South West Bedfordshire (UK Parliament constituency)

South West Bedfordshire
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of South West Bedfordshire in Bedfordshire.
Location of Bedfordshire within England.
County	Bedfordshire
Electorate	76,178 (December 2010)
Major settlements	Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard and Houghton Regis
Current constituency
Created	1983
Member of parliament	Andrew Selous (Conservative)
Number of members	One
Created from	South Bedfordshire
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	East of England

Coordinates: 51°57′29″N 0°29′28″W / 51.958°N 0.491°W / 51.958; -0.491

South West Bedfordshire is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. As with all constituencies of the UK Parliament, it elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.

The serving Member since 2001 is Conservative Andrew Selous, who succeeded Conservative David Madel. Selous has been re-elected three times: in 2005, 2010, and 2015.

The constituency was created in 1983, mostly from the former seat of South Bedfordshire. It was represented by Sir David Madel, a Conservative, from its creation until his retirement in 2001; he almost suffered one of the biggest upsets of the 1997 general election, when the Labour Party's candidate spectacularly cut his majority from 21,273 to just 132.

The present Conservative MP for the seat is Andrew Selous; he won the seat in 2001, when he managed to increase the party's majority, but only just: this increased somewhat more substantially each time in 2005 and 2010, ultimately to more than 16,000. The 2010 election also saw the second-placed candidate's party change, to the Liberal Democrats, similar to the results of 1983 and 1987, when this was the joint platform for R. Byfield and J.R. Burrow respectively, the (SDP-Liberal Alliance).