There is a proposal to divide the Isle of Wight up into two voting areas, leading to two MPs.
This was one of the issues raised by some Island residents before the election – “As the Isle of Wight is by far the country’s largest constituency it should be divided into two constituencies.” (more on this below)
Largest constituency in the UK
The question arose because the Isle of Wight is the largest constituency in the UK with more than 109,000 voters. Some feel that the Island only having a single MP doesn’t represent the Island as well as two would do – potentially twice the fire power.
We see in the County Press today, Andrew Turner has made it clear that he’s very against the idea.
The CP report says that current Liberal-Conservative policy (the government which he’s part of) is to ensure that areas are roughly the same size, “no constituency between 3.5 per cent and five per cent either larger or smaller than the national average, which now stands at just over 77,500 electors per constituency.”
Update 14:54: It’s also been pointed out by No 5 that the hope is to reduce the overall number of MPs in Parliament.
Two options are put forward: split the Island in two, or split the Island and merge part of it with some people from the mainland.
Andrew Turner points out that the Boundaries Commission looked at splitting the Island into two parts in 2007, but then had rejected the idea.
Pre-election unclear
The question in the second paragraph was part of The Democracy Club which offered each of those running for the election a chance to give their views.
All of the candidates did apart from Andrew Turner. Despite being asked a number of times before the election he didn’t answer any of the questions.
