BOUNDARY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND PROCEEDINGS AT THE 2018 REVIEW OF PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUENCIES IN ENGLAND HELD AT ALDERSGATE ROOM, CENTRAL HALL WESTMINSTER, STOREY’S GATE, WESTMINSTER, LONDON, SW1H 9NH ON MONDAY 17 OCTOBER 2016 DAY ONE Before: Mr Howard Simmons, The Lead Assistant Commissioner ______________________________ Transcribed from audio by W B Gurney & Sons LLP 83 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0HW Telephone Number: 0207 960 6089 ______________________________ At 10.00 am THE LEAD ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this public hearing, the Boundary Commission for England considering proposals for the new parliamentary constituencies for the London Region. My name is Howard Simmons; I am one of the Assistant Commissioners appointed to assist the Boundary Commission in this review and I have my two colleagues present as well who will be working on London, Emma Davey and Richard Wold, in the audience. Essentially, our job is to consider the representations made by the public and we welcome representations and proposals for how the initial proposals put forward by the Commission can be amended, improved and developed and, in the light of that, then make recommendations on how the constituencies should in fact be drafted for London region. I am assisted by a team of staff from the Boundary Commission and they are led by Sam Hartley who is sitting on my left. Sam will shortly provide an explanation of the Commission’s initial proposals for the constituencies for the London Region. He will run through how you can make representations and some other administrative matters. The hearing today is scheduled to run from now, 10.00 am, until 8.00 pm this evening. We are taking some comfort breaks during the course of that. Tomorrow, from 9.00 am until 5.00 pm. I will be chairing both of those sessions. A number of people have already booked in to make their representations at particular times. We welcome others who have not yet booked in to come forward and I will make sure that they have the opportunity to speak and to put forward their views. It is important to underline that the purpose of today is to allow people to make representations on the initial proposals; it is not to debate those initial proposals as such but to make representations about how they can be improved. It is not an opportunity for cross-examination of people’s views; it is to listen and hear those proposals. There will be an opportunity later at the next stage of consultation when challenges can be made to suggestions or further thoughts can be considered for proposals that have been made. If there are any questions arising for points of clarification, then I am happy to take those but they should be addressed to me as the Chairman, not to the individual who has made the actual proposals or representations. I am going to hand over to Sam now who will run through the administrative points and actually set out the original proposals for London from the Commission. MR HARTLEY: Thank you, Howard. Good morning, everyone. As Howard mentioned, my name is Sam Hartley and I am Secretary to the Boundary Commission for England. 2 I am responsible for supporting the Commissioners in their role to recommend new parliamentary constituency boundaries and at this hearing I lead the team of staff responsible for ensuring that the hearing runs smoothly. As Howard has already stated, he will chair the hearing itself and it his responsibility to run the hearing at his discretion and to take decisions about speakers, questioners and timings. My team and I are here today to support Howard in carrying out his role. Please, ask one of us outside of the hearing if you need any help or assistance. I would like to talk now about the Commission’s initial proposals for the London Region which were published on 13 September 2016. The Commission’s proposals for this region are for 68 constituencies, a reduction of five. Our proposals leave four of the existing constituencies unchanged. We used the European electoral regions as a template for the allocation of the 499 constituencies to which England is entitled, not including the two constituencies to be allocated to the Isle of Wight. This approach is permitted by the legislation and has been supported by previous public consultation. This approach does not prevent anyone from putting forward counterproposals that include one or more constituencies being split between the regions but it is likely that compelling reasons would need to be given to persuade us to depart from the regional base approach we adopted in formulating our initial proposals. In considering the composition of each electoral region, we noted that it might not be possible to allocate whole numbers of constituencies to individual counties or local authority areas. The London region has been allocated 68 constituencies, as I said, a reduction of five from the current number. Our proposals leave four of the existing constituencies unchanged. As it has not always been possible to allocate whole numbers of constituencies to individual London boroughs, we have grouped them into sub-regions. The number of constituencies allocated to each sub-region is determined by the electorate of the combined boroughs. Substantial change is required throughout London in order to comply with the electoral quota. Consequently, it has been necessary to propose 38 constituencies that cross London borough boundaries. Of these, 36 contain parts of two London boroughs and two contain parts of three or more London boroughs. In order to create 68 constituencies wholly within London, we have proposed one constituency that crosses the River Lea. We have not proposed any constituencies that cross the River Thames. The statutory rules allow us to take into account local government boundaries as they existed on 7 May 2015. These include both the external boundaries of local councils and their internal boundaries known as wards. We seek to avoid dividing wards between constituencies wherever possible. Wards are well-defined and well- understood units which are generally indicative of areas which have a broad community of interest. We consider that any division of these units between constituencies would be likely to break local ties, disrupt political party organisations and cause difficulties for electoral registration and the returning officers who are responsible for running elections. It is our view that only in exceptional and compelling circumstances will 3 splitting a ward between constituencies be justified and our initial proposals do not do so. If an alternative scheme proposes to split wards, strong evidence and justification will need to be provided and the extent of such ward splitting should be kept to a minimum. The scale of change in this review is significant and we look forward to hearing the views of people at this hearing and throughout the rest of the consultation period. We are consulting on our proposals until Monday 5 December; thus there is still time after this hearing for people to contribute in writing. There are also reference copies of the proposals present at this hearing and they are available on our website and in a number of places of deposit around the region. You can make written representations to us through our consultation website at BCE2018.org.uk. I do urge everyone to submit written representations to us before the deadline of 5 December. Finally, I would like to remind all participants that this hearing is part of a public consultation and you will be asked to provide us with your name and address if you make an oral representation. The Commission is legally obliged to take a record of the public hearings and, as you can see from the back, we are taking a video recording today from which we will create a verbatim transcript. The Commission is required to publish the record of the public hearing along with all written representations for a four- week period during which other members of the public will have an opportunity to comment on those representations. We expect this period to occur during the spring of next year. The publication of the hearing, records and written representations include certain personal data of those who have made representations. I therefore invite all those contributing to read the Commission’s Data Protection and Privacy Policy, a copy of which we have with us today and which is also available on our website. There are just a few matters of housekeeping before we start. There is no fire alarm due today; if the alarm goes off, please use the door at the front on the left or the door at the back. The toilets are outside across the hall past the stairs. I remind everybody to switch off their mobile phones or put them to silent, please. I will now hand back to Howard to begin the public hearing and I thank you all for your attendance today. THE LEAD ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER: Thank you very much, Sam. We will start the proceedings and the proposal is this morning to hear from the main political parties and the first party to make representations is the Green Party. Is the representative of the Green Party here? Welcome. Would you come up to the lectern and introduce yourself, please, with your name, address, so on and so forth. 4 MR HAMDACHE: (Green Party) My name is Benali Hamdache; I am the London Green Party’s Election Co-ordinator. Thank you for giving me the dubious honour of going first today. I want to start by thanking the hard work that has been done by the Boundary Commission; I think this is a sometimes rather thankless task and I dare say that there will be many demonstrations against some of the proposals that we make today but I do want to start by saying that it is not an easy task and I want to thank all the hours that have gone into the proposals that have been made today.