The major purpose of electing an MP is not to provide advice surgeries for constituents. It is to represent the constituents in Parliament. It is, at least in theory, the job of the MP to exercise his or her own judgement on issues which come before Parliament, not merely to ascertain the opinions of voters and then defer to them. The voters can decide what they think of the representatives choices, at the next election.

If we take the view that some very rural constituencies need to be smaller, to make it easier to provide effective advice surgeries, we are giving the votes of the electors in those areas a higher value than those in the rest of the country. There would also be calls for inner city seats to be smaller than average, because the MPs for those areas have a higher than average caseload.

It is unfortunate that the coalition has already sold out on democratic principle, to a certain extent, by allowing two island groups and 12,000-13,000 square mile large seats to be exceptions. We should not expand the special cases any further, because the more we do that the further we depart from one person, one vote, one value.