Mr Simons had agreed to vacate his seat as Member for Makerfield so that the present Mayor of Greater Manchester (Andy Burnham) could, if selected as a candidate by the Labour Party, stand for election at a by-election. The politics behind this are not the concern of this blog but the aim is to try to secure the Labour Party leadership for Burnham and he would then displace Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.
The House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 section 4 provides that - ' ... the office of steward or bailiff of Her Majesty’s three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham, or of the Manor of Northstead, shall be treated as included among the offices described in Part III of Schedule 1 to this Act.'
The effect is that the holder of one of those offices is disqualified for membership of the House of Commons.
As far as I know, there is no connection between Andy Burnham and the fact that one of the three Chiltern Hundreds is known as Burnham - see Chiltern Hundreds - Wikipedia.
The history of this topic may be seen at Why UK MPs Must Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds to Resign from the House of Commons
Links:
House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975
Three Hundreds of Chiltern - GOV.UK
By-election timetables - House of Commons Library
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