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 by the first-past-the-post system of election, and was created for the 1983 general election. It has been a safe Conservative Party seat at recent elections. It is currently represented by Robert Courts of the Conservative Party. It was represented from 2001 to 2016 by David Cameron, Leader of the Conservative Party (2005–2016) and UK Prime Minister (2010–2016). On 12 September 2016, Cameron resigned from serving as an MP triggering the 2016 Witney by-election, at which Robert Courts of the Conservatives retained the seat; albeit with a reduced majority. His vote share subsequently rose to 55% at the 2017 and 2019 general elections. It is coterminous with the district of West Oxfordshire, and includes the towns of Carterton, Chipping Norton and Woodstock. History In the late 19th century, the Bampton East petty sessional division, with Witney at its heart, formed one part of the Woodstock constituency. Until 1974, much of the seat remained as part of the Woodstock and latterly Banbury constituency. From 1974 to 1983, the area was included in the Mid Oxfordshire seat along with parts of Bullingdon and Ploughley. Since 1983, Witney has been a full parliamentary seat in its own right and comprises the whole of the District of West Oxfordshire with surrounding villages attached until 1997. Carterton is the second largest populated town with 14,000 and is situated alongside RAF Brize Norton which is vital to the local economy, being one of the largest and busiest Royal Air Force stations in the country. 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. At the 2001 general election, David Cameron was elected as MP for Witney. Cameron was re-elected to a fourth term as MP for the constituency at the 2015 general election with a majority of 25,155, the highest in his political career; on that occasion his