Rupa Huq



Rupa Asha Huq (born 2 April 1972) is a British Labour Party politician, columnist, academic and DJ. She was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Ealing Central and Acton at the 2015 general election. She was formerly a lecturer in sociology at Kingston University and deputy mayoress of the London Borough of Ealing.

Political career
Huq was a researcher for Tony Banks and Patricia Hewitt. In 2004, she stood as a candidate for Labour in the European Parliament election in North West England.

In 2005, she stood as the Labour parliamentary candidate in the safe Conservative seat of Chesham and Amersham in Buckinghamshire (Conservative majority of 11,882) at the 2005 general election. She came third, receiving 6,610 votes and lost to the Conservative candidate Cheryl Gillan who had 25,619 votes.

In 2008, she served on a UK government Foreign and Commonwealth "Understanding Islam" delegation to Bangladesh.

In 2010, Huq was one of three Labour candidates standing for a council seat in Walpole in the constituency of Ealing. In 2010, after the local elections, she became the deputy mayoress of the London Borough of Ealing for the municipal year 2010 – 2011.

In November 2013, Huq was chosen by Labour as their prospective parliamentary candidate for Ealing Central and Acton constituency to challenge Conservative MP Angie Bray at the 2015 general election.

In May 2015, Huq won the Ealing Central and Acton seat with 22,002 votes, previous incumbent Angie Bray received 21,728 votes, with a turnout of 71.4%. In June of the same year, she was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election, although she later supported Yvette Cooper. Huq was appointed vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Music Group and All-Party Parliamentary on Crossrail. She is also chairing an All-Party Parliamentary Group on London, with specific reference to planning and the built environment. Since her election, Huq has also been a member of the Justice Select Committee.

In October 2016, Huq was appointed as a member of the Shadow Home Affairs team in the Labour Party's frontbench in Parliament. She is Shadow Home Office Minister for Crime Prevention. Huq led from the frontbench on the bill before the House of Commons to equalise Civil Partnerships to include heterosexual couples.

In April 2017, the Green Party decided not to run a candidate to contest her seat in the general election. They said "By and large we quite like Rupa. She has made quite prominent statements on proportional representation and Heathrow, as well as climate change and environmental issues in regards to Brexit, so for those reasons we won't tell our members to vote for her, but we will say we're not going to stand against her."