Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that there are already within the Bill factors that the Boundary Commission can, if it so wishes and to the extent that it so wishes, take into account. They include special geographical considerations including, particularly, the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency, local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies, local government boundaries—I will perhaps come back and say something about that because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, made a lot of the impact on local government boundaries—and also the proposed Rule 4, where the area of constituencies is taken into account so that one does not get constituencies that become unmanageable because of size. The size is set just slightly larger than the largest constituency at the moment.