As you probably know, the Boundaries Commission for England has proposed new constituency boundaries to come into force in 2023.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own commissions.

Many of the proposals will be controversial and will attract opposition, but most people, not realising that constituency boundaries are mainly a problem of the existing First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system, will probably accept that some changes are necessary even if they don’t like the changes that affect them.

Also, most won’t realise that fair boundaries are impossible with FPTP.

The Government set the Boundaries Commissions the contradictory task of creating equal-sized constituencies and keeping natural communities together. Proportional Representation would considerably reduce the problem.

A whole town or county (i.e. a natural community) could elect several MPs together and proportionally. Instead of changing the boundaries (and splitting natural communities) when a community grew or shrank, its number of MPs could simply be adjusted.

Although equal-sized constituencies sound fair, FPTP is inherently unfair and it is impossible to draw FPTP constituency boundaries fairly.

With FPTP, the number of MPs elected for each party can depend more on where the boundaries are than how people vote.

You can click on https://stvact.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/ gerrymander_wheel.pdf for a graphic explanation of this.

DAVID SMITH

Weymouth