Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 95:"Page 19, line 38, at end insert—" ““18BA   ELECTORAL BOUNDARY REFORM (1)   An electoral quota system shall be introduced to determine the size of each constituency electorate. (2)   The quota shall be determined by dividing the total electorate in the United Kingdom by the number of seats in the House of Commons. (3)   The relevant authority must have regard to the maintenance of an equal number of electors per seat above all other considerations when determining all electoral boundaries.”” The noble Baroness said: The amendment moves us into a wider area, but it seems an appropriate Bill in which to try and insert it. The amendment would place a duty on the Boundary Commission to have regard to the maintenance of an equal number of electors per seat above all other considerations when considering existing geographical and country boundaries. The thinking behind the amendment is not, as has been suggested elsewhere, a disguised criticism of the Boundary Commission, rather it is a necessary suggested code of practice. We have addressed the issue of fairness at many levels in this Bill, about encouraging electoral participation and about ensuring that the vote is safeguarded. Those are surface measures, and our electoral system will not be truly fair until each elector is equally represented. We have a voting system where some votes are more equal than others. Votes in the United Kingdom have values that differ significantly from constituency to constituency. Hackney South and Shoreditch has 57,204 electors; Banbury leaps to 78,817; and the Isle of Wight goes up to 103,480. Those figures are a random representation of an unwieldy state of affairs. An analysis of the overall figures shows that the average number of votes cast for the winning party in England at the last election, per seat, was 18,833. Conversely, the average number of votes cast per seat for the Tory party was 22,763.