During the Committee stage of the Representation of the People Bill on 24th March, in connection with the proposed addition of 17 borough constituencies in England, I undertook to ask the Boundary Commissioners if they would receive and consider representations with regard to the proposed manner of dividing the 17 boroughs concerned from the local authorities, political parties and other persons interested, who would have had the right to make such representations to the Commission under the procedure laid down by the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act, 1944. I therefore wrote to you, Sir, on 25th March. I would like to inform the House that you have now been good enough to forward to me a letter addressed to you by the Deputy-Chairman of the Commission expressing the willingness of the Commissioners to consider such representations, and indicating the manner in which the representations should be made and the procedure which the Commissioners propose to adopt.

The Deputy-Chairman writes as follows: I have now had an opportunity of consulting my colleagues regarding the Home Secretary's request that we should consider representations relating to the proposals, details of which are set out in the White Paper published on 19th March for the division of the 17 boroughs selected for additional representation.We are prepared to undertake this additional task, but it is clear that in the circumstances the procedure set out in paragraphs 3 and 4 of Part III of the First Schedule to the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act is not applicable. Moreover, considerations of time would appear to render it impracticable to employ the normal machinery of local advertisement or the holding of local inquiries if such were considered desirable. Perhaps the simplest course would be for an announcement to be made in the House to the effect that we are prepared to consider any representations relating to the 17 boroughs submitted to us within a specified period. The exact time to be allowed for this purpose will presumably have to be kept as short as possible in order to avoid unnecessary delay in the progress of the Bill. In our view a period of 14 days should be sufficient to enable all those interested to prepare and submit representations. The representations should, of course, be in writing and addressed to the Secretary, Boundary Commission for England, North Wing, Somerset House, London, W.C.2.When we have considered the representations, we will submit a report to the Home Secretary indicating what amendments if any, should in our view, be made to the published proposals in the light of the representations submitted. In accordance with the suggestion made in the letter representations should reach the Secretary of the Commission not later than 24th April.