{"id":5697,"date":"2012-06-26T16:42:14","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T15:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=5697"},"modified":"2012-06-26T16:42:14","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T15:42:14","slug":"scotland-should-have-109-mps-not-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/scotland-should-have-109-mps-not-52\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland should have 109 MPs, not 52"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hocseats.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/hocseats.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"HoC seats\" width=\"50%\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-5700\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Tories and the LibDems are reducing the number of seats in the House of Commons <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Number_of_Westminster_MPs\">from 646 to 600<\/a>.  As part of this, the four nations&#8217; representations will be equalised to the same number of voters per seat (until now, the smaller nations have had smaller seats than England); for instance, Wales will see its number of MPs drop from 40 to 30.<\/p>\n<p>Most people seem to think this is fair, and many English MPs are even calling for a further reduction in the number of Scottish MPs to cancel out the effect of Scottish devolution.<\/p>\n<p>However, according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Penrose_method\">Penrose method<\/a>, also sometimes described as the square root formula, each nation should get allocated seats according the square root of the population to achieve equal voting powers for all people represented.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a table showing the figures for actual and calculated numbers of MPs:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<th>Country<\/th>\n<th>Population<\/th>\n<th>Actual 2015 seats<\/th>\n<th>Square root seats<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>England<\/td>\n<td>52,234,000<\/td>\n<td>502<\/td>\n<td>344<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Scotland<\/td>\n<td>5,254,800<\/td>\n<td>52<\/td>\n<td>109<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Wales<\/td>\n<td>3,006,400<\/td>\n<td>30<\/td>\n<td>83<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Northern Ireland<\/td>\n<td>1,799,392<\/td>\n<td>16<\/td>\n<td>64<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><em>Total<\/em><\/td>\n<td>62,294,592<\/td>\n<td>600<\/td>\n<td>600<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>The square root method has been suggested for allocating seats in the European Parliament (although the current method used there results in similar results).<\/p>\n<p>I guess it all depends on the status of the four nations of the UK.  If they&#8217;re just seen as electoral regions of a single country, the CoLD coalition&#8217;s proposal makes perfect sense (but then devolution should probably be abolished); on the other hand, if the Westminster Parliament is seen as a supranational parliament for the union of the four sovereign nations of the UK, the Penrose method should be used.<\/p>\n<p>If Penrose isn&#8217;t used, I presume it means Scotland will have more influence as an independent country, so unless the No parties put Penrose on the table as an alternative, I would strongly suggest voting Yes to independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Tories and the LibDems are reducing the number of seats in the House of Commons from 646 to 600. As part of this, the four nations&#8217; representations will be equalised to the same number of voters per seat (until now, the smaller nations have had smaller seats than England); for instance, Wales will see its number of MPs drop from 40 to 30. Most people seem to think this is fair, and many English MPs are even calling for a further reduction in the number of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,130,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-politics","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}