Tory grandees press for boundary changes
TORY grandees are urging Boris Johnson to introduce legal changes that could give the Prime Minister 20 more seats at the next election.
Two former Conservative chairmen, a former constitution minister, and Sir Graham Brady, the head of the 1922 committee, are among senior party figures calling on Mr Johnson to change “deeply-flawed” parliamentary constituency boundaries “as fast as possible”.
Last week, an analysis revealed that the Conservatives would have a 104seat majority under proposed changes put forward by the Boundary Commissions in 2018 for a slimmed down 600seat House of Commons. The reforms were proposed under a process that sees the size and shape of parliamentary boundaries periodically reviewed to keep up with population changes.
The Tories’ manifesto included a pledge to “update and equal Parliamentary boundaries” to ensure “every vote counts the same” – but last week’s Queen’s Speech contained no explicit reference to the changes.
In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, six senior Tories, led by John Penrose, the former constitution minister, said it was “essential for the health and credibility” of Britain’s democracy to introduce the changes “immediately” – putting them in place for the next election. The politicians, including Liam Fox and Lord Pickles, former party chairmen, Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, and Damian Green, who was de facto deputy prime minister, state: “We are writing to show our support for fixing the current, deeply-flawed parliamentary constituency boundaries as fast as possible.
“The existing constituencies vary enormously in size, from some where less than 40,000 voters elect a Westminster MP, to others where it takes 90,000 or more. That means votes in some parts of the country are worth more than twice as much as those in others.” The MPs add: “The Boundary Commission produced new proposals to right this wrong several years ago. They are ‘oven-ready’, but opposition parties have refused to let it through Parliament until now.”
‘Votes in some parts of the country are worth more than twice as much as those in others’