County Hertfordshire Number of members 1 European Parliament constituency East of England Created from Hertford, St Albans | Member of parliament Grant Shapps Electorate 71,766 (December 2010) Replaced by Hertford, St Albans | |
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Welwyn Hatfield is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Grant Shapps, a Conservative.
Contents
History
The seat was called for by the second periodic review of Westminster seats (the first periodic review led by the Boundary Commission was in 1945 and followed that of the Representation of the People Act 1918). Its changes were made in time for the first 1974 general election which resulted in a temporary minority administration on a hung parliament.
Despite its short history, the seat has seen two parties serve it, with two Labour periods of representation, during the longer part of the Labour Government 1974-1979 and during the first two terms of the Blair ministry. Other than this the seat has elected a Conservative as its MP.
The present majority more than tripled on the second election of Grant Shapps, in 2010, from a historically breakable (in the constituency) majority of 5,946 votes to the 26th largest Conservative share of the vote, which on standard uniform swing seen in elections since 1931 represents a safe seat.
The first MP ended his term in the Commons as the member for Welwyn Hatfield before which he was Defence Minister from 1970 to 1972 then a Foreign Office Minister until February 1974 - later that year Lord Balniel was awarded a life peerage, accelerating and safeguarding his right to sit in the Lords. The second MP later became the politically neutral Lord Speaker, Baroness Hayman.
Melanie Johnson during five years of the Blair-Brown government was a frontbench minister: Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Minister for Competition and Consumers and the Minister for Public Health.
Grant Shapps was appointed the Minister of State for Housing and Local Government for the first two years of the UK coalition government 2010 before being appointed to chair his party. Following the Conservative victory in 2015, he was appointed Minister of State at the Department for International Development.
Boundaries
1974-1983: The Urban District of Welwyn Garden City, and the Rural Districts of Hatfield and Welwyn.
1983-1997: The District of Welwyn Hatfield wards of Brookmans Park and Little Heath, Haldens, Handside, Hatfield Central, Hatfield East, Hatfield North, Hatfield South, Hollybush, Howlands, Peartree, Sherrards, Welham Green and Redhall, Welwyn East, and Welwyn West, and the City of St Albans ward of Wheathampstead.
1997-present: The District of Welwyn Hatfield except the ward of Northaw.
Constituency profile
The area has a higher than average proportion of the managers, professionals and of the retired than much of Greater London with a strong local economy, retail and industrial/commercial premises are particularly in Hatfield and two of the four largest Hertfordshire economic towns, Stevenage and St Albans are close by. Accordingly, workless claimants who were registered jobseekers were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 2.4% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.