The Labour Party will suffer the most under proposed constituency boundary changes, a Conservative peer has warned.
A review of the new boundaries has suggested 200 Labour seats will be affected, with up to 30 seats being scrapped altogether. By contrast the Conservatives face losing between 10 and 15 seats.
The assessment has been undertaken by Lord Hayward, a Conservative peer and expert on the boundary review. He has warned that although all parties will be affected, Labour appears to stand to lose the most when the altered boundaries come into force.
Lord Hayward told The Guardian this is due to the geographical location of Labour seats and Labour MPs being more likely to dip below the projected threshold: “The party that will suffer most is the Labour party because such a high proportion of their current seats are well below the required quota, particularly in Wales, the north-east and parts of the M62 corridor.”
The changes will see the total number of MPs in the House of Commons cut by 50 to 600 seats. The review was initiated under David Cameron in a bid to ensure all votes carry equal weight throughout the country, regardless of the constituency in which they are cast.
A spokesperson for Labour’s chief whip Rosie Winterton told The Guardian Lord Hayward’s comments are confirmation that the review is an exercise in “gerrymandering”. They said: “Lord Hayward’s comments – a key architect of the Conservative’s boundary changes – that reducing the number of elected members of parliament by 50 will benefit the Tories’ electorally, is further evidence that the sole motivation for these changes is a partisan plan to give the Tories’ an unfair advantage at the expense of democracy. Simply put, this is gerrymandering.”
They added that the Brexit vote serves as another reason to keep the current number of MPs as the UK will lose democratic representatives in the form of MEPs once it leaves the European Union. They said: “In light of this, a reduction in the number of elected members of parliament is simply wrong.”
The Boundary Commission is due to publish its new maps on 13 September.
