Commissions for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland the power to create names for constituencies, and does not provide a set of statutory guidelines for the Commissions to follow in doing so. Constituency names are geographic, and "should normally reflect the main population centre(s) contained in the constituency". Compass points are used to distinguish constituencies from each other when a more suitable label cannot be found. Where used, "The compass point reference used will generally form a prefix in cases where the rest of the constituency name refers to the county area or a local council, but a suffix where the rest of the name refers to a population centre." This is the reason for the difference in naming between, for example, North Shropshire (a county constituency) and Reading West (a borough constituency). House of Commons constituencies In the 2005 United Kingdom general election, the House of Commons had 646 constituencies covering the whole of the United Kingdom. This rose to 650 in the 2010 election following the Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. Each constituency elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the "first-past-the-post" system of election. The House of Commons is one of the two chambers of the bicameral Parliament of the United Kingdom, the other being the House of Lords. See also Boundary commissions (United Kingdom) Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom List of former United Kingdom Parliament constituencies Constituencies in the next United Kingdom general election University constituency Number of Westminster MPs London Assembly constituencies There are fourteen London Assembly constituencies covering the Greater London area, and each constituency elects one member of the assembly by the first-past-the-post system. Eleven additional members are elected from Greater London as a whole to produce a form or degree of mixed-member proportional representation. Constituency names and boundaries remain now as they were for the first general election of the assembly, in 2000. The assembly is part of the Greater London Authority and general elections of the assembly are held at the same time as election of the mayor of London. Northern Ireland Assembly constituencies There are 18 Northern Ireland Assembly Constituencies: four borough (for Belfast) and 14 county constituencies elsewhere (see below). Each elects five MLAs to the 90 member NI Assembly by means of the single transferable vote system. Assembly Constituency boundaries are identical to their House of Commons equivalents. The constituencies below are not used