Major changes could see MPs lose their seats

PROPOSEDCHANGEStotheboundaries of Parliamentary constituencies may significantly affect areas with large Jewish populations.

The Boundary Commission for England published its boundary recommendations on Tuesday. The proposals, due to take effect in 2018, include suggestions to create new constituencies, abolish others, and redraw the borders of many more.

Under the proposed plans, Mike Freer’s Finchley and Golders Green seat in northwest London would be divided.

Significant changes are also proposed in the constituencies of Hendon and Hampstead and Kilburn. The two seats currently have the second and fifth highest proportions of Jewish voters in the country.

Harrow East and Harrow West also look set to be redrawn, with areas incorporated into three new seats — Kenton, Wembley and Harrow-on-theHill, and Harrow and Stanmore.

Ruth Smeeth, the MP for Stoke-onTrentNorth,isoneJewishpoliticianwho faces a fight to keep her job. The town’s three seats are to be amalgamated.

In Manchester, the constituency of Blackley and Broughton, which has a large Jewish community, would remain unchanged, but a new Prestwich and Middleton seat would be formed, taking five wards from Ivan Lewis’s Bury South.

Mike Gapes’s Ilford South seat is in line to be scrapped, with parts taken into Wes Streeting’s Ilford North con-

MP Ruth Smeeth faces a fight to keep her Stoke seat

stituency.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, would see his Islington North seat abolished. A newly created seat of Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington includes the Hackney ward of Stamford Hill West in Hackney, in which almost 40 per cent of residents are Jewish.

The planned changes are in their initial stage. Similar proposals in 2006 and 2007 eventually saw more than 60 per cent of the changes abandoned.