the harmonic mean were applied two seats would be allocated; if each had 37,000 voters, each would be only 13,000 below the quota-and thus closer to the electoral quota, which is what the Act requires, than if only one were allocated. The formula for the harmonic mean is [{n(n +1l)}/(n + 0.5)], so that if the issue is whether to allocate one or two seats, the break-point is 1.333: if the area's electorate divided by the quota exceeds 1.333 then two seats should be allocated in order for each to be 'as near to their electoral quota as is practicable'.
33. Boundary Commission for England, Third Periodic Report, HMSO, Cm 8797-I, 1983, p. 153.
34. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., pp. 9-10, n. 2.
35. Quotations are from the transcript of the Public Inquiry and the Assistant Commissioner's report, available at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pbc/ review_areas/West_Yorkshire_Boroughs/wakefield.asp
36. Interestingly, she also notes that Ed Balls MP quoted the wrong figures in his oral evidence.
37. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., p. 201, n. 2.
38. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pbc/review_areas/downloads/ Wilts_Transcript_1.d.oc
39. The original is in Rossiter et al., pp. 401-2, n. 3.
40. Committee on Standards in Public Life, Review of the Electoral Commission, HMSO, Cm 7006, 2007.
41. Butler and McLean's report The Electoral Commission and the Redistribution of Seats. A Report to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, University of Oxford, Department of Politics and International Relations, 2006, is available at http://www.public-standards.gov.uk/11thinquiry/ research.aspx
42. Peter Riddell called it a 'trenchant report' in The Times, available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1295474.ece
43. Boundary Commission for England, op. cit., pp. 486-7, n. 2.
44. Evidence of Dr Andrew Schuman: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pbc/ review_areas/downloads/Bristol_Transcript.pdf
45. The Commission listed 18 decisions 'which proved to be unpopular' (Boundary Commission for England op. cit.), one of which, was the Salisbury case. It claims that 'The strong and sincerely held views of a large number of electors have not been ignored and we have done as much, in our view, as the Rules allow in order to accommodate them but we could not always act as many electors wished if we were to fulfil our statutory duty'.
46. Interestingly, the Boundary Committee for England (formerly the Local Government Boundary Commission for England) only holds Local Inquiries in rare circumstances. It also operates in the reverse way from the Boundary Commission. It does not produce provisional schemes for wards but instead invites the local authority (and others) to do so; in effect, therefore it invites the political parties to present schemes in their electoral interest - which they often do! These are then used to produce draft recommendations which are circulated for comment before a final scheme is determined.
47. http://www.elections.org.nz/administration/proposed-electorate- boundaries.html. The final report, released in September 2007, is available at http://www.elections.org.nz/mapping/final_report/
48. There are separate arrangements for the Maori electorates.
49. On the role of the 'Political Commissioners' see B. Bowden and L. Falck, 'Redistribution and Representation: New Zealand's New Electoral System and the Role of the Political Commissioners', in I. McLean and D. Butler (eds), Fixing the Boundaries: Defining and Redefining Single-Member Electoral Districts, Dartmouth Publishing, 1996, pp. 147-166;
50. G. Beever, 'The new game with the old rules: boundary determination under MMP', Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 34(1), 2003, pp. 135-156;
51. A. Geddis, Electoral Law in New Zealand, LexisNexis, 2007.
52. For more details see http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legismgt/redistrict/ com&alter.htm
53. M. McDonald, 'A comparative analysis of redistricting institutions in the United States, 2000-02', State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 4, 2004, pp. 371-95.
54. Partisan districting whereby one party's incumbents are favoured by such strategies are characteristic of situations where that party controls the redistricting process, as shown in Morrill's classic paper: R.L, Morrill, 'Ideal and reality in reapportionment', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 63, 1973, pp. 463-77.
55. New Zealand has an MMP electoral system. Two parties predominate in the constituency component, and most of the other parties which have won membership of the House of Representatives at elections held under the system did so through the national party list. Constituency boundary definition is of little issue to them, therefore, and they are content to leave this to the two large parties. Interestingly, this process was established in the Electoral Act 1993, passed before the change from a first-past-the-post to an MMP electoral system.
56. See Beever, op. cit., n. 45.
57. M. Maley, T. Morling and R. Bell, 'Alternative ways of redistricting with single-member seats: the case of Australia', in I. McLean and D. Butler (eds), Fixing the Boundaries, op. cit., n. 45. pp. 119-146.
58. The Electoral Commission for each state or territory must hold a Public Inquiry to consider all objections 'unless it is of the opinion that the objection deals with matters which were considered in an earlier submission of comment, or is vexatious or frivolous': AEC Research, Australian Federal Redistributions 1901-2003. Canberra, Australian Electoral Commission Research Report 4, 2004, p. 10.
59. Rossiter et al. op. cit., n. 3.
60. Opposition parties may claim, this denies them the opportunity to reject a set of recommendations favouring the incumbent government, although safeguards could be built in to the voting procedure: and there is always the House of Lords. The Boundary Commission for England's Fourth Periodical Review report was debated in Parliament (on 14 June 1995: see Hansard for that debate); most of the points made were parochially partisan, there was no overall critique of a set of proposals which, as discussed here, favoured Labour because of its efforts at the Local Inquiries, and the Whips managed to close the debate a couple of hours before its scheduled end.
61. The enumeration date has traditionally been in February because until recently the electoral rolls were compiled annually based on registrations in October and published in the following February. There is now a rolling registration procedure with electoral rolls updated monthly, so a Boundary Commission review could start at any time of the year.
62. Until 2007, the only previous interim review was in 1988-1989 when the Boundary Commission, for England split the existing constituency in the rapidly growing new town of Milton Keynes into two. The July 2007 interim reviews in four English counties are set out in note 11; in one of them, the Commission noted that with the 2007 electorates Somerset was marginally entitled to an additional seat but that it would not make such a recommendation. The Boundary Commission for Wales announced an interim review for two constituencies on 31 August 2007; it will involve the transfer of 84 voters.
63. On Ireland, sec http://www.constituency-commission.ie/
64. On the practices in these and other countries see the materials of the ACE project at http://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/bd/bdb/bdb05/bdb05a
65. If population data were used in the UK this would further accelerate the redistribution process, because small area data are immediately available.
66. In England, only the Conservative and Labour parties are fully involved in this, with the Liberal Democrats being much less active: in part because they lack the resources and in part until recently because with a relatively few exceptions the definitions will have little impact on their electoral prospects-and in any case, they are opposed to the electoral system. (An excellent example was during the Fourth Periodical Review when they were six: months late submitting representations regarding the Isle of Wight, where they held the seat and could have convinced the Commission to create two: Rossiter et al. n. 3).
67. Elsewhere, other parties have been very active in the review process, as with Sinn Féin in Northern. Ireland: see D.J. Rossiter, R.J. Johnston, and C.J. Pattie, 'The partisan impacts of non-partisan redistricting: Northern. Ireland 1993-1995', Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, NS23, 1998, pp. 455-80.
68. Committee on Standards in Public Life, op. cit., p. 46, n. 37.