Examination of witnesses

Part of Parliamentary Constituencies Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:06 pm on 23 June 2020.

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Dr Rossiter:

Back in 1998, we wrote a proposed new set of rules that would have achieved what I think would have been a rather better way to work—I would say that, wouldn’t I? We felt at the time that the differences between national quotas, and the discrepancies between constituencies across England, were too large. We suggested that a new set of rules could say, “Yes, we’ll have a UK-wide quota, and we will have a target size for Parliament of whatever number of seats you wish.” It is 650 in the present case. We then said that a commission should be restricted to no more than 10% variance around the UK-wide quota, but that it should aim to get constituencies as near to that quota as was practical. That would give commissions the extra latitude that they would need to avoid many of the difficulties that were so evident in the 2013 and 2018 exercises.

At the same time, we would make it clear that electoral equality is a very important thing to aim for, and it should be the goal in all circumstances. I believe that having a degree of flexibility is extremely important, and I fear that not having it will inevitably cause consequences further down the line.