The constituency name has had two separate periods of existence.
1918–1974: A Scarborough and Whitby division of the
North Riding of Yorkshire was created by the
Representation of the People Act 1918 after the
Boundary Commission of 1917 and first elected a Member of Parliament in the
1918 general election. This division took the entirety of the abolished Parliamentary borough of
Scarborough together with the majority of the previous
Whitby division and a very small part of
Cleveland division. It had a population, in the middle of 1914, of 72,979. The Boundary Commission had initially recommended that the division simply be called 'Scarborough' but an amendment moved by the Government during enactment of their recommendations enacted it from the outset as Scarborough and Whitby. Throughout its 56-year first creation which allowed a full franchise for all resident men it was represented by a
Conservative, including during the
Attlee Ministry and
First Wilson Ministry.
Changes to boundaries: The Initial Report of the
Boundary Commission in 1947 made minor changes to the constituency, in line with local government changes which had abolished
Guisborough Rural District in 1932 and absorbed it into Whitby Rural District. The new constituency again included the whole of Whitby Rural District, and so gained
Hinderwell which was previously within Cleveland constituency. It had an electorate of 67,884 on 15 October 1946. No change was made in the First Periodical Report of the Boundary Commission in 1954. The Second Periodical Report, published in 1969 recommended that the constituency be divided and its recommendations came into effect at the
February 1974 general election abolishing the seat. The Scarborough constituency was thereby re-established, and Whitby joined with Guisborough, Loftus, Saltburn and Brotton to form
Cleveland and Whitby. By the beginning of the Third Periodical Report of the Boundary Commission,
Cleveland had been created as a new county, which would normally prevent the commission from recommending a constituency crossing the border. Several representations were made to the commission to try to preserve Cleveland and Whitby constituency, but the Commission found itself unable to accept them and recommended putting Scarborough and Whitby together in a new
Scarborough despite including the other coastal town, its old name, including Whitby, was finally reinstated in the next review. This constituency did not include Pickering, which was placed in a new Ryedale constituency.
1997–present: In the Fourth Periodical Report of the Boundary Commission for England, published in 1995 and coming into effect at the
1997 general election, the Scarborough constituency was renamed as
Scarborough and Whitby with no change in boundaries. When the constituency was recreated in 1997, the
Labour candidate,
Lawrie Quinn, defeated
John Sykes, the sitting Conservative MP for Scarborough – one of many locally and national press-predicted unlikely gains for Labour in their landslide victory of that year.
Robert Goodwill defeated Quinn in 2005 to regain the seat for Conservatives. Goodwill retained the seat at the next four elections before deciding to stand down for the
2024 election, when the seat was regained for Labour by
Alison Hume.
Prominent members Sir Herbert Paul Latham was the first sitting Member of Parliament serving in the army to have been court martialled since 1815.
Sir Alexander Spearman served as the
Parliamentary Private Secretary to the
President of the Board of Trade from 1951 to 1952.
Sir Robert Goodwill served in as a junior minister in both the
Cameron–Clegg coalition and the
second Cameron ministry. ==Boundaries==