MP for Dagenham and Rainham since general election, May 2010. Labour.

The current annual salary for an MP is £65,738. In addition, MPs receive allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, having somewhere to live in London and in their constituency, and travelling between Parliament and their constituency.

He was a member of the Transport and General Workers Union from 1989 until his election in 2001.

After the 1997 general election, he became the deputy political secretary to the new Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and as the link between the Prime Minister and the trade unions, he worked heavily on the introduction of the minimum wage.

He criticised the Blair Government for ignoring their traditional support in the chase for middle-class voters. He rebelled against the government on university top-up fees, the limiting of asylum seeker rights, the replacement of comprehensive education system with trust schools and proposals to renew the UK Trident nuclear weapons system.

Born in Helston, May 1962, the son of a sailor. He married fellow Labour activist Anna Mary Healy in 1992 in Camden, London; the couple have a son. He is a Roman Catholic.

Attended the University of Warwick where he qualified with an M.A. and later a Ph.D. in Philosophy,

Despite being touted by some media sources as a potential candidate for the Leadership of the Labour Party, he ruled himself out of the 2010 election, saying he did not want the job, but wanted to influence policy. He later announced that he will contend the election to become the next Chairman of the Labour Party.

The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 Members of Parliament. They hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved - five years after the preceding election.

“In our family the political heroes weren’t Gaitskell or Bevan. They were the Kennedys because they were Irish, there was Oscar Romero because liberation theology was quite a big thing, and Pope John XXIII. So I joined the Labour Party, my brother joined the Carmelites.”

“We are living in the eye of a storm. The low paid, the poor, welfare claimants will pay for the greed of bankers and the inflated salaries of public service managers and consultants.”

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