A £5million, long-delayed plan to shake up MPs' seat boundaries was quietly ditched today in a Tory U-turn. Plans to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600 were proposed in 2016 after a previous review had to be abandoned in 2013.
The idea was also to equalise the number of voters in each seat to ensure representation was far. But there had been little action since four Boundary Commissions for the four nations reported back in 2018.
The changes prompted a political bunfight as scores of MPs were pitched into a battle for survival with their nieghbours. And Labour said the carve-up was a Tory "power grab" because it left out a surge of young voters for the EU referendum and 2017 election.