Boundary Commission for Wales

Written evidence from the Boundary Commission for Wales

Introduction

1. The Parliamentary Boundary Commission for Wales (BCW) is an advisory Non Departmental Public Body sponsored and wholly funded by the Cabinet Office. The Commission submits reports to the Secretary of State and it is his statutory duty to lay them before Parliament. The Speaker of the House of Commons is the ex-officio Chairman of all four Parliamentary Boundary Commissions in the United Kingdom. The appointment of the Speaker emphasises the independence, impartiality, and non-political nature. The Speaker plays no part in the conduct of reviews. The Deputy Chairman, who presides over the meetings, is a High Court Judge: the Honourable Mr Justice Lloyd Jones. The Members are Mr Paul Wood and Mr John Bader.

2. This evidence only addresses Part 2 of the Bill, since Part 1 deals with matters in which the Commission have no locus. However, we note that since both First-Past-The-Post and Alternative Vote result in the election of a single member for each constituency, the requirements of constituency design will be the same for both systems.

3. We will be happy to discuss any of the matters in this evidence when we attend the Committee's evidence session. The evidence has been divided into the following general topics:

· the resource implications for the each of Commissions of the review process provided for in the Bill;

· the practical implications of the rules as set out in the Bill for the approach by the Commissions to a review;

· the provisions in the Bill on consultation; and

· other issues.

Resource implications

4. The changes to the review process will reduce the resource requirement of each review slightly, but the time between reviews will be approximately half the present frequency. Therefore the effect of the Bill will be to increase the overall resources required for boundary reviews. The secretariats of each country have estimated that, for the Bill as introduced, the first reviews after its passage would cost a total of £12.8m for the UK. For Wales, it is estimated that the total cost will be £1.9 million. The corresponding cost of the last reviews (5th Periodic Reviews) was a total of £13.6m.for all 4 countries. The corresponding cost of the last review for Wales (5th Periodic Review) was £645K. The reason for the higher cost of the proposed review is that the Secretariat is engaged in a review of the electoral arrangements for the principal local authorities in Wales and additional staff will be necessary to commence the parliamentary work. The arrangements in Wales are that the secretariat acts jointly for the Local Government Boundary Commission (LGBCW) and the BCW. During the Fifth Review there was a not significant level of activity taking place for the LGBCW which meant that no additional staff were needed.

5. The resource estimates have been made prior to decisions by the Commission on how best to carry out the review and therefore should be regarded as preliminary. Also, estimates have been made on the provisions of the Bill as introduced: amendments to the Bill may have resource implications. These have not been factored into the current estimate.

6. We note that the Commission will retain the power to request the appointment of Assistant Commissioners, and may wish to exercise that power to obtain expert assistance in assessing and reporting on written representations.

7. Currently within the Wales Commissions, Secretariat staff are continuously employed, with their tasks changing between Westminster, devolved body and local government reviews. The Bill would increase the variability of the workload making the recruitment and retention of staff with the specialist skills required more important for the future.

Practical implications

8. When designing constituencies, each Commission develops a scheme that fits the whole of its area of responsibility. Therefore it is not possible to say that constituency design has any particular geographic starting point.

9. The changes to the total number of constituencies, and the limited flexibility on the number of electors in each constituency, are likely to require a complete redrawing of constituency boundaries.

10. Many of the practical implications of the Bill result from the electoral parity target to be applied under the new Rule 2(1). The electoral parity target may require the Commissions to work with electorate data below electoral division (ward) level in some cases.

11. In Wales, early modelling suggests that the proposals for greater electoral parity may be achieved by using electoral divisions (wards) as building blocks for constituencies. Should a smaller unit be required, community areas (parishes) are defined across all of Wales. Thus, the Welsh Commission expects that it will be able to use a consistent and recognisable approach to constituency design across Wales.

12. The Bill limits the maximum geographical area of any constituency, and exempts constituencies close to this maximum from the lower limit on electoral parity. This only applies if a Commission is satisfied that it is "not reasonably possible" to meet the electoral parity target. This exemption will only apply in highland Scotland. The Scottish Commission will examine how to design constituencies within these new rules: their Secretariat's current view is that there are likely to be 0, 1 or 2 constituencies to which this exemption applies.

13. The electoral parity target will result in many constituencies crossing local authority boundaries.  Early modelling suggests that in Wales between 23 and 28 constituencies would cross a local authority boundary. The application of an electoral quota that represents the UK electorate could mean that in creating constituencies within the +/- 5% tolerance, we may have to work to a tolerance of +/- 3.3% in Wales in practice.  This would arise for example if, the electorate of Wales were equal to 30.45 times the electoral quota, but due to rounding would be allocated 30 constituencies. In other words the .45 of electors of a constituency would then be spread over the others- and it is that process that would result in the reduction of the tolerance to below 5%. Having examined such a scenario, we believe that are able to achieve that.

14. In Wales, local authority boundaries will be considered wherever possible, but as noted above, most constituencies are likely to cross a local authority boundary.

15. The Bill continues to give the Commissions discretion in constituency design, within the electoral parity and area requirements. We believe that this discretion is essential in order to retain, as far as possible a local dimension to an otherwise mathematical exercise.

16. However, the application of the electoral parity target is likely to result in some communities feeling that they are being divided between constituencies.

Consultation

17. The Commission’s experience from previous reviews is that many of those attending local inquiries have a specific party political affiliation which significantly determines their evidence. In practice, the main participants at inquiries have been representatives of political parties and local authorities.

18. While most of the issues which are raised are presented through written evidence to the Commission, others only emerge at an inquiry. During the Fifth Review all who asked to speak at inquiries were requested to make available a copy of their speaking notes. A longer consultation period should improve the quality of arguments and evidence presented in written submissions for two reasons: it will be the only means of presenting an argument, and a 12 week consultation period will allow for more detailed preparation of an argument. The Bill does not specify the means of making representations. We believe it should specify written representations, to allow full and fair assessment of all representations.

19. Schedule 1 to the 1986 Act is not amended by the Bill, and allows a Commission to request the appointment of Assistant Commissioners. It may be that a Commission may still find it useful to ask an Assistant Commissioner to assess and evaluate some of the written evidence submitted to the Commission.

Other issues

20. The Bill decouples Welsh Assembly constituencies from Westminster constituencies and removes any power to review Welsh Assembly constituencies after the completion of a set of interim reviews currently in progress. We have commenced several interim reviews in Wales in order to correct some of the anomalies that we have between parliamentary and Assembly constituency boundaries arising from minor changes to local government boundaries. The advantage from this work is not for the parliamentary constituency boundaries, of course, since these are to be addressed under this new Bill. However it will be advantageous for the co-terminous Welsh Assembly constituency boundaries because those anomalies will be put right.

21. It is understood that the Government intends to bring forward further legislation in due course to provide for future Welsh Assembly constituency reviews. The timing of such reviews will have an important impact on how the joint secretariat will efficiently manage its resources for local government, Westminster and Welsh Assembly reviews, assuming that there will still be a requirement for this.

22. Strict electoral parity, and a fixed total number of constituencies, will result in frequent constituency redesign. For example, looking at electorate data from the last 10 years, Scotland's, England's and Northern Ireland's allocation of constituencies would have changed on each occasion if reviews had been held 5-yearly since 2000. However, Wales' allocation would have been unchanged. When the number of constituencies in a country changes, it is likely that many constituencies will have to change in order to ensure continued compliance with electoral parity.

23. Reference has been made concerning the accuracy of the electoral registers and whether population figures would be a more appropriate basis for determining constituencies. The problems with using population data are twofold. Firstly, population data is only calculated and published at the council level, not at electoral division or any other unit below council. Secondly, population data is either an estimate or a projection, not a count, and therefore contains uncertainties. The only population count which is available is the 10-yearly census which is too infrequent to be useful for the purpose of constituency design.

24. The electoral registers are subject to cleansing at regular intervals by the Electoral Registration Officers of the local authorities and through the "rolling register" would provide data that is more robust than population estimates.

September 2010