The Boundary Commission have reversed their decision to take Castleford out of our constituency name. It is very welcome that they have responded to our campaign to restore Castleford’s name. But it is outrageous that they haven’t listened to the thousands of local people who agreed with Assistant Commissioner that the area needs four constituencies.

The Boundary Commission may be independent. But the law still says they have to listen to local people’s views.

The Commission had already rejected the advice of their own Assistant Commissioner who recommended the retention of four parliamentary seats following a public inquiry held in the summer of 2005.

The announcement follows a further four month consultation period in which the Boundary Commission received over 150 letters from local people and petitions containing over 3,300 names opposing the reduction in Wakefield district’s representation. Of the total figure of 6392 submissions received by the Boundary Commission, only 17 approved of all or part of the recommendations.

I will be discussing next steps with local people, community groups and Wakefield Council and MPs. We all want to keep fighting to make sure that the Five Towns area does not lose representation in Parliament.

Having seen all the evidence, she recommended that the four existing Wakefield constituencies should be maintained and Pontefract and Castleford should remain as it is.

But last month local people were shocked at the Boundary Commissions decision to overturn the recommendations of their own independent Assistant Commissioner and local people and plan to:

I believe that this decision is astonishing. The Commissioner who heard all the local evidence argued we needed four seats in Wakefield, but her views have been overturned. Anyone who has looked at the evidence would agree that the Boundary Commission should reconsider their decision because: