Meet Carl

This is the first general election since 2010 to be held with new constituency boundaries. We talk to Library statistician Carl Baker about his geographical analysis, and how it can help the public, parliamentary staff, and new MPs wrap their heads around the new boundaries.

Hi Carl. How long have you been working in Parliament?

I joined Parliament ten years ago and currently work as a statistical researcher in the Library’s social and general statistics section. Before joining Parliament, I was an academic in philosophy, so it wasn’t the most natural step to become a statistician in the House of Commons!

I’m Head of the Social and General Statistics research section. As part of my role, I cover health statistics, so I provide data to MPs and MPs’ staff on topics like waiting lists and health conditions. I also work on geography and maps, meaning I produce geographical analysis and visual maps too.

Does that geographical analysis factor into your work for the general election?

Definitely. For the first time since 2010, the election will be fought on new constituency boundaries, which means that 9 in 10 constituencies in the UK will have different boundaries than they did last time. I’ve spent lots of time this year analysing and visualising these changes, to make it easier for Parliament and the public to understand how it affects them.

In the background, I’ve been doing a lot of work with different parts of Parliament to help them integrate constituency boundary changes into their systems. So we’ve helped update pages like ‘find your constituency’, which helps people find out which constituency they’re in after the boundary changes.

What do all these changes mean for Parliament?

The boundary change has a lot of implications for everyone inside and outside of Parliament. You’d be surprised by how many of Parliament’s teams are impacted by changes to constituency boundaries! Everything, from the education centre and security, all the way to our Library data systems, has to be updated to reflect the fact that there’s a different set of 650 constituencies in play.

Because this hasn’t happened since 2010, there’s not really a standard system in place for what happens when boundaries change, and the people who worked through this last time have moved on. So it’s a fresh problem for us, and we’ve had to help a lot of people to understand the changes.

Has it been challenging to get all this work done in time for the election?

Some of the logistics have been challenging! We’ve produced 650 poster maps for each constituency to provide to MPs after the election, ranging from the very smallest constituencies in the centre of London to the very largest constituencies in rural Scotland.

We’ve had to come up with a way to efficiently and procedurally produce one map template that accounts for the different details that you would get in Peckham versus Ceredigion Preseli. We also had to make sure we had a plotter that could print out 1300 maps quickly and find somewhere to store them for an indeterminate period of time. But even though there have been challenges, there’s always lots of help from our Library team.

What’s it like to work in Parliament during a general election?

I’m working my fourth general election now, but in Parliament we know an election can come at any time. Parliament is a series of cycles, and elections are part of that – for us, an election is business as usual, so you always need to be ready for it. Dissolution marks the end of one cycle and results night marks the beginning of something new. It’s a nice rhythm that’s unique to Parliament.

At the last election, I was part of the overnight team working to record the winners of each seat. That was a really special thing. Lots of people are working on general election night, but in Parliament you get to sit and watch the world change around you.