§ MR. D. A. THOMAS (Merthyr Tydfil)To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether under Rule 2 of his Memorandum on the Redistribution of Seats it is proposed that the new municipal borough of Merthyr Tydvil shall become a separate constituency entitled to one Member; whether the part of the parish of Vaynor, included in the existing Parliamentary boroughs of Merthyr Tydvil, will in future form part of the Parliamentary Division of Brecon-shire; whether the remainder of the existing Merthyr constituencies, consisting of the parish of Aberdare and part of the parish of Llanwonno will form a separate constituency; what was the population of this part of the Merthyr borough in 1901; and whether the Boundary Commission will be authorised to recommend that the boundaries of such new constituency should be extended so as to include a part of a Division of the county of Glamorgan, if they deem such extension desirable.
382 (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) It is not intended that the new municipal borough of Merthyr Tydvil should become a separate Parliamentary borough. If it did, the present Parliamentary borough should be considerably curtailed, and this would be inconsistent with the concluding part of Rule 7. The Answer, therefore, to the second and third parts of the Question is in the negative. The population of the parish of Aberdare and of the part of the parish of Llanwonno which is included in the Parliamentary borough amounted to 63,574 in 1901. In the circumstances above stated the point referred to in the last part of the Question does not appear to arise.