UK parliamentary boundary review

[Gary JG]

When will some or all of the seemingly-unending UK boundary reviews actually be put into effect by Parliamentary act(s)?

By the second half of 2023, appears to be the plan.

Under the current law, it is no longer necessary for the boundary changes to be approved by parliamentary vote. In theory the review could be derailed by primary legislation, but this does not seem likely. Whatever emerges from the review process will almost certainly be the set of boundaries used at the next general election after the review is implemented.

The boundary commissions are legally required to submit their final recommendations by 1 July 2023. The government are then required to give legal effect to the recommendations by obtaining an Order in Council. This is a formality as the government has total control of which members of the Privy Council attend a meeting and it would be unthinkable for the Queen to reject the advice of ministers.

[Gary JG]

There’s still rumours that the election will happen before these boundaries come in- which would mean we’d lose out on the joy of watching MPs fight over seats.

A general election before the new boundaries are given legal effect, would be under the existing boundaries. It would probably be impractical, or at least massively inconvenient, to try to hold an election in the second half of 2023 as parties and electoral staff would probably need about six months to properly sort out the changes.

An early general election could be held up to mid 2023, but if the Conservatives were to lose power then the new government might well want to pass urgent primary legislation to cancel the 2023 review and start again with modified rules about how to draw up yet another set of new boundaries. The existing boundaries would then be getting close to remaining in force for a length of time not much less than the 1885-1918 and 1918-1950 sets of constituency boundaries. This would rather defeat the purpose of having regular periodic boundary reviews.