No to Devonwall

The Boundary Commissions for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have presented their recommendations for new parliamentary constituencies to the Westminster Parliament.

The Boundary Commission for England has ignored calls from Cornwall to challenge central government to revisit the flawed basis of the whole process, not least because of the breach of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

The relevant (very disappointing extracts) are as follows:

Paragraph 748. The County of Cornwall (including the electorate of the Isles of Scilly), has an electorate of 393,874 which results in an entitlement of 5.27 constituencies to that county. This meant that it was not possible to develop a proposal for five constituencies within the county boundary that were all within the permitted electorate range.

Paragraph 755. Most notably, we received significant opposition to our proposal to combine Cornwall in a sub-region with Devon, including one constituency that crossed the River Tamar. Many respondents wanted Cornwall to be treated as a stand-alone sub-region and that it be allocated five constituencies, which, as stated above, would not enable us to comply with the statutory rules within which we are bound to work.

Paragraph 757. In formulating our revised proposals, we considered that compelling evidence had not been received to propose constituencies that crossed the regional boundaries. We acknowledged the passionate views expressed by those opposing our proposals to combine Cornwall and Devon to form a sub-region. However, there is no valid lawful alternative to a cross-county boundary constituency that would comply with the statutory rules. Our revised proposals were, therefore, based on the same sub-regions as those of our initial proposals.

MPs will have a vote on the recommendations in the very near future and we must put pressure on them to vote them down.