AV referendum and 600 seats
The detailled legislation for the boundary review and the AV referendum is now out - if you are not a hardcore political anorak, you may wish to skip this post! For those who are left, here are the details.
Alternative Vote is the more straightforward section. The referendum is May 5th and the question is "Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the “alternative vote” system instead of the current
“first past the post” system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?". There is no minimum turnout or anything on the referendum and it is binding - if the referendum is won, the minister must bring the provisions introducing AV (which are all in the Bill) into effect.
Rules for boundary changes are much more complicated. First, the legislation proposes boundary reviews every five years, significantly speeding up the current timetable where they occur between 8 and 12 years apart (normally at the latter end). With fixed term Parliaments of 5 years, that means seats would change every Parliament (though it would also mean that the changes were normally quite small).
There will one national UK quota, rather than seperate quotas for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is, however, an exception to this for Northern Ireland, where if the number of seats Northern Ireland is entitled to is more than a third away from a whole number (as it probably will be this time round), they will have their own quota to aim at, which prevents the boundary commission in Northern Ireland being left with an impossible task.
The quota will indeed be based around the electorate of the UK, minus the two protected seats, divided by 598. All seats must be within 5% of the quota, with three exceptions: the two preserved seats (the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland), Northern Ireland under the circumstances discussed above, and any seat with an area above 12,000 sq. kilometers where the commission is satisfied it is not possible to get it within quota. As proposed before, there is a cap of 13,000 sq km on the size of consistuencies.
The Commissions may still take in account special geographical considerations, like size and shape, local government boundaries, local ties and minimal change (except, that is, for the coming boundary change, when they should not pay heed to minimising disruption). They may now also take into account the European electoral regions (making some of the possiblities I wrote about in this post less likely). All these considerations are subject to the rule on seats being within 5% of quota, which means that the boundary commissions will have to cross county boundaries if it is necessary in order to get within 5% of quota.
There is no mention of splitting council wards, but then, the old legislation doesn't refer to them outside Northern Ireland either. In practice, the rule about seats being within 5% of quota may compel Boundary Commissions to split wards in places like Birmingham with very large wards.
In terms of speeding up the review process, the Bill is pretty brutal. Local inquiries on boundary changes are abolished - though it is slightly balanced out by the period for written representations being extended from 1 month to 12 weeks.
All of this is, of course, subject to whatever amendments get made as it trundles through the Commons. I expect some bits may have a tricky passage.
