#NWDLabour

Text of email from Pat Glass MP sent to North West Durham Labour Party members on the Boundary Commission's proposals for changes to parliamentary boundaries:

As you may be aware the Boundary Commission has today published their initial proposals for new constituencies across England following the Tory-led government's decision to arbitrarily cut the number of MPs. Their initial proposals suggest changes for every constituency and they propose huge changes to the existing North West Durham constituency.

The Commission are proposing that most of the existing North West Durham goes into a new constituency of Consett and Barnard Castle, this would include Weardale and Teesdale. It would also cross the county boundary and go into Northumberland to cover South Tynedale and Haltwhistle. Crook, Tow Law and Willington would move to the Bishop Auckland constituency and Dipton & Burnopfield would move to the new Chester-le-Street constituency.

I believe these proposals are totally unacceptable.

They create a totally unworkable constituency which fails to respect historic county boundaries and covers a huge rural area. It puts together communities with absolutely no ties. In making this proposal the Commission claims that there are road links linking the North and South but make no reference to how high above sea-level those road links are - a big factor in the winter! On a sunny day it would take around 2 hours to make the trip between the North and South of the constituency.  In the winter it would be impossible to travel from one side of the constituency to the other without using roads that cross several other constituencies.

Over the coming days I and CLP Officers will be discussing alternative proposals with The Labour Party to come to a consensus on a single way forward from the Party. We need to ensure anything we suggest is fair to our neighbouring constituencies and is in the best interest of the communities we represent.

We will need your help to gather as much support from our local community as possible to change the Commission's mind.  We will update you further on our alternative proposals next week and tell you how you can help persuade the Boundary Commission to look again at their proposals.

Best wishes

Pat Glass MP