Town's leading politicians in favour of Boundary Commission proposals

12:40pm Wednesday 17th October 2012 in News Photograph of the Author By Mike Wright, Chief Reporter

The three main political parties in Watford have all welcomed the new proposed changes to the town’s parliamentary constituency.

Yesterday the Boundary Commission revealed initial plans to expand the seat to take in Moor Park and South Oxhey had been scrapped in a revised map.

Proposals to transfer Abbots Langley and Leaveseden to the neighbouring South West Hertfordshire constituency have also been dropped. Under the new map the area of Carpenders Park is still set to move from Watford to the Hertsmere constituency.

The move comes as part of a planned shake-up of the House of Commons that will see the number parliamentary seats reduced from 650 to 600 and redraw constituencies so they reflect more equal numbers of people.

Watford is a marginal seat that swung from Labour to the Conservatives at the last General Election. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats were also in contention, coming second in the race. So any changes to the constituency border could affect who Watford returns as its MP in the future. However Boundary Commission’s changes, which will be voted on next year, is under threat as the Liberal Democrat wing of the Coalition Government is threatening to block the bill after Conservative MPs thwarted attempts to reform the House of Lords.

Following the yesterday's release of the new constituency proposals Watford’s current Conservative MP, Richard Harrington, said he was happy with the latest draft.

He said: "I am very pleased my appeal was carried. My appeal was to keep the status quo but accept we had to lose Carpenders Park to keep in with the new lower numbers.

"Abbots Langley and Leavesden are important parts of the constituency, but Moor Park and South Oxhey are not so much."

After the first draft of the new constituency maps were released last year politicians and the public were able to make representations to the politically-neutral Boundary Commission over the changes.

Watford’s Liberal Democrat elected mayor, Dorothy Thornhill, said she was also pleased with the latest constituency map.

She said: "I am pleased that the Boundary Commission agreed with the Liberal Democrat submission (to keep Abbots Langley and Leavesden), we felt it made more sense in terms of natural communities.

"Now whether it will go through is up to our MPs."

Mayor Thornhill added she hoped her party would drop its opposition to the boundary changes in Parliament between now and the vote.

She said: "If I was an MP I would say we should not be blocking this. I think it is a good piece of work, reducing the number of MPs is necessary and it equalises the constituencies."

Neither the town’s MP nor elected Mayor wanted to be drawn on the potential political implications the new map would have on the next General Election battle in Watford if it is passed.

But Labour said they thought the new map would help the party reclaim the Watford’s Parliamentary seat.

Mike Jackson, chairman of Watford Labour Party: "Were the proposals to go ahead, then the new boundary would actually be more favourable for Labour. Opinion polls consistently show Labour would win Watford on existing or proposed boundaries. "As we are already seeing in by-elections, voters will punish Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats for getting into bed with Cameron's Conservatives and slavishly supporting right-wing policies. It's a going to be a two-horse race here at the general election, Labour - or the Conservatives."

Comments(10)

Andrew1963 says...
1:06pm Wed 17 Oct 12

Strange that the Mayor is in favour of reducing the number of MPs when Nick clegg is pledged to vote against the proposal. She is of course herself an additional Cllr to the original Council of 36 elected cllrs. Also don't the Lib Dems support an elected House of Lords? There is no logic to the argument that 650 MPs is too many but 600 just right. Why not 500 MP's or 700? The latest round of boundary changes is a transparent attempt to get the Conservatives an advantage over the 2010 boundaries that failed to deliver their expected majority government.

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clarkie750 says...
2:03pm Wed 17 Oct 12

By the same token it is strange that Mr Jackson is happy with the proposals when in fact his party's submission to the Boundary Commission was very different to the outcome.

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Reg Edit says...
2:06pm Wed 17 Oct 12

Andrew,

Let me try to help you on this...

Currently there are 650 MPs. It has been proposed that this is too many, the UK does not need 650 MPs.

Now, over time the constituencies which started off more even, have had population movements meaning that some MPs have a great many more voters in their constituencies than others. This is a tidying up exercise to make the constituencies more equal in numbers of voters on the whole. Following so far?

OK, so in essence it's a step in the right direction and it makes the FPTP voting system fairer in the UK.

Now here's the rub. It is thought the current boundaries, the uneven ones, favour Labour, helping keep them in power in the past. It is said the Tories must get more votes per MP than Labour needs, an inbuilt bias in favour of Labour. These new boundaries will remove some of that bias towards Labour. The implication is that if Labour loses an advantage, then the Tories gain. This would be true in a two-party system.

SO, it's not gerrymandering by the Tories, it is trying to even up the constituencies and in the process will remove some of the bias in the current system.

The only way you could disagree with this is

a) if you had a vested interest and it would affect your party directly in a negative capacity (i.e. a Labour supporter),

b) if you were a Liberal (Nick Clegg is throwing his toys out of his pram over this) with no belief in fairness and were hoping to wring concessions out of the conservatives for supporting it, or

c) if you were pretty uninformed about the whole situation and didn't really know what you were talking about.


Andrew, which one (or ones) of the above best describes you?

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Andrew1963 says...
2:47pm Wed 17 Oct 12

If you have 650 uneven constituencies you can even them up in size to get 650 of equal number of voters. Even Reg must understand the principle of dividing up! Or you could divide the existing constituencies into 700 or 500 equal amounts. The Boundary Commission created the 650 constituencies (when the tories last had a majority in the 1990's) not the political parties - but here is the rub the Boundary Commission was instructed to reduce the 650 to 600! Why - who worked out 600 was to their advantage when 650 was not? Reg, explain why 600 is better than 500 MPs. And why is it fairer now when Stevenage will have 4% more voters than Watford? Four Percent is a significant variation 26 out of 650 MPs!

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Harry Caine says...
10:21pm Wed 17 Oct 12

Given that the population has increased substantially since the number of MP's was set at 650 surely there should be more MP's rather than the fewer proposed

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garston tony says...
9:01am Thu 18 Oct 12

Approval to look at boundary changes was given by Parliament. Given that there is no majority this mean that MP's from all parties had to back it. There goes that myth then that this is purely being done to benefit one particular party or other.

The principal is that every MP should represent give or take roughly the same amount of people. Long gone are the days of rotten boroughs but there are some MP's whose constituency consists of far more people than others which is a little unfair.

The boundary commission is also independent of any party (lets not forget that it’s the same organisation that Labour used when they proposed limited boundary changes only a few years ago) and that again their proposals have to be agreed by parliament i.e. MP's from all different parties need to back it for it to go ahead.

As to Dotty seemingly going against Lib Dem policy, her concern is local not national and she obviously sees it as a benefit to our town. Or more likely her personal position, but that is me being biased.

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Andrew1963 says...
10:50am Thu 18 Oct 12

The Coalition parties do have a majority -That's is the point of the Coalition. Now that the bigger Tory part of it does not support Lords reform the Lib Dem part is saying it wont support the reduction in seats which is of benefit to the Tories. The reduction is less insignificant to the Lib Dems. After all their support is more concentrated. Plus the most uneven in size consituencies in Scotland like the Hebridies etc cannot in a practical sense have the same rules applying - and guess who wins those seats! We had 650 MPs in 1983 after Margaret Thatchers party endorsed the then Boundary review, which made Watford bigger than the old borough constituency. Her government then passed the 1986 act to restrict the growth in the number of MPs - The 650 led to a whopping great Tory majority and ever since we have had that number. We have not had 600 MPs since before World War two. In the UK we have far fewer elected representatives. Germany, USA etc have a powerful Federal structures. In other countries you have far more power and responsibility at what we would call Local government level, and far more elected representatives at a local level. Today with over 100 MPs in Coalition Government positions, and local councils voting to reduce the number of elected cllrs we are moving towards a situation where we have more power in the hands of a few and control by the unelected bureacrats. Look at the mess up letting a simple rail franchise which only runs 20 railway stations to see that officialdom is not always the best way to go. I would support fewer Westminster MPs if we had more powerful regional authorities - like Germany. But that is unlikely to happen. Another isue is workload, MPs point out that they face a huge increase in case work. This grows year on year. Which by implication means the public need more elected advocates to help with sorting out officialdom not less.

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garston tony says...
12:40pm Thu 18 Oct 12

The coalition do have a majority but not everyone in the coalition agree with this, and not everyone in Labour disagrees. Thats the point

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Mike Watford says...
1:42pm Thu 18 Oct 12

clarkie750 wrote:
By the same token it is strange that Mr Jackson is happy with the proposals when in fact his party's submission to the Boundary Commission was very different to the outcome.
...and laughable for him to suggest that NOT having South Oxhey in the constituency would somehow help Labour!!
...clearly not credible at all.

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Steve, Abbots Langley says...
12:30am Wed 24 Oct 12

I dont think that Mike Watford has actually read the quote. Clearly Labour would do better if Carpenders Park were removed from the Watford constituency, but of course, unlike the Lib Dems, Labour has managed to win three times on the present less favourable boundaries than those proposed.

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