FINAL recommendations for new parliamentary boundaries that would see the number of Welsh MPs cut from 40 to 29 have been laid before Parliament.

The Boundary Commission for Wales submission is part of the plan for the UK-wide re-drawing of boundary lines, approved in principle by MPs in 2011, which will involve cutting the number of constituencies from 650 to 600.

The main reason for the changes is to redistribute voters into roughly even constituencies of between 71,000 and 75,000 voters. Other constituencies would be scrapped entirely, and their voters redistributed among neighbouring constituencies.

The recommendations still need to secure the backing of MPs and peers, with the debate and vote likely to take place at the end of October.

Proposals include a renamed constituency of ‘Monmouthshire (Sir Fynwy)’ with approximately 11,000 additional electors, drawn from the absorption of wards in Severnside and Newport East.

Despite being one of the largest constituencies by area in Wales, the existing constituency of Monmouth currently has fewer than 63,000 voters. The proposed Monmouthshire constituency would have 74,532 electors.

The commission’s recommendation is to merge the existing constituencies of Newport West (60,000 voters) and Newport East (54,000 voters) into one centralised constituency named Newport.

This would mean Newport losing some of the wards on the city’s outskirts, including Caldicot Castle, Langstone and Llanwern, which would be absorbed into the new Monmouthshire constituency.

Meanwhile, the wards of Croesyceiliog North, Croesyceiliog South, Llanyrafon North and Llanyravon South, currently in the Monmouth constituency, would become part of the Torfaen constituency.

Monmouth MP David Davies has backed the proposed changes, describing the inclusion of the Newport East wards as ‘eminently sensible’ because the new constituency would then marry areas of the principal council and Parliamentary constituency.

The Commission noted in its report that, during the revised proposals consultation period, it had received representations that the community of Magor with Undy (made up of the electoral wards of Mill and The Elms) should be included within the new Newport constituency rather than Monmouthshire.

But the Commission had decided Monmouthshire was more appropriate because the community was part of the local authority area, which is wholly contained within the proposed new constituency.

The Commission felt that calling the new constituency ‘Monmouthshire (Sir Fynwy)’ best reflected its geographical composition and was likely to have greater affinity with electors.

They noted that, while there had been comparatively few representations at the public hearings or in written representations in relation to the proposed Monmouthshire constituency, there had been support for the new constituency from the five MPs in the area.

The final proposal is therefore to create a county constituency from the existing Monmouth CC and County of Monmouthshire wards plus Caldicot Castle (1,736), Dewstow (1,370), Green Lane (1,363), Mill (2,242), Rogiet (1,303), Severn (1,269), The Elms (2,408) and West End (1,438) Langstone (3,620) and Llanwern (2,645).