Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill — Clause 11 — permissible variation in population in a constituency — 15 Feb 2011 at 18:47
Mark Hoban MP, Fareham voted not to increase the permitted variation from the norm in the number of voters in each parliamentary constituency to 7.5% from the 5% previously proposed.
A majority of MPs voted against making the changes to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill proposed by the Lords amendment 16. During the debate, Mark Harper MP said:
- 'The amendment would give the Boundary Commission the discretion to propose constituencies within an extended 15% range of the UK electoral quota in the event that a commission considered that exceptional local ties or geographical circumstances made it necessary for a viable constituency. That means that the plus or minus 5% rule could be extended to plus or minus 7.5% in the exceptional circumstances set out in the amendment.'
MPs voting against this change were therefore implying that they believe that having an equal number of MPs in a constituency is more important than having constituencies based on local ties or geographical circumstances.
This amendment is closely linked to Lords amendment 19.
Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.
What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.
What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.
What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.
|Party||Majority (Aye)||Minority (No)||Both||Turnout|
|Con||268 (+1 tell)||3||0||88.9%|
|Lab||0||224 (+2 tell)||0||87.9%|
|LDem||49 (+1 tell)||4||0||94.7%|
|George Eustice||Camborne and Redruth||Con (front bench)||no|
|Sheryll Murray||South East Cornwall||Con (front bench)||no|
|Sarah Newton||Truro and Falmouth||Con (front bench)||no|
|Andrew George||St Ives||LDem (front bench)||no|
|Stephen Gilbert||St Austell and Newquay||LDem (front bench)||no|
|Charles Kennedy||Ross, Skye and Lochaber||LDem (front bench)||no|
|Dan Rogerson||North Cornwall||LDem (front bench)||no|