Theresa May to scrap plans to cut number of MPs – report
2 min read
Theresa May is repotedly preparing to ditch Tory manifesto plans to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600.
The party had pledged a series of sweeping boundary changes which they said would save the taxpayer around £50m a year and equalise constituency sizes.
However, three senior Conservatives have told The Times the Prime Minister is likely to abandon draft proposals laid out by the Boundary Commission last year after she failed to win a majority in June’s election.
The DUP refused to back the proposals under the ongoing “confidence and supply” agreement with the Tories, fearing they would benefit nationalist parties in Northern Ireland.
Labour have also voiced their opposition, claiming they would disproportionately lose out, while the Liberal Democrats refused to back the changes when proposed by David Cameron under the coalition government.
Senior Tories say that an Act of Parliament is needed to change the remit of the commission back to 650 MPs, a proposal Labour has signalled it would support.
The paper says the Prime Minister will instead seek to make the current 650 seats more fairly divided in a bid to shore up her wafer thin support and ensure Brexit legislation passes.
“The plan to reduce the Commons to 600 was a colossal liability which could only have been simply implemented if they had got a 100-plus seat majority in June, which they did not,” one source said.
In a statement, Downing Street did not deny that a U-turn was planned, with a spokesman saying: “The independent Boundary Commissions are continuing the process set out in the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Act 2011 to bring forward proposals for a fairer House of Commons based on 600 equally sized seats, and these will be brought forward to parliament in due course.”
The paper adds that scrapping the recently completed existing boundary review on the basis of 600 MPs would cost around £10m.
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