Tuesday 25 March 2008

Whoops: Hold Them to Account Ignores Boundary Changes

Updated: To take into account action taken since this posting.

I just followed a link to Hold Them to Account knowing full well the result I should have got for Michael Connarty my MP. Obviously the reason I knew was that his vote on Iraq was one thing we actually had in common at the 2005 election. However, on entering my postcode I got the following message.

Your Labour MP, Michael Connarty, was not a Member of Parliament at the time of the motion on the Iraq War, which was supported by both the Labour Party and the Conservatives.


I'm sorry Hold Them to Account but Michael has been a Member of Parliament since 1992. Up until 2005 he was the member for Falkirk East and since about 1:45 on the morning of 6 May he was returned as member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk. He was in the House when the vote was taken but voted against going to war with Iraq.

It makes me wonder how many of our Scottish MPs are actually able to be held to account on this site with every constituency being redrawn it is possible that none of the Scottish Members who voted to take us to war 5 years ago, may come up on their database as the constituency they now represent may not have existed in 2003 and therefore return the same result as above.

So I'm holding Hold Them to Account to account to get their data sorted out.

UPDATE: As you can see from the comments below it is all due to the naming convention of my new constituency but I am not alone. My new search does return the correct information namely:

Your MP, Michael Connarty, did not vote for the Government's Iraq War motion. However, the war was supported by both the Labour Party and the Conservatives and there are several ways you can hold Gordon Brown and David Cameron to account.


So well done to the Webmasters over at Hold Them to Account. Not only are Lib Dems the most wired party in the land but we're also pretty responsive to issues regarding our sites as well. I was about to say check out my local MP's website until I did just then and realised he must have someone updating that more regularly now.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for pointing it out, Stephen, although it's nothing to do with boundary changes. We, like you, called the seat "Linlithgow and East Falkirk". TheyWorkForYou, who provide the constituency lookup, call it "Linlithgow and Falkirk East".

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  2. My MP Brian Donohoe is listed as not having been a MP at the time too. In fact he has been a MP since 1992. The constituency name as changed from Cunninghame South to Ayrshire Central though.

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