Witney (UK Parliament constituency)

Witney
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Witney in Oxfordshire.
Location of Oxfordshire within England.
County	Oxfordshire
Electorate	78,220 (December 2010)
Major settlements	Witney, Carterton, Chipping Norton and Charlbury
Current constituency
Created	1983
Member of parliament	Robert Courts (Conservative)
Number of members	One
Created from	Mid Oxfordshire and Banbury
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	South East England

Witney is a county constituency in Oxfordshire represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election, and was created for the 1983 general election. It is a safe Conservative Party seat.

The constituency was represented from 2001 to 2016 by David Cameron, who was Conservative leader from 2005 to 2016 and Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016. On 12 September 2016, Cameron said that he would resign as an MP with immediate effect, triggering the 2016 Witney by-election, which was won by Robert Courts, also a Conservative, albeit with a significantly reduced majority.

The constituency is co-terminous with the district of West Oxfordshire and so, incorporates the towns of Carterton, Chipping Norton and .

The constituency's first MP was Douglas Hurd, who served as a cabinet minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and retired in 1997. Hurd was succeeded by Shaun Woodward at the 1997 general election. However, Woodward defected to the Labour Party in 1999, and Witney unexpectedly had a Labour MP. Woodward chose not to stand in Witney as a Labour candidate and moved to the Labour safe seat of St Helens South instead, following the practice of Alan Howarth in 1997.