Parliamentary Connections

I ask this question becasue the full extent of the proposed changes to constituency boundaries for the next General Election has just been analysed. Among the many consequencies – including the loss of John Greenway's Ryedale seat – is that the number of MPs will increase from 646 to 650. Can this be justified? I believe the answer is no.
Just look at the trends.
After the post-war abolition of the university seats the House of Commons had 625 MPs: this steadily increased over the next 50 years until it reached 659 in 1997 and 2001. Amazingly, the first tranche of post-devolution changes actually reduced the number of MPs elected at the last General Election to 646 but this was too good to last so the trend is back on an upward curve.
There are still huge anomalies which the Boundary Commission has failed to address this time round. For instance, why does the average English constituency have 69,934 electors while the average Welsh constitutency only have 55,640? And they have their own Assembly. I would use this as a lever to reduce the number of Welsh MPs but it could, of course, just as easily be used as an argument for increasing the number of English MPs.
The real shortcoming of this whole boundary review exercise is that it appears no-one has ever sat down and asked the obvious question: how many MPs do we need to create an efficient, modern political assembly that is effective in holding the government of the day to account? I don't know the answer to that question but it is likely to be nearer to 300 than 700. Could you imagine the huge rows if the number of seats was slashed by half?

One of the refreshing features of the early years of the Blair governments was the determination to make Parliament operate abit more like the rest of us. This reforming zeal led to many changes, one of the most welcome of which was that key events such as the Budget and the Queen's Speech were announced months in advance so that everybody could plan for them.
I remember for years trying to plan issues of Post Magazine around the uncertainty of when the Budget would be. Frequently, the date was announced only a couple of weeks in advance, meaning that I often had to shift great chunks of editorial from one issue to another at short notice. There never seemed to be a good reason why the Treasury felt it had to play this game of cat and mouse so it was refreshing to find that you could come back after Christmas with the date of the Budget (sometime in March) already firmly in the diary.
All of that has gone out of the window and we are right back at square one. Here we are on 22 February and the Treasury still hasn't announced the date of the Budget. The top bets are on Wednesday 21 March, only because that is virtually the last day it could be if the Finance Bill is to be published before Easter. With 30-40 pages of the bill predicted to deal with specific measures relating to the taxation of insurance it will be a busy Easter for the industry's tax experts.
But why are they left guessing on how to plan their time to deal with that? It doesn't seem very professional.

The deadline on the consultation period for the Treasury's review of the sale of travel insurance passed yesterday with absolutely no new light being shed on the subject.
Just about all the submissions were as predictable as they come and could have been written anytime in the last five years.
To sum up: The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) has stuck its head in its members' balance sheets and realised that they cream off too much commission for mis-selling travel insurance for it to risk even the most minimal acknowledgement that there might be a problem; on the other side, brokers and direct insurers are united in their condemnation of the shabby sales practices of most travel agents and the poor value of the policies they sell. Powerful backing for the latter viewpoint comes from a range of consumer groups, most recently reinforced by BBCTV's Watchdog programme. This demonstrated, yet again, that too many people go through unnecessary hardship and suffering because they were not sold the right travel insurance policy by a travel agent.
So, if nothing has changed in the view of the market participants what chance is there that the Treasury will now stand up to the mighty travel industry lobby and do what it should have done in the first place which is get the Financial Services Authoirty to regulate all sales of travel insurance?
I suppose the most optimistic sign is the mere fact that the review is taking place. It was initiated by new Treasury minister Ed Balls who, as I have pointed out before, shows a greater understanding of the insurance industry than most of his recent predecessors put together. In speeches I have heard him make he has given the strongest hint possible that his belief is that there is a problem with travel insurance which wasn't solved by ABTA's worthless promises about addressing the problem with rigourous self regulation. He is unlikley to be impressed by ABTA's submission which seems just a re-run of previous arguments.
The one that always srtikes me as the most specious is that proper regulation will lead to a lack of consumer choice. I think this is the complete opposite of the real effect of introducing a level playing field as, at the moment, people almost feel obliged to buy the insurance through the travel agent or tour operator – it is virtually a linked with no choice offered. This means they do not have the incentive to shop around for something better and, also, that the alternative providers know that a large chunk of the potential market is cut off from them, reducing their incentive to market to them. Put everyone in the same regulatory environment and I believe that alongside the major benefit of eliminating alot of mis-selling we will also see greater consumer choice.