Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill — Clause 9 — Number of MPs — 20 Oct 2010 at 21:00

The majority of MPs voted to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600.

Clause 9 of the The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill^[1][2] contained the "Rules for distribution of seats"; the first rule in the Bill as introduced was:

• Number of constituencies
• The number of constituencies in the United Kingdom shall be 600.

The amendment voted on in this division would have replaced that with:

• UK Electoral quota
• The UK Electoral Quota shall be defined as the total electorate of the United Kingdom on the designated enumeration day divided by 650.'

During the debate Labour MP Chris Bryant^[3] said:

• The Liberal Democrats mentioned 500 MPs in their manifesto, while the Conservatives had a manifesto commitment to reduce the number of seats by 10%, which would have taken the number down to 585.

Mr Bryant explained his, and his party's, opposition to the proposed figure of 600 saying:

• I suspect that bringing the number of seats down to 600 will disproportionately attack Labour seats, while going down to 585 would disproportionately attack Liberal Democrat seats. I therefore suspect that the number of 600 has been arrived at specifically for partisan purposes-to rig the Parliament of this country. That is why we will not support the clause.

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• [1] Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill as introduced
• [2] Section of Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill as introduced containing p.7 lines 27-28, the location of the relevant section
• [3] Chris Bryant MP, House of Commons, 20th of October 2010

Debate in Parliament | Source |