Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on November 16, 2007
Parliamentary Affairs 2008 61(1):4-30; doi:10.1093/pa/gsm053
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‘Far Too Elaborate About So Little’: New Parliamentary Constituencies for England
New Parliamentary constituency boundaries for England were implemented in 2007. It took over six years for the Boundary Commission to produce its final recommendations, and the new constituencies—which will probably first be used at a general election in 2009/2010—are based on electorate data for 2000; they will thus be seriously out-of-date by the time they are first used, and are likely still to be in place for at least one further general election (in 2013–2015?). A major cause for the extenuated process is the public consultation required under the relevant legislation. That consultation—although oriented to the general public—in effect involves little more than an invitation to the political parties to seek to influence the constitution of the new constituencies for their own electoral ends. A more streamlined system is proposed which removes that potential gerrymandering and would ensure that constituencies are not as outdated—and hence unequal in their electorates—as is currently the case.