Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent assessment the Electoral Commission has made of the potential merits of using the electoral registration data relating to the recent EU referendum as baseline data for the boundary review of parliamentary constituencies.

The Electoral Commission does not have responsibility for this issue and the Government is not aware of any recent assessment made by them on this matter. The Government remains committed to addressing the unfairness of current Parliamentary boundaries by making votes of more equal value. Changing the base data for the review now would risk the work of the Boundary Commissions not being implemented for the next election, meaning that the next general election would be fought on the basis of registers that are up to 20 years old.