Your report about forthcoming Westminster constituency boundary changes (Constituency review 'will hit Labour hard', 29 August) suggests that only existing constituencies outside the new quota range are under threat.
Thank you Jeremy, John, Diane etc. Charles Foster Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire So under the constituency review for the House of Commons in the name of a fairer democracy we cut the number of MPs by 50.
There is little dispute that the electoral system favours Labour but there has to be considerable doubt that the next parliamentary constituency boundary review will remove that advantage.
Nick Clegg is battling to prevent Conservative reprisals after leading his MPs to vote with Labour for the first time since the coalition was formed, in order to defer the parliamentary constituency boundary review until after the next election.
Jonathan Wallace Newcastle upon Tyne Lord Hayward's report on the constituency boundary review appears not to have referred to the fact that it will be based on the electoral register as at December 2015, contrary to the advice of the Electoral Commission.
The board's membership is important because, among other things, it will play a substantial role in Labour's response to the parliamentary constituency boundary review - which, as Labour List puts it, "will likely see Labour MPs from different wings of the party go up against each other in [candidate] selections" – and has a big influence over who gets picked to run for council seats.
Liz Benson, secretary to the commission, said: "With the new rules placing great emphasis on broadly achieving equal numbers of electors in each constituency, the review will result in significant changes.
At present, that plan calls for a panel of 10 chosen jurists to draft a sweeping constitutional overhaul in less than a month, and for an assembly of 50 appointees from various constituencies to review the package two months after that.
In discussing the coalition agreement last year, a leading Conservative minister told me when we spoke about the proposed constituency boundary reviews how he felt that Liberal Democrats "underestimated the progress that the Conservatives had made in going for a largely elected House of Lords using the Lib Dems' preferred system of proportional representation".
Recently we received a copy of John Adams' new opera "A Flowering Tree," which was created in collaboration with Peter Sellars for the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, back in 2006, and now, in its recorded form, is starting to cross over to non-classical constituencies (Pitchfork reviewed it, for example).
The commissions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are reviewing constituency boundaries, under rules set out in theParliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act.
