List_of_MPs_elected_in_the_2017_United_Kingdom_general_election

List of MPs elected in the 2017 United Kingdom general election

List of MPs elected in the 2017 United Kingdom general election

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In the United Kingdom's 2017 general election, 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) were elected to the House of Commons – one for each parliamentary constituency. A record number of women (208) were elected as MPs.[1]

Quick Facts 2017–2019 Parliament of the United Kingdom, Overview ...

Parliament consists of the House of Lords and the elected House of Commons.[2] The State Opening of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster by Queen Elizabeth II was on 21 June 2017. The subsequent parliamentary session was the longest since the formation of the United Kingdom in 1707, and the longest to sit at Westminster since the Long Parliament in the 17th century.[3] The second and last parliamentary session however was the shortest since October 1948,[4] lasting less than a month, from 14 October 2019 until Parliament dissolved at 00:01 on 6 November 2019.[5]

Notable newcomers to enter the House of Commons in this General Election included future Secretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack and future Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross. For the opposition, newcomers included Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Anneliese Dodds and future Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities Marsha de Cordova.

The Parliament was marked by extraordinary political turmoil as Governments led by Theresa May and Boris Johnson were unable to win a series of important votes on the issue of Brexit. This left both Parliament and the Government in a prolonged state of deadlock and unable to move forward on the issue. Consequently, there was an unusually high number of defections and suspensions, including the suspension of 21 Conservative MPs in September 2019; 10 of those suspended MPs re-joined the Conservative Party in October 2019. The Parliament was dissolved after MPs passed the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019, which bypassed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 to bring the next election forward to December 2019 from its original scheduled May 2022 date.

House of Commons composition

Below are graphical representations of the House of Commons showing party strengths directly after the 2017 general election, at important intermediate points, and immediately prior to dissolution. This is not an actual seating plan of the House, which has only five rows of benches on each side, with the government party to the right of the Speaker of the House of Commons and opposition parties to the left, but with room for only around two-thirds of MPs to sit at any one time.

This table shows the number of MPs in each party:

More information Affiliation, Members ...
Notes
  • For full details of changes during this Parliament, see Defections and suspensions and By-elections.
  • Labour, as the largest party not in government, took the role of Official Opposition (OO). The Co-operative Party was represented in the House of Commons by Labour MPs sitting with the Labour and Co-operative designation.[7]
  • "Members elected" refers to the composition resulting from the election on 8 June 2017, but note that the confidence and supply arrangement (C&S) was only reached on 26 June.
  • The "voting total" is the effective size of the House excluding vacancies, suspensions, and certain members (ten at dissolution): the Speaker, two (usually three) Deputy Speakers (one Labour and one Conservative) who had only a tie-breaking vote constrained by conventions,[8] and seven abstentionist members (Sinn Féin). This left relevant party voting totals as follows: Con 297, Lab 241, SF 0, Speaker 0.
  • The "safe majority" (the number of seats needed to have a majority of one or two), "Gov short by" (the margin by which the governing Conservatives are short of that majority), and "Gov + C&S total" are based on the voting totals. The government entered into a confidence and supply agreement to secure a small majority, which shrank due to defections, finally disappearing on 3 September 2019. Hence, the "Gov + C&S majority", calculated as the sum of voting Conservative and Democratic Unionist Party members, less the sum of all other voting members, was negative at dissolution.

List of MPs elected in the general election

The following table is a list of MPs elected, ordered by constituency. Names of incumbents are listed where they stood for re-election; for details of other defeated candidates and the incumbent who stood down in those cases see individual constituency articles.

More information Constituency, Party of incumbent before election ...
Notes
  1. The incumbents for these seats were originally members of political parties before either being suspended or resigning from their respective parties and subsequently sitting as independents for the remainder of the Parliament.

Deputy Speakers

The Speaker nominated Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West) and George Howarth (Labour, Knowsley) to serve as Temporary Deputy Speakers until the Deputy Speakers had been elected. The election of Deputy Speakers took place on 28 June 2017.

Although Deputy Speakers do not resign from their parties, they cease to vote (except to break ties) and they do not participate in party-political activity until the next election.

More information Name, Party ...

As the only contesting member from the government side, Eleanor Laing's name did not appear on the ballot paper, and she was duly declared First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.

When Sir Lindsay Hoyle was elected Speaker on 4 November 2019 in succession to John Bercow, the post of Chairman of Ways and Means (one of the Deputy Speakers) became vacant and remained so when Parliament was dissolved on 6 November.

By-elections

By-elections are held for seats that become vacant.

More information By-election, Date ...

John Mann vacated the seat for Bassetlaw on 28 October 2019, and the Speaker John Bercow vacated his Buckingham seat on 4 November 2019. The seats remained vacant until dissolution and the election of new MPs in the general election on 12 December 2019.

Defections and suspensions

The label under which MPs sit in the House of Commons can change if they leave or are suspended from or expelled by their party. When suspended, they effectively[16] become independents. This Parliament has had an unusually large number of these changes, resulting in the number of MPs sitting as independents rising to its highest level (33) since the Ballot Act 1872 (which introduced secret ballots for elections in the United Kingdom).[citation needed]

The Conservative and Labour parties lost numerous MPs through suspensions and defections to other parties. In February 2019, 8 Labour and 3 Conservative MPs formed a new grouping (later a party in its own right), Change UK. That grouping experienced a split in June, with some of its members resigning to form The Independents. The Liberal Democrats have made a gain of 8 seats since the opening of Parliament, including some former Change UK members. The government lost its majority on 3 September 2019, when the Conservative MP Phillip Lee defected to the Liberal Democrats. Later the same day, the Conservatives expelled 21 of their MPs for voting against the government, 10 of whom were later readmitted to the party on 29 October.

More information Name, Date ...

Progression of government majority and party totals

The majority is calculated as above.

More information Date, Event ...

See also


Notes and references

  1. Khomami, Nadia (9 June 2017). "Record number of female MPs win seats in 2017 general election". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  2. "What do MPs do?". UK Parliament. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  3. "The dissolution ended the shortest parliamentary session in just over 70 years, with the Commons having met for only 19 days since the state opening on 14 October." "Starting gun fired on five-week race for No 10". BBC News. 6 November 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2019.
  4. "Order Paper on 4 November 2019" (PDF). UK Parliament. Retrieved 6 November 2019.
  5. "About the Party". Co-operative Party. Retrieved 22 February 2019.
  6. Boothroyd, David. "House of Commons: Tied Divisions". United Kingdom Election Results. Archived from the original on 5 January 2008. Retrieved 25 July 2018.
  7. "MPs". UK Parliament. Retrieved 12 May 2015.
  8. "MP Ivan Lewis suspended by Labour". BBC News. 23 November 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2018.
  9. "Barry McElduff resigns as MP for West Tyrone". BBC News. 15 January 2018. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  10. "Tributes to veteran Labour MP Flynn". BBC News. 18 February 2019. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
  11. Jarvis, Jacob (21 February 2019). "Conservative MP Christopher Davies charged over 'false expenses claim". Evening Standard. Retrieved 23 June 2019.
  12. "Labour suspends MP after online comments". BBC News. 25 October 2017. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  13. O'Mara, Jared (12 July 2018). "An open letter to my constituents". Jared O'Mara MP. Archived from the original on 13 July 2018. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  14. "Labour suspends Luton North MP Kelvin Hopkins". BBC News. 3 November 2017. Retrieved 25 July 2018.
  15. McDonald, Henry (15 January 2018). "Sinn Féin MP Barry McElduff resigns after Kingsmill row". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 June 2018.
  16. "Anti-Semitism row: Frank Field resigns Labour whip". BBC News. 30 August 2018. Retrieved 30 August 2018.
  17. "Fiona Onasanya: Peterborough MP guilty in speeding case". BBC News. 19 December 2018. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
  18. Grafton-Green, Patrick (4 January 2019). "Labour Party expels disgraced MP Fiona Onasanya who lied over speeding charges". Evening Standard. Retrieved 4 January 2019.
  19. "Change UK loses six of its 11 MPs". BBC News. 4 June 2019. Retrieved 4 June 2019.
  20. @thesundaytimes (7 September 2019). "Sunday Times exclusive: Angela Smith MP has defected to the Liberal Democrats" (Tweet). Retrieved 7 September 2019 via Twitter.
  21. Elliott, Francis (13 June 2019). "It's all change again as Chuka Umunna joins Lib Dems". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
  22. Mason, Rowena (20 February 2019). "Three Tory MPs defect to fledgling Independent Group". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 February 2019.
  23. @@laurak (7 October 2019). "Statement here ... 17 becomes 18" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  24. "Ex-Tory MP Sarah Wollaston joins Lib Dems". BBC News. 14 August 2019. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
  25. "Labour MP suspended in anti-Semitism row". BBC News. 27 February 2019. Retrieved 27 February 2019.
  26. Proctor, Kate; Walker, Peter (3 September 2019). "Phillip Lee quits Tories, leaving government without a majority". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  27. "Sixth Conservative MP defects to Liberal Democrats". RTÉ News. 14 September 2019. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  28. @AmberRuddHR (7 September 2019). "I have resigned from Cabinet and surrendered the Conservative Whip" (Tweet). Retrieved 7 September 2019 via Twitter.
  29. "Sexual harassment claim against MP dropped". BBC News. 21 October 2019. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
  30. Cecil, Nicholas; Murphy, Joe (30 October 2019). "John Bercow will stand down as Commons Speaker tomorrow". Evening Standard. Retrieved 4 November 2019.

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