The United Kingdom’s system of redistribution has operated in its current form, with some modifications, since the end of the Second World War. As of 2005, there have been five redistributions completed: 1947, 1954, 1969, 1983 and 1995. The sixth is underway and due to be completed in 2006. The task is undertaken by four independent Boundary Commissions, one each for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Historical Background
The system for electing the lower house of the Parliament, the House of Commons, was introduced in the thirteenth century, and this system went largely unchanged for the next 600 years. Each Shire (or County) and Borough was invited to send two representatives: the former were elected from among the landowners, the latter by the enfranchised burgesses. When Scotland, Wales and Ireland were incorporated into the United Kingdom their Members of Parliament (MPs) were similarly elected.
Parliamentary boundaries were not controversial because no one expected constituencies to have even approximately equal populations – MPs were conceived of as representing places (or property) rather than people. 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.
Before the 1832 Great Reform Act there were major variations in constituency electorates, a result primarily of nineteenth-century industrial-urbanisation. The three nineteenth century redistributions reduced these differences by removing seats from the small boroughs (mostly “rotten boroughs” with negligible electorates) and reallocating them to the rapidly-expanding shires. Most two-seat boroughs lost their separate status, and the new constituencies allocated to the shires returned a single MP.
The nineteenth century redistributions were undertaken by the House of Commons, and were carefully constructed by the government to favour its electoral interests. The first twentieth century redistribution in 1917 marked the earliest occasion when commissioners were explicitly non-partisan and the Commissions had clearly stated principles and freedom to recommend constituencies. It was also the first time that the goal of approximate equality in district population was accepted. Following the 1918 redistribution, however, constituency boundaries were left alone for a generation and large divergences in populations developed. The modern system was introduced after the Second World War, in part as a response to the major anomalies in the size of constituencies (as indicated by the number of electors).
Vivian Committee Recommendations for Redistribution In 1942 the wartime coalition government established a committee (chaired by the 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 an electoral 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
- The need for constituencies to conform to local government boundaries in order to provide community representation and ease of organisation for elections (which are conducted 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 offered by the Vivian Committee as well. The latter subject would become the focus of debate for the next fifty years.
The Redistribution Acts of 1944 and 1958 The first House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act, enacted in 1944, adopted many of the Vivian Committee’s recommendations. The Act set the limit of toleration at plus or minus 25 per cent of the electoral quota. 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 Initial 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 equal constituency population. They removed the 25 per cent deviation rule and replaced it with a rule that constituencies should ‘be as near the electoral quota as is practicable’. This new rule was placed after and, it was assumed, subsidiary to the rule regarding local government boundaries.
The Commissions’ First Periodical Review of all constituencies were reported in 1954 (the 1944 legislation required them to be delivered within 5-7 years of the previous Review). This generated consternation among MPs 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 Redistribution Act in 1958, extending the time period between Reviews to 10-15 years (in 1992, the allowable time period between Reviews was amended again – Reviews must now be conducted every 8-12 years).
Although the Act was subsequently amended to take account of major local government changes in the 1970s and was then consolidated into a new one – the Parliamentary Constituencies Act, 1986 – there were no further changes to the basic principles for redistributions.
Legal Framework for Redistribution
Boundary Authority The delimitation of constituencies is undertaken by four independent and non-partisan Boundary Commissions, one each for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Commissions are composed of four members appointed by the relevant Secretaries of State. The nominal Chair is the Speaker of the House of Commons who neither attends nor participates; meetings are conducted by the Deputy Chair (a senior judge). Each Commission has assessors representing departments which supply vital information (for England and Wales these are the Registrar-General and the Director General of the Ordnance Survey). Each Commission also has a small civil service staff.
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, but this has never happened.) In this century Parliament has never significantly revised the constituency boundaries prepared by the Boundary Commissioners [1].
Frequency When in 1944 it was decided to institute regular redistributions of seats, the time limit envisaged was “not less than three or more than seven year” – that is, once in the life of every five-year Parliament. But the dislocations involved in the first routine redistribution in 1954-55, only five years after the general redrawing of boundaries had taken effect in 1950, produced an outcry. The time limits were therefore altered in 1958 to “not less than ten or more than fifteen years” and in 1992 the limited was again changed – a redistribution of seats is now required every 8 to 12 years.
In each review, the process has been slow. The Third Periodical Review actually took seven years to complete. Although some of the delay was due to the two-year legal tangle over ward boundaries (and therefore could not be blamed on the delimitation process), a large portion was the result of the elaborate appeal procedures laid down in the 1958 Act.
Allocation of Seats to Component Parts of UK For the First through the Fourth Reviews, the electoral law guaranteed a minimum number of seats for Scotland (71) and Wales (35), a minimum and maximum number of seats for Northern Ireland (16-18), and a total number of seats for Great Britain (i.e. England, Scotland and Wales) that should not be substantially exceeded (613) [2]. As a consequence of these rules, England has become under-represented relative to its population and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have become over-represented. For example, if seats were allocated to the component parts of the United Kingdom on the basis of population alone, prior to the Fourth Review, England would have additional seats, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would have far fewer seats:
| Actual Number of Seats at start of Fourth Review | Number of Seats based on Population, start of Fourth Review |
England | 529 | 549 |
Scotland | 72 | 59 |
Wales | 40 | 34 |
Northern Ireland | 18 | 17 |
This seat allocation will change rather dramatically for the Fifth Review because of the Scotland Act 1998, which removes the guarantee of a minimum number of parliamentary seats for Scotland. The Scotland Act also requires that the electoral quota for England be used to determine the appropriate number of Scottish seats to Westminster. The mathematical effect of applying the English electoral quota to Scotland is likely to be a reduction in the number of Scottish seats from the current 72 to fewer than 60 seats. (In fact, the Boundary Commission of Scotland, which has now completed its Fifth Review, proposes 59 constituencies.)
Allocation of Seats to Counties and Boroughs Each commission begins the delimitation process assuming that it will have the same number of seats in Parliament that it currently holds. The Fourth Periodic Review therefore began, in 1991, with England assuming an allotment of 529 seats, Scotland 72 seats, Wales 40 seats and Northern Ireland 18 seats.
The commissions establish the new “electoral quota” by dividing the latest annual register of the electorate by the number of seats authorized at the last redistribution (i.e., the current number of seats). In the Fourth Review, the quotas were as follows:
| Number of Seats | Electoral Quota |
England | 529 | 69281 |
Scotland | 72 | 58525 |
Wales | 40 | 54569 |
Northern Ireland | 18 | 67852 |
The English and Welsh Commissions then allocate the appropriate number of seats to each shire country (ranging from 1 in the Isle of Wight to 17 in Kent and Hampshire); to each metropolitan country (ranging from 13 in Tyne and Wear to 29 in the West Midlands); and to each of the 32 London boroughs.
Once seats have been allocated to counties and boroughs, the Commissions draw up provisional maps. It is possible, in the process of creating these maps, to award extra seats when “special geographic considerations” merit it. As a result, the size of the House of Commons has consistently grown: from 625 to 630, then to 635, then to 650, and to 659 in the Fourth Review [3].
Public Consultation Process The Commission’s provisional maps are published once they are completed. If objections to the boundaries are raised, local inquiries are scheduled [4]. The stages involved in the public consultation are as follows:
1) The Commission publishes its provisional recommendations for a local government unit in one or more newspapers circulating in the area, and sends notices to all affected MPs, political parties and local governments, giving details of the recommendations and indicating where maps showing the recommended constituencies can be viewed. Representations are invited within one month of the publication.
2) After the closing date for representations, if objections have been received from either at least 100 local electors or one interested local authority, then a public Local Inquiry must be convened. This is chaired by a specially-appointed Assistant Commissioner (AC), who is invariably a senior lawyer. ACs must have no political affiliations and in England (though not elsewhere) they must have no detailed knowledge of the area they are assigned.
3) Before the Inquiry, a document is produced summarising the representations received; a full list of those making representations and the grounds for the recommendations are appended.
4) At the Local Inquiry, the AC invites those who made written representations to make oral submissions, where they may be questioned by the AC and cross-examined by others who have made representations. Some of those objecting to the provisional recommendations (mainly the political parties) offer alternative configurations for one or more constituencies. Partisan considerations cannot be discussed, but the proceedings are invariably dominated by the political parties and their representatives (including local governments, most of which are politically-controlled). They use the criteria in the rules, especially those concerning community ties and the inconveniences of change, to influence the AC to recommend constituencies to the Commission which are in their own electoral interest.
5) On the basis of what has been read and, especially, heard, plus site visits when chosen, the AC’s report summarises local opinion on the provisional recommendations, discusses any counter-proposals presented to the Inquiry, evaluates the evidence, and recommends whether the Commission should change its provisional recommendations.
The boundary commissioners usually – but not always – accept the recommendations of the ACs. The reports and the reasons for accepting or rejecting offered recommendations are made public.
If the commissioners redraw the constituency boundaries based on the inquiry process, then further inquiries may be required [5]. The whole inquiry process can be quite long-winded and repetitive. The English commissioners started work on their Third Periodical Review in 1976 and did not produce their final report until late in 1982.
Commission can also conduct Interim Reviews to take account of either major local government changes or substantial population changes. Only one significant Interim Review has been undertaken: in 1990 the English Commission recommended an additional constituency for the rapidly expanding new town of Milton Keynes.
Delimitation Criteria Population equality, compactness, established geographic links, natural and administrative boundaries, and community of interest are the only factors that commissioners are to take into account in creating constituency boundaries. A summary of the rules are as follows:
- “So far as is practicable’, constituency boundaries should not cross major local government boundaries - although this requirement is less stringent for Scotland and, especially, Northern Ireland.
- Each constituency’s electorate should be as near the electoral quota as practicable, within the constraint of the previous rule. Commissions may depart from that previous rule to avoid disparities in electorates among neighbouring constituencies.
- Commissions may depart from strict application of the previous two rules “if special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency” make that desirable.
- Commissions should also take account of the inconveniences that may be caused, and the local ties that may be broken, if they give full effect to the “equal electorates” requirement.
The rules include two that give the Commissions considerable flexibility: the Commission can over-ride the requirement not to create constituencies crossing designated local government boundaries if this is necessary to avoid major disparities in constituency electorates; and the use of ‘special geographical considerations’ (of which size, shape and accessibility are cited as particular examples) to justify over-riding both the local government boundary and the equal electorates requirement.
The following table lists the number of constituencies that deviated from the electoral quota, and by how much, after the Fourth Review:
| England | Wales | Scotland | N. Ireland | TOTAL |
Within 10% | 444 | 29 | 50 | 14 | 537 |
10 -15% (plus or minus) | 60 | 8 | 12 | 0 | 80 |
15 - 20% (plus or minus) | 21 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 31 |
over 20% (plus or minus) | 4 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 11 |
Non-Partisan Boundary Commission Commissioners are not supposed to have any cognizance of political party considerations. In fact, no one has seriously suggested that the commissioners have deviated from this apolitical ideal. On the other hand, during the public inquiry process, political parties and MPs may attempt to persuade the commissioners, using supposedly objective arguments about natural communities, etc., to act in the self-interest of a particular political party.
Court Challenges to Redistributions
In 1982, the Labour Party brought suit against the English Boundary Commission, challenging the Commission’s newly completed redistribution plan. This was the first such legal challenge brought against a boundary commission in the United Kingdom.
In the complaint, the Labour Party argued that the Commission had given too much weight to “natural communities” and county boundaries in the plan and too little weight to ensuring equal electorates. There were, in fact, large disparities in population across constituencies: for example, both the Isle of Wight and the London suburb of Surbiton were designated as single seats, but the Isle of Wight had an electorate of 95,000 and Surbiton had only 48,000 electors.
The court, however, in its decision in R. v. Boundary Commission for England ex parte Foot, found no evidence that the Commission had failed to undertake its statutory obligation to ensure equality of numbers. Furthermore, the court indicated a decided reluctance to query a Commission’s sovereignty – it suggested it was willing to do so only in the very special circumstance that a Commission has clearly acted unreasonably. The court in Britain has not been asked to consider the fairness of a redistribution plan since this 1983 decision.
Steps in the Commission Process
Each Commission operates in the following way:
(1) The Commission decides when to initiate a Periodic Review and announces its intention. (The four Commissions are not required to act together, but do, although English redistributions normally take much longer to complete.)
(2) Each Commission calculates its electoral quota using the 1986 Act formulation: the country’s registered electorate on the ‘qualifying date’ (when the review was publicly announced) is divided by its current number of seats.
(3) In England, Scotland and Wales, the Commissions determine each major local governmental unit’s ‘theoretical entitlement’ to seats, dividing its electorate by the electoral quota. (This is not done in Northern Ireland because local government units are not identified in the Act.)
(4) If some ‘theoretical entitlements’ would produce constituencies that are very large or very small relative to the quota, two contiguous local government units can be combined to achieve greater equality. (This has rarely happened.)
(5) The Commission staff prepares a number of optional schemes for constituencies in each local government unit. Local government electoral wards are always used as the ‘building blocks’: this is not legally required but has become the accepted modus operandi.
(6) The Commission evaluates the options offered and decides which one to put out to public consultation as its provisional recommendation.
(7) After the public consultation (see below), the Commission assesses the additional information and advice provided by the Assistant Commissioner who held the Inquiry, and decides whether to modify or confirm its provisional recommendations. If it takes the latter course, the provisional proposals become the final recommendations: they are published and included in the final report to Parliament. If the Commission decides to change any or all of its provisional recommendations (including a proposed constituency name), however, the changes are published and a further round of public consultation is initiated.
(8) When all of the recommendations have been made final, the reports are submitted to Parliament through the relevant Secretary of State.
For each constituency, the Commission has to recommend a name (which can stimulate considerable local concern) and whether to classify it as ‘borough’ or ‘county’. Candidates are allowed to spend more money campaigning in ‘county’ (rural) than in ‘borough’ (urban) constituencies.
Problems with the Review Process
The Review process can be quite time-consuming; the Fourth Review took four years to complete in England, with consideration of one County (Devon) taking 1,028 days to complete. An even greater problem is that the rules are ambiguous, with standards that are subjective (such as “as far as practicable”) and no indication of the relative salience of the various criteria. Some the particular problems that the rules and procedure create are as follows:
- The guarantee of a minimum number of seats to three of the four countries ensures that they are over-represented relative to England, whose population is growing more rapidly. (This will change for one of the three countries – Scotland – once the Fifth Review has been completed.)
- The method of calculating the electoral quota produces an in-built bias towards an increase in the number of seats. This is because constituencies that vary considerably from the electoral quota (because of ‘special geographical considerations’) are included in the denominator, increasing the likely allocation.
- The allocation of theoretical entitlements to local government areas also tends to inflate the number of seats. This is because fractional entitlements are often rounded -up rather than -down.
- Different Commissions can give different weight to the various criteria. For example, in the Fourth Review, the Scottish Commission determined not to create any additional seats (after Parliament expressed a desire for no growth in the number of MPs), whereas the Welsh Commission created an additional two seats, even though Wales was already substantially over-represented.
- The same Commission (especially the English Commission, which has the largest task) can weight the criteria differently in different areas, giving an impression of inconsistency.
- The use of the registered electorate rather than the population, although beneficial because the electorate is enumerated annually, means that 2 to 3 million people may not be included in the count. The Commissions cannot take this undercount into account when allocating seats, which may disadvantage areas with high under-enrolments (mainly inner cities), nor can the Commissions take an area’s projected population growth into account.
- The Local Inquiry system allows the political parties to employ the various criteria to press cases which favour their electoral interests, without being transparent in their reasons. Thus the strength of the advocacy may convince the AC, rather than the merits of the case.
Notes
[1] However, the 1948 Labour government, believing urban areas to be under-represented, asked the commissioners to devise 17 extra seats. Although the request may have been politically motivated, the ultimate result was that the seats divided almost evenly at the next election. In 1969, the Labour government, worried about the seats it would lose under redistribution, postponed implementing the boundary commissions’ proposals on the ground that the impending change of local government boundaries would render the constituency boundaries obsolete.
[2] The 1944 Redistribution of Seats Act guaranteed that the representation of Scotland should be maintained at a minimum number of 71 seats and Wales at a minimum of 35 seats. Northern Ireland seats were increased from 12 to a proportionate 17 by the Labour government in 1979.
| First Review | Second Review | Third Review | Fourth Review |
England | 511 | 515 | 523 | 529 |
Scotland | 71 | 71 | 72 | 72 |
Wales | 36 | 36 | 38 | 40 |
Northern Ireland | 12 | 12 | 17 | 18 |
Total | 630 | 634 | 650 | 659 |
[4] Public consultation was included in the nineteenth century redistribution process but its nature was only formalised in the 1944 Redistribution Act. The 1958 Act specified the circumstances in which a Local Inquiry is mandatory.
[5] Although the Local Inquiry process may be repeated if a Commission publishes revised boundaries after receiving an AC’s report, this does not happen often since the Commissions will not allow issues already fully covered in the previous proceedings to be reconsidered. (There were only two second Local Inquiries in the most recent Review, which included 83 first Inquiries.)
