Amber Valley Philip Oppenheim 18,330 29,943 4,219 0 0 Amber Valley 28,360 27,077 5,582 0 0 Conservative Amber Valley is an industrial area in mid-Derbyshire, centred on three towns of some 20,000 souls each, Alfreton, Heanor and Ripley, together with surrounding villages like Ambergate, where the Amber flows into Derbyshire's main river, the Derwent. In minor boundary changes the village of Crich is transferred into the seat from West Derbyshire: only a couple of thousand voters are added, but the Conservative MP Philip Oppenheim will be grateful for them, because Amber Valley is now a super-vulnerable Tory marginal, with a majority of just 712 in 1992. This is in fact a gritty East Midlands seat, nowhere near as beautiful as the name. Its economy was originally based on coal, but all the pits are long since closed; light industrial estates are more the order of the day now. Amber Valley, created in pretty much its present form in 1983, has never yet been held by Labour; but if they actually win a general election, as seems likely in 1997, it will almost certainly fall to them for the first time.

	1,195	3.03	9.03	34
	2,900	7.37	11.17	66
	2,540	6.45	11.25	57
	8,368	21.25	14.70	145
	0	0.00	10.45	0
	75	0.19	2.81	7
	1,326	3.37	8.01	42
	16,373	41.58	15.25	273
	6,390	16.23	7.13	228
	208	0.53	10.17	5