Electoral boundaries - determination process: independent review report

Other considerations

Through the process of consulting with stakeholders and the public during this Review, it became clear that there were strong views that aspects of the wider rules around reviewing electoral boundaries are not as clear or as good as they could be. This was expressed most strongly in discussions about the current criteria Boundaries Scotland follow when deciding where to draw electoral boundaries as part of a review.

One of the considerations when drawing electoral boundaries is to ensure each constituency or ward within an area contains the same number of people on the electoral register – this is often referred to as parity. Boundaries Scotland must abide by parity as much as possible, but reviews for Scottish Parliament or local council boundaries currently do not have a rule for a strict percentage of leeway, as seen in some other countries. For example, UK Parliamentary constituencies can be no more than 5% higher or lower than strict parity, and Welsh Senedd constituencies can be no more than 10% higher or lower than strict parity.

Other countries also have limits on the deviation from parity, such as in Australia where constituencies must be within 3.5% of parity (using forecasted electorate data), or New Zealand where parity can deviate by no more than 5%. Further detail on international comparisons can be found at Annex B of this report. The Council of Europe’s Venice Commission report ‘Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters’ sets out guidelines on equal voting power, noting that in terms of departure from the idea of parity:

“The permissible departure from the norm should not be more than 10%, and should certainly not exceed 15% except in special circumstances…”

When setting Scottish Parliament constituencies, Boundaries Scotland also has to take into account local authority boundaries, special geographical considerations and local ties and inconveniences caused by altering existing boundaries. For local authority ward boundaries, effective and convenient local government is the fundamental principle. Other factors to be considered are, special geographical considerations, future electoral change, local ties and whether boundaries will be easily identifiable. These may include electoral wards (when reviewing Scottish Parliament constituencies), traditional village boundaries, or natural boundaries such as rivers or mountain ridges. When local government ward boundaries and councillor numbers are reviewed, Boundaries Scotland is permitted to allocate wards with only 1 councillor when the ward is wholly or mainly comprised of inhabited islands. Non-island wards can have between 2 and 5 councillors.

Many members of the public, and some organisations noted the complexity of the rules and the way that they intersect. There was a significant amount of confusion about the purpose of boundary reviews and the practical impact of changes to electoral boundaries. There were comments made by some local councillors which suggested that they believed that reviews of electoral arrangements in their council area would have impacts on council taxes, when in fact these reviews only impact the ward boundaries and numbers of councillors elected in each ward. Similarly, there were strongly held views by members of the public that electoral boundaries had a significant impact on local communities, with impacts on services, and a view that changes in electoral boundaries were divisive for communities. This was sometimes framed as Boundaries Scotland ‘playing a numbers game’, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the principle of parity in reviewing electoral boundaries, and the relationship between parity and considering local ties.

I believe that in order to clarify the rules Boundaries Scotland follows when reviewing electoral boundaries, there should be a clear limit on the extent to which it can deviate from parity.

10. The rules Boundaries Scotland follows when drawing boundaries should be clarified to aid understanding of the criteria. There should be a 15% limit to the degree to which parity can be deviated from.

While acknowledging the impact some members of the public feel that changes to electoral boundaries have on community ties, I believe that the core reason that electoral boundaries are regularly reviewed should be re-emphasised and left in no doubt. That is to ensure that votes in different parts of the country or local authority are worth roughly the same, and that representatives represent a similar number of electors.

A limit on the deviation from parity means that while local ties and communities can and should very much continue to be taken into account, this would be balanced against ensuring the value of each elector’s vote is not deviated from too significantly. The existing rules offer significant flexibility for Boundaries Scotland to amend electoral boundaries while respecting a broad range of local ties, and the ability to amend the number of councillors within each ward is another tool available to Boundaries Scotland to ensure that parity is maintained.

There are parts of the country where limits on the deviation from parity would be felt more sharply than others. In particular, island communities have distinct geographical considerations, as well as obviously defined community boundaries in most places. For this reason, I recommend that wards which contain inhabited islands be exempt from the 15% parity rule when Boundaries Scotland conducts reviews of local government electoral arrangements. This would ensure the principles of the Islands Act 2018 are respected. For local ward boundaries, each calculation for parity would continue to take place within each review of local government electoral arrangements (i.e. each local government area would have its own calculation) rather than one parity calculation taking place across all of Scotland.

The 15% rule would also be in place for Scottish Parliament constituency reviews, with the exception of the protected island constituencies (Orkney, Shetland, and Na h-Eileanan an Iar). It would not apply to the reviews of Scottish Parliament electoral regions, as this would cause difficult to resolve issues for the region that consistently includes all three of the protected constituencies listed above.

11. Legislation flowing from recommendations in this report should ensure that Boundaries Scotland’s independence, and its role in making final decisions, is clear.

The central aim of a move to automaticity is to protect and enhance the independence of Boundaries Scotland, and to ensure that it is able to review and adjust electoral boundaries in an apolitical and independent manner. In order to do this, legislation will be necessary to change the existing system and to introduce automaticity. While not every recommendation or suggestion in this report requires a change in law in order to be implemented, the Scottish Parliament should progress legislation which, above all, ensures Boundaries Scotland can continue to work independently, and in the interests of the Scottish people.