Politicians from all three of the major parties have welcomed a report advocating that any new review of Parliamentary constituency boundaries should respect the Cornish border.
Last year MPs rejected plans to reduce their numbers from 650 to 600, which would have meant at least one Cornish constituency being "shared" with Devon. The Boundary Commission is required, as far as possible, to ensure that all Parliamentary seats hold roughly equal numbers of voters and this had posed a threat to the existing North Cornwall and South East Cornwall constituencies.
The Commission is again due to begin the multi-million pound project of radically redrawing constituency boundaries once again in 2016, unless Parliament amends the law next year. Existing constituencies vary massively in size between different parts of the UK, with some Welsh seats containing as few as 40,687 voters while the Isle of Wight constituency contains around 111,109.
Last week an academic report published by the McDougall Trust suggested making sure that any fresh shake-up should respect boundaries that people consider important, including that between Cornwall and Devon.
Former North Cornwall MP, Lord Tyler (Liberal Democrat), co-sponsored the report's cross-party launch, with former Political Reform Minister (Conservative), Mark Harper MP and Political Reform Select Committee Chair (Labour), Graham Allen MP.
Lord Tyler said: "The risk is that without a change in the law after 2015, the Boundary Commissions could spend nearly £7m on another review with totally unsatisfactory results. For Cornwall, the outcome would be particularly bad, since the present rules make a cross-border Devon/Cornwall constituency more or less inevitable. This report shows the way - on a totally non-partisan basis - to make the system fairer without breaching strong natural borders like that between Cornwall and England."
The current North Cornwall MP Dan Rogerson said: "A cross-border seat is unwanted by those living in both Devon and in Cornwall. I have always said that I am happy for the number of MPs to be reduced, but that this should take account of natural community boundaries and the strength of feeling amongst the public that the historic border between Cornwall and England should maintained."
