County Oxfordshire Created 1983 | Electorate 82,931 (May 2015) Number of members One | |
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Major settlements Wantage, Didcot, Wallingford, Faringdon Member of parliament Ed Vaizy (Conservative) | ||
Wantage is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Ed Vaizey, a Conservative.
Contents
In terms of electorate, at the time of the 2015 general election, Wantage was the 37th largest constituency in the United Kingdom and the second largest in Oxfordshire.
Boundaries
1983-2010: The District of Vale of White Horse wards of Appleton, Craven, Drayton, Faringdon and Littleworth, Greendown, Grove, Harwell and Chilton, Hendred, Icknield, Island Villages, Kingston Bagpuize and Southmoor, Longworth, Marcham, Segsbury, Shrivenham, Stanford, Steventon, Sutton Courtenay, The Coxwells, and Upton and Blewbury, and the District of South Oxfordshire wards of Brightwell, Cholsey, Didcot North, Didcot Northbourne, Didcot South, Hagbourne, and Wallingford.
2010-present: The District of Vale of White Horse wards of Blewbury and Upton, Craven, Drayton, Faringdon and The Coxwells, Greendown, Grove, Hanneys, Harwell, Hendreds, Kingston Bagpuize with Southmoor, Longworth, Marcham and Shippon, Shrivenham, Stanford, Sutton Courtenay and Appleford, Wantage Charlton, and Wantage Segsbury, and the District of South Oxfordshire wards of Brightwell, Cholsey and Wallingford South, Didcot All Saints, Didcot Ladygrove, Didcot Northbourne, Didcot Park, Hagbourne, and Wallingford North.
In September 2016, the boundary commission proposed plans to amend the boundaries of five of the six constituencies in Oxfordshire with Wantage being one of the five with proposed new boundaries. The main proposed change would see Wallingford become part of a renamed Henley and Thame constituency - currently just Henley. Whilst Wallingford would be part of the Henley and Thame constituency, the villages surrounding Wallingford currently in the Wantage constituency (including Brightwell-cum-Sotwell and Cholsey) will remain part of the Wantage constituency. The changes will also see several villages currently in the Oxford West and Abingdon (including Appleton, Besselsleigh and Eaton) become part of the Wantage constituency. It had previously been thought that the boundary commission may rename the Wantage constituency to include Didcot in the name however no such plans are included in the proposal.
History
The constituency was created in 1983 from parts of the seat of Abingdon. It is a safe seat for the Conservative Party. Its first MP was Robert Jackson, who served as a junior minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
However, Jackson defected to the Labour Party in 2005, and so Wantage unexpectedly had a Labour MP. Jackson was deemed unlikely to be re-elected in Wantage as a Labour MP, so he did not stand at the 2005 general election. At that election, Ed Vaizey was elected as MP for Wantage and, until July 2016, held the post of Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.
Constituency profile
There are three market towns in the constituency: Faringdon, Wallingford and Wantage. Wantage is famous as the birthplace of King Alfred the Great, Wallingford has the ancient enclosure walls of a castle and medieval bridge. Faringdon bears a scar of the English Civil War, when its church lost the top of its steeple. The largest town in the constituency is Didcot, which grew up around the Great Western Railway when Isambard Kingdom Brunel built a branch line from its main line between London and Bristol to Oxford, siting the junction at the then sparsely populated parish of Didcot.
The constituency is mostly rural in character, with more than 400 farms in operation. Included are the Uffington White Horse and The Ridgeway, a prehistoric road, runs along its southern border. The River Thames runs along the northern and western border. The area is affluent and Conservative in nature containing many commuters with fast transport links to London, with Didcot the only area with a strong Labour vote locally. The seat includes international race horse breeders and trainers with racing stables across a broad area that reaches into the Lambourn Downs, crossing over the border into the Newbury seat.
Workless claimants, registered jobseekers, were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 1.6% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.