Great news: Devonwall seat is doomed

Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall has welcomed the news that the creation of a cross-Tamar Devonwall parliamentary seat is unlikely to happen, following the failure of the Coalition to agree a way forward on the reform of the House of Lords.

Last week, the Prime Minister David Cameron announced that proposals to reform the House of Lords were doomed, because he could not guarantee the support of large numbers of Tory MPs.

And yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg admitted that the reforms had to be abandoned. But told the Prime Minister that the Liberal Democrats would oppose proposals to reduce the size of the Commons from 650 to 600 MPs and to redraw parliamentary boundaries (likely to favour the Conservatives) and delay them until after the 2015 election.

It is great news that the creation of a cross-Tamar parliamentary seat will almost certainly not happen and that the territorial integrity has been safeguarded for Westminster elections. But it is also important that the Prime Minister makes a prompt announcement that the Boundary Review has been curtailed with immediate effect.

Many people campaigned hard to oppose the Devonwall seat and we must celebrate the news that it is not going to happen. But the Boundary Review has only been ended because of primitive and self-interested political bartering between the Coalition parties.

We must never forget that both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats voted through the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which would have created a Devonwall seat.

We must never forget that both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Ministers dismissively ignored our opposition to Devonwall.

And we must never forget that over 95% of Coalition MPs opposed an amendment to protect the integrity of Cornwall, and that five of Cornwall’s six MPs supported the finalised Bill with their votes.