The House of Commons has passed the initial stages of legislation which will lead to the equalisation of the parliamentary boundaries. The legislation will result in the UK Parliament having 650 MP’s all representing roughly the same number of electors plus or minus 5%.
Boundaries in the future will be reviewed every eight years and the review is conducted by the independent Boundary Commission.
In another change future recommendations of the Boundary Commission will automatically become law.
John Stevenson MP for Carlisle said
“I very much welcome this long-awaited change to the boundaries. We have been waiting far too long to have a boundary review. It is important that each constituency has broadly the same number of electors to be represented by each MP.
At present we have some constituencies such as Bristol West that have 99,253 electors while some welsh constituencies have as little as 42,500. This cannot be right.
It is also very important that the review of boundaries is carried out by the independent Boundary Commission and that their proposals automatically become law. This should remove any delay in ensuring constituencies are kept up to date to reflect changing demographics.”