Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the difference is between the number of voters on the electoral register compared to the electoral register data used for the current parliamentary boundary review.

Parliament previously agreed legislation that requires the 2018 Boundary Review to be based on the December 2015 electoral registers. Data published by ONS shows that the number of electors on these registers was 44,722,004. ONS has recently published data showing that there were 46,148,035 electors on the December 2017 electoral registers.

Registers used for a boundary review are necessarily a snapshot and the registers have always continued to change while a review takes place.

Without the current parliamentary boundary reviews, MPs could end up representing constituencies based on data that is over 20 years’ old, disregarding significant changes in demographics, house building and migration.