Bedford is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Mohammad Yasin of the Labour Party. The seat dates to the earliest century of regular parliaments, in 1295; its double representation was halved in 1885, then being altered by the later-termed Fourth Reform Act in 1918. Constituency profile Geographical and economic profile Bedford is a marginal seat between the Labour Party and the Conservatives. The main settlement is Bedford, a well-developed town centre with a considerable amount of social housing relative to Bedfordshire and higher poverty index but on a fast railway link to London and other destinations, the town is at the north end of the Thameslink service to Brighton and is not far from Milton Keynes which has a larger economy. The smaller and contiguous town of Kempston is also in the constituency. History Bedford was first represented in the Model Parliament of 1295. The constituency was originally a parliamentary borough electing two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons, and consisted of the five parishes making up the town of Bedford. Before the Reform Act of 1832, the right to vote was exercised by all freemen and burgesses of the town (whether or not they lived within the borough boundaries) and by all householders who were not receiving alms. This was a fairly wide franchise for the period, but potentially subject to abuse since the Corporation of the borough had unlimited power to create freemen. The corporation was usually under the influence of the Dukes of Bedford, but their influence usually fell well short of making Bedford a pocket borough. In 1768, a majority of the corporation apparently fell out with the Duke at the time, and decided to free the borough from his influence. They elected a Huntingdonshire squire, Sir Robert Bernard, as Recorder of the borough, and made 500 new freemen, mostly Bernard's Huntingdonshire neighbours or tenants. As there were only 540 householders, this gave him the effective power to choose Bedford's MPs; at the next election the defeated candidates petitioned against the result, attempting to establish that so many non-residents should not be allowed to vote, but the Commons dismissed the petition and confirmed the right of all the freemen, however created, to vote. Bernard cemented his control with the creation of hundreds of further freemen in the next few years; at around the same