Tuesday 11 September 2018 10:56 am

DEBATE: Is now the right time to redraw the parliamentary map and reduce the number of MPs?

Is now the right time to redraw the parliamentary map and reduce the number of MPs?

Olivia Utley, communications manager at Bright Blue, says YES.

In terms of population, the largest constituency in the UK is the Isle of Wight, with an electorate of 110,924 in 2015. The smallest is Na h-Eileanan an Iar in the Outer Hebrides, which boasted a 2015 electorate of just 21,837. That means that if you’re lucky enough to live on a small island in the Scottish Highlands, your vote is worth slightly more than the combined votes of five Isle of Wight dwellers.

Thanks to a shifting population, bizarre and unfair disparities such as this are likely to become more and more common over the next 20 years. Boundaries are meant to be redrawn every five years, but haven’t been changed since before the 2010 election.

In light of the surprise Brexit vote of 2016 – which two thirds of MPs were against – it has never been more vital to prove that parliament is properly and accurately representing the people.

By making all constituencies approximately equal, the proposed boundary changes (published by the Boundary Commission this week) would go a long way to doing just that.

Richard Angell, director of the think tank Progress, says NO.

This week, the Tories are making their third attempt to gerrymander the Commons. Reducing the size from 650 to 600 is designed to cause maximum damage to their opponents.

Analysis by UK Polling Report shows that the 2017 election fought on these new boundaries would have the Tories down by 10 MPs, Labour by 28, and others by nine.

To win this vote, the government needs the DUP – which means Northern Ireland is down by just one. Fairness is not on the agenda.

It is a power grab for the executive too. The number of ministers is limited by law to 109. There are no measures to reduce this by the same proportions, meaning more ministers for fewer parliamentarians.

With Brexit monopolising politics and sucking up all the legislative oxygen, combined with the government’s insistence on rolling out a failed model of universal credit (creating huge amounts of MP casework in pilot areas), it’s clear that the idea that the UK needs fewer MPs is just wrong.