There has been plenty of commentary on all sides about the reduction in numbers of MPs and the rather shoddy way in which the counting has taken place. Despite One of the Lib Dems less palatable advocates comment on a previous post, there are plenty of good reasons to oppose the methodology and rationale both behind the reduction of MPs as a whole and aganst the specific way that these numbers have been counted, by focusing only on electors and not constituents. There are far better ways of discovering who lives in a locality than the electoral roll, especially since new influxes to cities are often more transient and likely to move around from temporary home to temporary home. This is why, in the past, information beyond the electoral roll (such as the Census and registration with GPs) has been used to create a far clearer picture. MPs are not just there to represent those who vote, but those who live in their constituency. No good MP – of any party – would turn away someone resident in their constituency who came to them for help because they were not a registered voter, so why should the system exclude an understanding of this need for representation?

But I wanted to consider a slightly more philosophical question. If we were to find ourselves in a situation with a perfect and accurate electoral roll, would then it be automatically the fair and right thing to do to have constituencies of a similar size?

Of course on the face of it, this seems like a complete no brainer. Of course ideally all votes should count equally and everyone should have equal representation in Parliament. The problem is, I am unconvinced that the former automatically leads to the latter.

I have already written about the muddled attitude we have towards MPs and the multitude of roles we expect them to play to our equal satisfaction. We expect them to be equal parts strategists, local champions and expert legislators. Depending on our own personal prejudices and priorities we want them to be far more one of those than the others.

My contention is that it may be, that even despite their own natural talents and preferences, some MPs have little choice over the majority of their focus, and their voters even less.

I haven’t managed to find any research about this, though would be delighted if someone would point me towards some either way, but I’d be willing to bet a pound to a penny that MPs who represent areas with high levels of deprivation have far, far higher loads of more complex casework. So those who live in such areas, whatever their own preference for an MPs priorities, will find their MPs time disproportionately taken up with local – rather than strategic or legislative – issues.

If my contention is the case, that MPs representing seats with high levels of depravation have higher workloads, then others then I contend that project like the Voter Power Index (who primarily complain about safe seats, but also factor in large voter numbers) are missing a significant part of the picture. There may well be a tension in fact between the question of “how much is my vote worth electorally?” and “how much work do I get from my MP proportionately?”.

Equally there are additional democratic disadvantages for Labour. Beyond the numerical difference between electors and constituents, there is the lower percentage of their time that is able to be devoted to national political work, either through strategy or effective legislative work.

In many ways, this reminds me of the tension between those who advocate measures to promote equality of opportunity versus those who promote equality of outcome (or on a smaller scale the liberal measures Vs liberal outcomes debate on representation the Lib Dems are starting to have).

At the moment, everyone is talking about the numbers and how we count them, and not the bigger philosophical questions of what we expect and deserve of our MPs. Once again we might lose the opportunity to challenge and change what is a serious and long term problem with our democracy. We are fighting – rightly – an undemocratic measure but in doing so may well be missing a much larger undemocratic canvas.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 at 22:39 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.