About South East Cambridgeshire

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South East Cambridgeshire is a large Parliamentary Constituency including most of the local government district of East Cambridgeshire and about a third of South Cambridgeshire.

The large rural area belies its nature, not least because within the constituency are a number of centres of excellence in high tech research and manufacturing. Almost all the Cambridge Science Park is within South East Cambridgeshire as are the new Cambridge Research Park at Landbeach, Granta Park at Abington, the Babraham Institute and TWI, the research centre for joining technology. It also contains most of Cambridge Airport and the Marshall Group of Companies as well as countless more traditional businesses.

Agriculturally the constituency is largely arable being mainly cereals and sugar beet on the lighter chalk soils in the south whilst in the northern Fen areas intensive salad, vegetable and root cropping predominate. The constituency is one of the most important horse racing constituencies in the country; it includes the July Course at Newmarket and two point-to-point courses at Horseheath and Cottenham. Most of the Stud farms that surround Newmarket, including the National Stud, lie within the constituency making the welfare of the racing industry of crucial importance to local employment.

At the time of the last General Election in 2005 the total electorate was 85,800. The result was the election for his fifth term of Jim Paice, the Conservative Candidate with a majority of 8,624.