Peterborough is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom since July 2024 by Andrew Pakes of the Labour Party.

[3] The commissioners appointed prior to the parallel Great Reform Act 1832 and reported that Peterborough's parliamentary boundary, as far as was then known, comprised the Minster Precincts and the south-eastern part of the surrounding parish of Saint John the Baptist, excluding the parish's northern and western townships of Longthorpe, Dogsthorpe (or Dodsthorpe) and Newark-with-Eastfield.

[4] For parliamentary purposes, the rest of the Soke of Peterborough, north and west of the city, was in the county constituency of Northamptonshire; the area south of the River Nene was in Huntingdonshire; to the east, Thorney was in Cambridgeshire.

The 1832 acts extended the parliamentary borough of Peterborough to the entire parish of Saint John the Baptist (adding 48 qualifying properties[3]) and retained its two members.

However, the next redistribution did not come into effect until the 1983 general election, when areas to the south of the River Nene, including Fletton and the Ortons, which were now part of the expanded City of Peterborough, were transferred from the abolished constituency of Huntingdonshire.

Originally the Dean of Peterborough and Cathedral Chapter had claimed the franchise and held that only residents of Minster Precincts were burgesses and so entitled to vote.

By the interregnum, the city was one of 37 boroughs in which suffrage was restricted to those paying scot and lot, a form of municipal taxation.

Votes were cast by spoken declaration, in public, at the hustings, erected on the Market Place (now Cathedral Square).

Later, in the nineteenth century, William Elliot, Whig member from 1802 until his death in 1819, was Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1806 and 1807; the Hon.

Lord Burghley, as he then was, succeeded the socialist writer and illustrator, Frank Horrabin, who was born in the city and elected under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald in 1929.

In 1966, in one of the closest polls in UK history, Sir Harmar Nicholls held the seat by three votes after seven recounts.

Since its formation, North West Cambridgeshire has been one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, whilst Peterborough was ranked 93rd in the Conservatives's one hundred most vulnerable seats (the ones which the other parties must take if there is to be a change of government) and 73rd on Labour's target list;[citation needed] these factors led Mawhinney to stand in North West Cambridgeshire instead.

Furthermore, Peterborough became one of five constituencies – the others being Croydon Central, Enfield Southgate, Leeds North West and Reading East – which elected Labour MPs in 2017 having not done so since 2001.

The Tories (or Abhorrers) and Whigs (or Petitioners) originated in the Court and Country parties that emerged in the aftermath of the civil war, although it is more accurate to describe them as loose tendencies, both of which might be regarded as conservative in modern terms.

[74] Successors of the historic parliamentary boroughs, the spending limits for election campaigns are slightly lower than in county constituencies.

[75][76] The seat became vacant on 1 May 2019 following a successful recall petition,[77] until 7 June 2019, when Lisa Forbes was elected to the constituency in the 2019 Peterborough by-election, on behalf of the Labour Party.