Wales parliamentary constituencies

After the dubious results from the Assembly vote one might think electoral reform would be on the agenda. Not so but the Tories' plan has been to reduce the number of Welsh constituencies from 40 to 30. Hardly great for Wales but harder to disagree with since we're over-represented population-wise at Westminster. I've been looking at the map and it's not too easy to see where the lines should be drawn. For Cardiff, I hadn't realised just how big Cardiff South and Penarth has become (75000 electorate) if they switch some of the wards it might be a way to keep four seats in the city. Another option would be to add Dinas Powys - but what would that mean for the Vale of Glamorgan?

I presume it's still fair to say that hell will have to freeze over before Penarth and Dinas are incorporated into a Cardiff local authority?

They'll probably be much the same as the aborted 2012 proposals at the link below although it's likely to twenty nine rather than thirty seats this time around. In those proposals Cardiff West, Cardiff Central and Cardiff South & Penarth stayed much the same and a new Cardiff North and South West Gwent seat was created.

http://bcomm-wales.gov.uk/prevreviews/2013-review/revisedproposals/?lang=en

The other thing at the moment is the proposed mergers of the local authorities. The latest plan is for Cardiff and VoG I think. Speaking of which what is the LDP for VoG? Do they even have one and how does it relate to Cardiff?

The Assembly constituencies and the Westminster constituencies have been detached for some time - if the UK government decides to reduce the number of MPs or change the constituencies in some other way it will have no effect on the Assembly's own constituencies, and likewise if the Welsh government decides to increase the amount of AMs or change their own constituencies in some other way as well (after the Wales Bill goes through) then that won't have an effect on the Westminster constituencies either.

It's probably likely that eventually we'll see the amount of Welsh MPs decrease, and the amount of Welsh AMs increase. A similar thing happened in Scotland years ago.

The Assembly constituencies and the Westminster constituencies have been detached for some time - if the UK government decides to reduce the number of MPs or change the constituencies in some other way it will have no effect on the Assembly's own constituencies, and likewise if the Welsh government decides to increase the amount of AMs or change their own constituencies in some other way as well (after the Wales Bill goes through) then that won't have an effect on the Westminster constituencies either.

It's probably likely that eventually we'll see the amount of Welsh MPs decrease, and the amount of Welsh AMs increase. A similar thing happened in Scotland years ago.

Given Labour remain in power in the Senedd is there anything to stop them stitching up the system for Assembly constituencies or voting system?

The Assembly constituencies and the Westminster constituencies have been detached for some time -

Nope, Assembly and Westminster constituencies are exactly the same geographically, though obviously that will change once the MPs are culled down to 29. There is nothing stopping the Assembly keeping the current constituencies, though the political parties may not want to run two separate sets of constituency parties which could get pretty complicated.

Given Labour remain in power in the Senedd is there anything to stop them stitching up the system for Assembly constituencies or voting system?

The fact that they don't have a majority.

Given Labour remain in power in the Senedd is there anything to stop them stitching up the system for Assembly constituencies or voting system?

The Assembly doesn't have the power to change the voting system yet. When they do it will be by a conditional majority - i.e far more than 50% of members. Labour don't even have 50% at the moment - let alone the 67% likely to be needed to change the system.