Updated in 2011 by: Ron Johnston, David Rossiter and Charles Pattie
In February 2011 the UK Parliament, after extensive and sometimes heated debates, enacted the coalition government’s proposed major alteration of the country’s rules for redistributions. A new redistribution (the UK term for a redistricting) began in the following month. It will result in an almost total recasting of the country’s electoral map - a consequence of not only the new rules, with their emphasis on equality of electorates as the prime criterion in defining constituencies, but also the associated decision (enacted in the same legislation) to reduce the country’s MPs from 650 to 600.
The United Kingdom's previous system of redistribution operated, with some modifications, for just over sixty years. Six redistributions were completed, in 1947, 1954, 1969, 1983, 1995 and 2004/2007. The task was undertaken by four independent Boundary Commissions, one each for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, to a set timetable; this was changed twice after 1944, when it was set at every 5-7 years.
The four
Commissions have been retained under the new legislation. Each is composed of
three members appointed by the relevant Secretaries of State. In addition to
those three, the chair is the Speaker of the House of Commons who neither
attends nor participates; meetings are conducted by the deputy chair, a senior
judge in each case. Each Commission has assessors representing departments,
which supply vital information (for England and Wales these are the
Registrar-General, responsible for statistical data, and the Director General
of the Ordnance Survey, responsible for mapping). The Commissions make
recommendations to Parliament, which can accept or reject, but not modify,
them. (A Secretary of State can modify the recommendations before transmitting
them to Parliament.)
The system for electing Parliament’s lower house, the House of Commons, was introduced in the thirteenth century, and went largely unchanged for the next six hundred years. Each shire (or county) and borough was invited to send two representatives, elected from among the landowners and the enfranchised burgesses respectively. When Scotland, Wales and Ireland were incorporated into the United Kingdom their members of Parliament (MPs) were similarly elected; the universities also had separate representation, as did the City of London. Changes to the system occurred largely as a by-product of three nineteenth century franchise extensions expanding the (all-male) electorate: the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1885. The franchise was extended to all males, and to females over 30, in 1918, when there was a further redistribution; total adult enfranchisement was completed in 1929, with the voting age reduced from 21 to 18 in 1969.
Before the 1832 Great Reform Act there were major variations in constituency electorates, a result primarily of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century industrial urbanisation. The three nineteenth century redistributions reduced these differences by removing seats from the small boroughs and reallocating them to the rapidly-expanding shires (many of the new industrial towns lacked borough status). Most of the small, rural two-seat boroughs lost their separate status, and the new constituencies allocated to the shires returned a single MP. By the turn of the twentieth century, most MPs were elected from single-member constituencies.
The nineteenth century redistributions were undertaken by the House of Commons, and were carefully constructed by the incumbent government to favour its electoral interests. The modern system of redistribution by independent commissions was not introduced until after the Second World War, in part as a response to requests for one during the 1930s.
Vivian Committee Recommendations for Redistribution
In 1942, the wartime coalition government established a committee, chaired by Registrar-General Vivian, to consider various aspects of the electoral system, including "the principles on which any [redistribution] scheme should be based". The Vivian committee identified equal representation as the basic principle for a Parliamentary democracy, with constituencies of equal population returning one member each, and set out four salient features to be taken into account during a redistribution:
- the need for a constituency quota, or an average number of electors per electoral district;
- the need for limits of toleration, indicating the allowable population variation around the quota;
- the need for continuity of constituencies, with change being proposed only where necessary so that MPs could build lasting relationships with their constituents; and
- the need for constituencies to conform to local government boundaries in order to provide community representation and ease of organisation for general elections (which is undertaken by local government officers).
Other recommendations suggested a time interval for redistributions and procedures for the four independent commissions to follow. Advice on whether each country should be guaranteed a minimum number of MPs was also offered.
The Redistribution Acts of 1944 and 1958
The first House of Commons Act (Redistribution of Seats) Act, approved in 1944, adopted many of the Vivian Committee's recommendations. It set the limit of toleration at plus or minus 25 per cent of the electoral quota, which was defined using each country’s total electorate (i.e. England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales were treated separately) at the date when a redistribution commenced, rather than the total population. (The electoral roll is recompiled annually.) It guaranteed representation for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland at their 1944 levels, as well as indicating a desirable maximum number of MPs for Great Britain, thereby implying a maximum for England. The Initial Review of Parliamentary Constituencies, completed in 1947, was based on this Act.
Before the review was completed, however, the Boundary Commissioners claimed that they were unable both to meet the 25 per cent toleration limit and respect local government boundaries. The former requirement apparently dominated, since it came earlier in the Act's Schedule of Rules. Parliament, however, determined that the "organic" requirement to represent communities should take primacy over the mathematical requirement of (relatively) equal constituency electorates. The House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act, 1949, removed the 25 per cent deviation rule and replaced it with one that constituencies should "be as near the electoral quota as is practicable". This new rule was placed after and, so it was assumed, thus considered subsidiary to the rule regarding local government boundaries; organic issues - relating to the representation of communities - took precedence over arithmetic concerns - equality of representation.
The Commissions’ First Periodical Reviews of all constituencies - following the Initial Review in 1947 - were reported in 1954. The 1944 legislation required them to be delivered within five to seven years of the previous review. This generated consternation among members of Parliament and party organisations, since constituencies were to be substantially changed soon after their creation, contrary to the Vivian Committee recommendation on continuity. Thus the government amended the Act in 1958, extending the time period between reviews to between ten and fifteen years (in 1992 it was changed again to eight to twelve years).
Although the Act was subsequently amended to take account of major local government changes in the 1970s and was then consolidated into the Parliamentary Constituencies Act, 1986, there were no further changes to the basic principles for redistributions: organic criteria retained their precedence over arithmetic. This situation was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in 1983 when four leading Labour party members unsuccessfully challenged the Boundary Commission for England’s recommendations in its Third Periodic Review (completed in 1982) on the grounds that the recommended constituencies were not as equal in electorates as they might be.
The pre-2011 Rules for Redistribution
The basic features of the pre-2011 rules were:
- a guaranteed minimum number of seats for Scotland (71) and Wales (35), a maximum and minimum for Northern Ireland (16-18; this was introduced in 1978 after suspension of devolved government there), and a total number of seats for Great Britain (i.e. England, Scotland and Wales) that should not be substantially exceeded (613);
- a requirement that, "so far as is practicable", constituency boundaries should not cross major local government boundaries - although this requirement was less stringent for Scotland and, especially, Northern Ireland because of changes in their local government systems;
- a requirement that each constituency's electorate be as near the electoral quota as practicable, within the constraint of the previous rule (from which Commissions may depart to avoid disparities in electorates among neighbouring constituencies);
- Commissions could depart from strict application of the previous two rules "if special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency" made that desirable;
- Commissions should take into account the inconveniences that may be caused, and the local ties that may be broken, if they gave full effect to the "equal electorates" requirement.
Under these rules, each country had a separate electoral quota - determined by dividing the electorate when a redistribution began by the country’s then number of constituencies. Those quotas varied very substantially. For the redistribution reported in 1995, for example, they were: England - 69,281; Northern Ireland - 67,852; Scotland - 54,569; and Wales - 58,525. After devolution to Scotland, the English and Scottish quotas for the next review (completed in 2004 in Scotland and 2007 in England) were made the same, but there was no change to the Welsh situation.
The procedure for redistributions was also set out in the Acts. After determining the electoral quota for its country, each Commission then allocated a number of constituencies (its ‘entitlement’) to each local government area - or combination of neighbouring areas in some places, such as London where most of the boroughs are relatively small. It then published provisionally recommended constituencies for each area and invited written representations - both negative and positive. If there were substantial negative responses a public inquiry was held, chaired by a specially-appointed Assistant Commissioner who submitted a report on the proceedings and, if he saw fit, recommended changes. If the Commission accepted some or all of those recommendations it then published its revised set of constituencies and again invited submissions; a further public inquiry could then be held, but that was rare. When the public consultations were completed, all of the recommendations for the country were submitted to the relevant Secretary of State, for transmission to Parliament, where - after 1955 - they were either accepted or rejected en bloc. (In 1969 the Labour government placed the Commissions’ recommendations before Parliament but then ensured that they were rejected, because they feared a loss of seats were the new seats in place for the next election - which they lost in 1970; the incoming Conservative government immediately implemented the recommendations.)
The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, 2011, and the New Rules
The procedure in place, with modifications, since 1944 was subject to considerable criticism by academic and other commentators, and the Commissions occasionally indicated the difficulties they had with applying a relatively incoherent set of rules. Parliament was not prepared to act on these, however. After the Labour party’s three general election victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005 (the first two by very large Parliamentary majorities), academic analyses showed that it had been very substantially advantaged by the operation of the system of translating votes into seats of which the rules for redistribution lay at the heart - largely because of its geography of support compared to the two other main political parties - the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. These showed that if the Labour and Conservative parties had obtained equal shares of the votes cast at those elections, Labour would have won many more seats (over one hundred more in 2001 and 2005); even in 2010, when the Conservatives defeated Labour by 7 percentage points in the national vote tally, if their vote shares had been equal Labour would have led the Conservatives by over 50 seats.
From 2004 on,
the Conservative party identified the inequality in electorates as a major
cause of the disadvantage from which it suffered. In 2001, for example, it
obtained one MP for every 50,347 votes, compared to Labour’s one for every
26,031; the average electorate in a constituency returning a Conservative MP
then was 72,137, compared to 67,544 for one returning a Labour MP. The
Conservatives determined to change the rules to make equality of electorates
the prime determinant in redistributions, and prepared a Bill ready to be
introduced when it next gained power. This occurred in May 2010, when it was
the major partner in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Bill was
tabled in July (it also contained the legislation for a referendum to be held
on a possible change in the voting system to the Alternative Vote - which was
lost in May, 2011 - hence the Bill’s title) and was enacted on 16 February
2011.
This Act, and especially the Schedule setting out the Rules for Redistribution (which was incorporated into a revised version of the Parliamentary Constituencies Act, 1986), sets out a clear and unambiguous sequence of rules in which the arithmetic criterion takes clear precedence:
- There is a fixed number of constituencies - 600 - each returning a single MP;
- There is a single UK electoral quota, obtained by dividing the total electorate when a redistribution commences by 596 (excluding the protected constituencies - see below);
- The Sainte Laguë method is used to determine the number of constituencies for each of the four countries, with no constituency crossing a national boundary;
- Each constituency must have an electorate within +/- 5 percentage points of the UK quota;
- There are four ‘protected constituencies’ that are not subject to the previous rule - two are isolated, low density island areas in Scotland (the Orkney & Shetland Isles, and the Western Isles) and the other two are guaranteed for the Isle of Wight (previously England’s largest constituency with an electorate of c.110,000);
- In addition, no constituency shall be larger than 13,000 square kilometres, and if it is necessary for a Commission to recommend one of 12,000 square kilometres or more it need not conform to the +/-5 per cent constraint, which will mean that remaining constituencies in the relevant country (it will only apply in Scotland) will on average be slightly larger than the quota;
- If necessary, the +/-5 per cent rule can be modified with a slightly larger allowed variation in Northern Ireland (the smallest of the four countries) if its Commission considers that necessary because of difficulties in meeting the +/-5 per cent rule;
- Within the size constraint, Commissions may take into account in determining constituency boundaries: special geographical considerations; the local government boundaries (of counties, county districts, London boroughs, and other local authorities, plus electoral wards and divisions) in place at the most recent local election prior to the start of the redistribution; boundaries of existing constituencies; any local ties that would be broken by changing constituency boundaries; and the inconveniences attendant on any proposed changes; and
- The Boundary Commission for England could, if it wished, use the nine constituencies employed for elections to the European Parliament for the allocation of UK Parliament constituencies within England.
Redistributions are to take place every five years, with the first to be reported to Parliament by October 2013, approximately eighteen months before the scheduled date of the next general election on the first Thursday in May 2015, according to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, 2011.
The Commissions have to recommend a name for each constituency (which can stimulate considerable local concern) and whether to classify it as a borough or county. Candidates are allowed to spend more money campaigning before a general election in county (rural) than in borough (urban) constituencies.
Public consultation
The 2011 Act also established a new system for public consultation. Initially the government intended there to be no public inquiries, in part because holding them extended the time taken by a redistribution and in part because the existing system had become, in one minister’s words, ‘not fit for purpose’ - the inquiries were confrontational and dominated by the political parties. The new system involves:
- An initial consultation period of twelve weeks after publication of provisionally recommended constituencies for an area, during which written submissions can be made. Publication involves announcing the recommendations in one or more newspapers circulating in the relevant area and sending notices to all affected MPs, political parties and local governments, giving details and indicating where maps showing the recommended constituencies can be viewed;
- A series of public hearings, each lasting no more than two days, at which oral cases for and against a Commission’s proposals and any alternative schemes can be presented; these are to be held during weeks 5-10 of the initial consultation period. A minimum of two and a maximum of five such hearings are to be held in each of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and each of the nine English regions;
- A secondary consultation period of four weeks, after all of the written submissions and a transcript of the public hearings have been published, when further written comments can be made;
- Preparation of a report by the designated Assistant Commissioner analysing all of the evidence received (the written submissions and the oral evidence at the hearings) and making recommendations to the relevant Commission;
- In the light of that report, reconsideration of its provisional recommendations by the Commission and, where changes are made, publication of revised proposals with an eight-week period for further written representations only, after which the Commission will reach its final determination without further publication or consultation.
The new procedure in action
Within one month of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, 2011, receiving Royal Assent the four Boundary Commissions had undertaken the necessary initial tasks and commenced the redistribution that must be completed by October 2013.
Using data for December 2010, the UK electoral quota was determined as 76,641, which means that 596 constituencies must all have electorates between 72,810 and 80,473. (The electorates of the two Scottish protected constituencies - 21,837 and 33,755 - are outside this calculation, as is the electorate of the Isle of Wight - 110,924; the Boundary Commission for England has to propose two constituencies for the Isle of Wight.) The subsequent allocation of constituencies, using the Sainte Laguë rules was:
| Review started in |
2000 |
|
2011 |
|
|
Previous |
Allocated |
Preserved |
Total |
| England |
533 |
500 |
2 |
502 |
| Northern Ireland |
18 |
16 |
0 |
16 |
| Scotland |
59 |
50 |
2 |
52 |
| Wales |
40 |
30 |
0 |
30 |
As a consequence of the introduction of a UK quota and its previous substantial over-representation Wales will lose one-quarter of its complement of MPs at the 2015 general election (the average electorate in a Welsh constituency at the 2010 general election was 56,545 compared to 71,882 in England); this compares to losses of 12 per cent for Scotland, 11 per cent for Northern Ireland, and 6 per cent for England.
At the start of its review, the Boundary Commission for England held a public consultation on whether it should subdivide the country into the European Parliamentary constituencies as the first stage of its allocation, and whether it should use the Sainte Laguë procedure for that process. Both proposals received general support and have been adopted.
Problems with the Review Process
Before the review started - indeed during the Parliamentary debates over the Act in 2010 and 2011 - a number of potential problems in implementing the new rules was identified.
The biggest of these was the difficulties that the Commissions will face building recommended constituencies using electoral data for smaller areas. At all of the post-1944 reviews they used local government electoral wards as the building blocks for constituencies; these are the smallest areas that have legal status. Some are relatively large, especially in urban areas (electorates of 5-10,000 in many cases and over 10,000 in some), and it will not be possible to use them and remain within the rigid +/-5 per cent limit in some places. The Commissions are making their own responses to this situation, recognising that splitting wards can have substantial impacts not only on the organisation of political parties and the conduct of elections but also on electors’ sense of local identity.
There are also
problems with the electoral data because the Electoral Commission estimates
that at least 3.5 million individuals (out of a total of some 49 million)
eligible to register have not done so (despite a legal requirement that they
should). Those ‘missing voters’ are concentrated among younger adults,
including students, members of ethnic minorities, those living in rented
properties and those who move frequently. A majority of them live in urban
areas which means that the country’s (inner) cities may be under-represented in
the next Parliament relative to suburban, small town and rural areas. This is
not a new problem, and there have always been difficulties with the
completeness of the electoral roll; however, the emphasis on equality of
electorates in the new rules has increased its importance. The Commissions are
not able to take this under-count (nor any changes in an area’s
population/electorate during a review period) into account. The government
intends to introduce a more complete registration process before the next
review that will start after the 2015 general election.
The introduction of a new registration procedure is likely to exacerbate a further problem - that of continuity, which led MPs to change the frequency of redistributions in 1958 and was the cause of concern during the debates over the 2011 Act. Its proponents argued that conducting redistributions every five years should not lead to major changes in the pattern of constituencies for every Parliament, because population changes would be insufficiently large to cause most constituency electorates to fall outside the 5 per cent variation around the new quota. However, a significant increase or decrease in the electorate of one constituency requiring a change in its boundaries would impact on some, if not all, of its neighbours, potentially leading to them also falling outside the electoral tolerance limits, with impacts in turn on their neighbours. A necessary change to the boundaries of just a few constituencies could thus have a ripple effect across a considerable number of others, requiring a substantial redrawing of the constituency map.
Each
redistribution could potentially involve a substantially changed electoral map,
therefore, with consequences for MPs, party organisations, and electoral
administrators but also the electors, who will lose continuity of
representation. Introduction of a new system of electoral registration could
exacerbate this for the review to be undertaken between 2015 and 2018.
Currently in Great Britain the electoral roll is recompiled every year through
a household canvass, although individuals can apply to be included on the roll
at any time and many do (including recent migrants), especially in the weeks
immediately prior to a general election.
The household canvass was replaced by
individual registration in Northern Ireland in 2002, with major changes in both
the number of registered electors and their distribution. A similar outcome is
likely in Great Britain should that system be introduced - as the government
proposes by 2014. (For example, under the current household canvass all
students living in University-owned and -operated accommodation are registered
in that location by the relevant authorities; there are many thousands of these
in a substantial number of city constituencies. This will cease under the proposed
new system and unless the students register individually there - they can also
legally register at their parental home, although they can only vote in one
place - many urban electorates will be substantially reduced, with consequences
for the subsequent redistribution.)
More constituency building?
A further constituency-building exercise was proposed by the coalition government in May 2011. Currently, the UK’s second chamber - the House of Lords - is unelected, comprising 92 hereditary peers (elected from among a much large number of them, who were removed from the House in 1999) and around 700 (mainly political) appointed life peers. The proposal is to replace this with a House of 300 members, 240 of them elected, in thirds, for fifteen-year terms and the remainder appointed, also for the same period (although the government indicated it was prepared to consider a fully-elected House).
It is proposed to elect peers using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system from multi-member constituencies. The Electoral Districts would be Northern Ireland (which would return 9 members, three elected at each contest), Scotland (21 members, 7 per election) and Wales (12 and 4), plus a number defined in England by an ‘independent committee of experts’ returning 5-7 members each at every election. Those districts in England will be created by combining counties and should, wherever possible, be confined within one of the nine standard regions used both for statistical purposes and the election of members of the European Parliament. The ratio of electors to elected members should be ‘broadly equal’ across the country, averaging, according to current data, some 573,000 voters per member at each election - or 191,000 electors per member when the fully-elected House is completed in 2025.
The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, 2011, can be found at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/1/contents
The revised Parliamentary Constituencies Act, 1986, is at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/56/contents.
