Peterborough

Constituency profile

Peterborough is a constituency in Cambridgeshire in the East of England. It covers the northern half of the city of Peterborough, that being the area north of the River Nene, which includes the city centre and the suburbs of Eastgate, Bretton, Ravensthorpe, Longthorpe, Dogsthorpe, Gunthorpe, Paston, Parnwell and Werrington. The constituency also includes the rural villages of Newborough, Eye and Thorney to the east of the city.

Peterborough is a historic cathedral city that was an important national centre for the brickmaking industry during the 20th century. The city was designated a new town in 1967 leading to large-scale suburban development outside of the historic centre. The outer, more recently developed suburbs of Longthorpe and Werrington are mostly affluent, however the rest of the city is highly-deprived. The neighbourhoods immediately north of the city centre feature dense terraced housing and some suburbs like Eastgate, Ravensthorpe and Paston contain a large quantity of low-income council housing. House prices across the constituency are considerably lower than the regional and UK averages.

This constituency has an above-average population of middle-aged adults and a low proportion of retirees. Residents have low levels of income and homeownership and the child poverty rate is high. They have low levels of education and a high proportion work in the health, retail and business administration sectors. The percentage of residents claiming unemployment benefits is high. White people made up 70% of the population at the 2021 census, around a quarter of whom were of non-British origin, including large Polish and Lithuanian communities. Asians, mostly of Pakistani origin, made up 20% of residents.

At the local council level, the centre and east of the city are represented by Labour Party councillors whilst the western and northern suburbs elected mostly Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Voters in Peterborough strongly supported leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum; an estimated 62% voted in favour of Brexit compared to the UK-wide figure of 52%.

Boundaries and boundary changes

Historic

The earliest known members representing Peterborough were in 1547, shortly after it had gained city status, when Peterborough Cathedral became the seat of the new diocese of Peterborough in 1541. The cathedral had been Peterborough Abbey until the dissolution of the monasteries abolished it in 1539. The new city was not an ancient borough, nor a municipal borough until 1876; no charter survives granting the status of city or the right to Parliamentary representation or delimiting its boundary for electoral purposes.

The centre of the city was an extra-parochial area called the "Minster Precincts" comprising the cathedral close. The commissioners appointed prior to the parallel Great Reform Act 1832 and

reported that Peterborough's parliamentary boundary, as far as was then known, comprised the Minster Precincts and the south-eastern part of the surrounding parish of Saint John the Baptist, excluding the parish's northern and western townships of Longthorpe, Dogsthorpe (or Dodsthorpe) and Newark-with-Eastfield. The borough franchise was scot and lot in the parish and householder in the Minster Precincts. For parliamentary purposes, the rest of the Soke of Peterborough, north and west of the city, was in the county constituency of Northamptonshire; the area south of the River Nene was in Huntingdonshire; to the east, Thorney was in Cambridgeshire.

The 1832 acts extended the parliamentary borough of Peterborough to the entire parish of Saint John the Baptist (adding 48 qualifying properties) and retained its two members. (The rural portion of the Soke was included in the Northern division of Northamptonshire.) Under the Boundary Act 1868, the area of New Fletton and Woodstone (south of the River Nene) was transferred from Huntingdonshire. Under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, the borough's representation was reduced from two MPs to one.

The administrative county of the Soke of Peterborough (the Municipal Borough of Peterborough and the Rural Districts of Barnack and Peterborough);

The Urban District of Oundle;

The Rural Districts of Easton-on-the-Hill and Gretton; and

Current

Further to the 2023 review of Westminster constituencies, which came into effect for the 2024 general election, the composition of the constituency is as follows (as they existed on 1 December 2020):

The City of Peterborough wards of: Bretton; Central; Dogsthorpe; East; Eye, Thorney & Newborough; Gunthorpe; North; Park; Paston & Walton; Ravensthorpe; Werrington; West.

Marginal loss due to further ward boundary changes.

The current constituency is composed of built-up areas of Peterborough to the north of the River Nene, as well as rural areas to the east and north and comprises approximately 60% of the electorate of the local authority of the City of Peterborough. Remaining parts of the city, composed of residential areas to the south of the River Nene and rural areas to the west of Peterborough form part of the North West Cambridgeshire constituency.

Franchise

In the unreformed House of Commons the franchise for borough seats varied enormously. Originally the Dean of Peterborough and Cathedral Chapter had claimed the franchise and held that only residents of Minster Precincts were burgesses and so entitled to vote. By the interregnum, the city was one of 37 boroughs in which suffrage was restricted to those paying scot and lot, a form of municipal taxation. In 1800 there were 2,000 registered voters in Northamptonshire and 400 in Peterborough. By 1835 this was 576, or about one per cent of the population. Bribery was general until the introduction of the secret ballot under the Ballot Act 1872. Votes were cast by spoken declaration, in public, at the hustings, erected on the Market Place (now Cathedral Square).

The Great Reform Act 1832 enfranchised those who owned or leased land worth £10 or more and the Second Reform Act extended this to all householders paying £10 or more in rent per annum, effectively enfranchising the skilled working class, so by 1868 the percentage of voters in Peterborough had risen to about 20% of the population. The Third Reform Act extended the provisions of the previous act to the counties and the Fourth Reform Act widened suffrage further by abolishing practically all property qualifications for men and by enfranchising women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. This system, known as universal manhood suffrage, was first used in the 1918 general election. However, full electoral equality would not occur until the Fifth Reform Act ten years later.

According to the 2001 census, the population count of Peterborough constituency is 95,103 persons, comprising 46,131 males and 48,972 females. 67.56% of those aged 16–74 are economically active, including 5.92% unemployed; a further 12.26% are retired and 3.08% students. Of a total 39,760 households, 63.80% are owner occupied, fewer than the regional (72.71%) and national (68.72%) averages. Turnout at the 2005 general election was 41,194 or 61.0% of those eligible to vote, below the regional (63.6%) and national (61.3%) figures.

Members of Parliament

Peterborough sent two members to parliament for the first time in 1547. Before the civil war, many were relatives of the clergy; then for two hundred years after the restoration there was always a Fitzwilliam, or a Fitzwilliam nominee, sitting as member for Peterborough, making it a Whig stronghold. Representation was reduced to one member under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.

One of the earliest incumbents, Sir Walter Mildmay, member for Peterborough from 1553 to 1554, subsequently became Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1559 to 1589. Later, in the nineteenth century, William Elliot, Whig member from 1802 until his death in 1819, was Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1806 and 1807; the Hon. William Lamb (later the 2nd Viscount Melbourne), Whig member from 1816 to 1819, became Home Secretary in 1830 then Prime Minister from 1834 to 1841; and Sir James Scarlett (later the 1st Baron Abinger), Whig member from 1819 to 1830, was, from 1827, Attorney General for England and Wales.

From the formal merger of the breakaway Liberal Unionists with the Conservatives in 1912 and the absorption of rural North Northamptonshire in 1918, Peterborough has been predominantly Conservative; however, it has elected Labour MPs several times from 1929 onwards.

Lord Burghley, as he then was, succeeded the socialist writer and illustrator, Frank Horrabin, who was born in the city and elected under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald in 1929. David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter, winner of 400m hurdles at the 1928 Summer Olympics, member of the International Olympic Committee for 48 years and chairman of the organising committee of the 1948 Summer Olympics, was the Conservative member from 1931 to 1943.

In 1966, in one of the closest polls in UK history, Sir Harmar Nicholls held the seat by three votes after seven recounts. Nicholls was the Conservative member from 1950 to 1974, when he lost in the October election of that year to Labour's Michael Ward, having held on by just 22 votes after four recounts in the election eight months earlier. The growth in the New Town from 1967 may in part account for Labour's victory here in 1974. In 1979, however, Ward lost the seat to the Conservative Brian Mawhinney, who would represent Peterborough for the entire duration of the incoming Conservative government and was a Cabinet Minister and Chairman of the Conservative Party during the second Major government (1992–97).

Parliamentary borough 1547–1918

The Tories (or Abhorrers) and Whigs (or Petitioners) originated in the Court and Country parties that emerged in the aftermath of the civil war, although it is more accurate to describe them as loose tendencies, both of which might be regarded as conservative in modern terms. Modern party politics did not really begin to coalesce in Great Britain until at least 1784.

In 1832 the Tory Party evolved into the Conservative Party and in 1859 the Whig Party evolved, with Radicals and Peelites, into the Liberal Party. In opposition to Irish home rule, the Liberal Unionists ceded from the Liberals in 1886, aligning themselves with the Conservatives. The Labour Party was later founded, as the Labour Representation Committee, in 1900.

Division and county constituency

The parliamentary borough of Peterborough was abolished under the Representation of the People Act 1918, and the name was transferred to a division of the new parliamentary county of Northampton with the Soke of Peterborough. The Peterborough division became a county constituency in 1950.

Borough constituency

Peterborough was redefined as a borough constituency with effect from the February 1974 general election. Successors of the historic parliamentary boroughs, the spending limits for election campaigns are slightly lower than in county constituencies.

Onasanya sat as an independent after she was suspended by the Labour Party in December 2018. The seat became vacant on 1 May 2019 following a successful recall petition, until 7 June 2019, when Lisa Forbes was elected to the constituency in the 2019 Peterborough by-election, on behalf of the Labour Party.

Elections

Elections in the 1940s

General Election 1939–40

Another general election was required to take place before the end of 1940. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place from 1939 and by the end of this year, the following candidates had been selected:

Conservative: David Cecil

Labour: Samuel Bennett

Elections in the 1880s

Caused by Wentworth-Fitzwilliam's death.

Caused by Whalley's resignation.

Elections in the 1870s

Caused by Whalley's death. Raper was a 'Permissive Bill' candidate.

Elections in the 1860s

Green, a Radical liberal, withdrew before polling.

Elections in the 1850s

Caused by the 1852 by-election being declared void on petition due to bribery and treating. Although Whalley secured the most votes, his election was declared void owing to disqualification due to the earlier bribery and treating, and Hankey was declared elected.

Caused by Watson's death.

Elections in the 1830s

Caused by Wentworth-FitzWilliam's resignation