John Spellar

John Francis Spellar (born 5 August 1947) is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Warley. He served as a Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office and returned to the backbenches in 2005. Spellar was Comptroller of the Household and the third most senior whip in the Whips' Office between October 2008 and May 2010.

Parliamentary career
Prior to his parliamentary career he was a councillor in the London Borough of Bromley between 1970 and 1974.

Spellar stood for the constituency of Bromley at the 1970 general election and came second.

He was first elected to the House of Commons in the Birmingham, Northfield by-election, 1982 but lost at the 1983 General Election. At the 1987 general election he stood again for the same seat but was again unsuccessful. Spellar returned to the House of Commons in the 1992 general election becoming the MP for Warley West and was appointed an opposition whip. Following a period as opposition spokesman for Northern Ireland in 1994, he was moved to shadow Defence ministers in 1995.

When Tony Blair formed his government in 1997, Spellar was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, being promoted to become Minister of State for the Armed Forces in 1999. He was appointed to the Privy Council, as Minister of State for Transport in the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions with rights to attend Cabinet. After the 2002 reshuffle, he became Minister of State at the Department for Transport, and moved to the Northern Ireland Office in 2003. He was banned from the offices of both the Mayor of Londonderry and the Mayor of Belfast during that year, because he supported the reinstatement to the British Army of convicted murderers Mark Wright and James Fisher of the Scots Guards. He left the front benches in 2005, but in 2008, he rejoined the government as a whip (Comptroller of the Household) and served until Labour entered opposition in May 2010.