John Mann

John Mann (born 10 January 1960) is a Labour Party politician in England who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bassetlaw since the 2001 general election, after the previous MP Joe Ashton had retired.

Mann serves on the Treasury Select Committee. He had previously been the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Tessa Jowell and Richard Caborn. He is also a prominent campaigner against antisemitism.

Early life and career
Mann is the son of James and Brenda (née Cleavin) Mann. He attended Waterloo Infants school and Pudsey Waterloo Junior school in Pudsey, Yorkshire, then won a County Council scholarship to Bradford Grammar School. He holds a degree in Economics from the University of Manchester and a Diploma in Training Management. Active in the Labour Party from his youth (Pudsey South Labour Party), he was formerly a councillor in the London Borough of Lambeth.

He was chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students in 1983 and 1984, and as a consequence a member of Labour's National Executive Committee. He subsequently co-authored a Fabian Society tract on the organisation of Labour's youth wing, which formed the basis of the later reorganisation of the youth wing by Tom Sawyer to reduce the influence of Militant tendency.

Before entering Parliament he previously worked for the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union as Head of Research and Education and as the National Training Officer at the TUC National Education Centre in North London (now defunct). Mann was national trade union officer for the 1997 general election. He also ran a company organising international conferences.

Parliamentary career
Mann was first elected as MP for Bassetlaw at the 2001 general election, and has retained his seat at each elections since then.

Mann served on the Treasury Select Committee twice, 2003–2005, and 2009–2015, during which time he raised issues around debt, financial misselling (with particular reference to Credit Cards) and claims handlers. Some commentators have noted Mann's reputation for asking brusque questions, particularly of senior bank executives and George Osborne.

John Mann was the first Labour MP to call for Gordon Brown to resign after the 2010 general election. Some months earlier, when Brown was Prime Minister, Mann had written an open letter demanding a number of changes to the Labour party structures.

Mann was also vocal in criticising other MPs over the expenses scandal, arguing that MPs could not be trusted to self-regulate. He criticised the shredding of documents related to expenses before 2010, saying "it looks like MPs trying to protect MPs again". He was also responsible for lodging the complaint that resulted in an inquiry into Maria Miller's expense claims.

In 2014, Mann was responsible for compiling a dossier of historic allegations of child abuse, detailing allegations of 12 former ministers that may have been involved. He said he believes some of them were "definitely child abusers".

Mann has been from the outset an opponent of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. During the leadership campaign he wrote an open letter to Corbyn saying that it would be "inappropriate" for Corbyn to become leader due to allegations that Corbyn had failed to act over allegations of child abuse in his constituency. Just over two months after Corbyn had won the leadership campaign, Mann continued to refuse to back Corbyn in an interview with the BBC, indicating he had no confidence in him. Instead he said that he had confidence in the then shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn.

European Union
Mann announced he would vote to leave the EU in the June 2016 referendum, saying he believed Labour voters "fundamentally disagree" with Labour's official stance. However, research conducted by YouGov found that 65% of Labour voters had backed remain. His own constituency voted to leave by a margin of 68% to 32%.

Parliamentary work on antisemitism
Mann has described antisemitism as "the worst of racisms", and he chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism. The Group commissioned the "All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism" in 2005. The cross-party inquiry panel gathered written and oral evidence on antisemitism in Britain and published a report of their findings on 7 September 2006. The panel's recommendations included improved reporting and recording of antisemitic attacks; a crackdown on anti-Jewish activity on university campuses; and improved international co-operation to prevent the spread of racist material online. In May 2009, Mann received the American Jewish Committee's Jan Karski Award in recognition of his commitment to fighting antisemitism in all of its forms.

As chair of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism, Mann has overseen three landmark conferences – in the UK, Canada and Germany.

Mann wrote in The Jewish Chronicle in early May 2016: "If Labour cannot combat racism then we are nothing – and racism always includes antisemitism. If we cannot do that now, then we have no reason to exist". In June 2017, he criticised Jeremy Corbyn as "a man who claims he's dedicated his entire life to racism" but was "not prepared to make a speech exclusively, explicitly, just on antisemitism".

Clashes with Ken Livingstone
On 28 April 2016, Mann publicly confronted Ken Livingstone over comments in which Livingstone had claimed that Adolf Hitler "was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews". This interpretation was based on the polemic Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by the American writer Lenni Brenner. The historical accuracy of some of Livingstone's comments was questioned by historians of the Holocaust. Mann publicly accused Livingstone of being a "Nazi apologist" and a "fucking disgrace". Following this incident, Mann was allegedly reprimanded by Labour's chief whip Rosie Winterton, with party spokesperson saying that she had told Mann that it is "completely inappropriate for Labour members of Parliament to be involved in very public rows on the television". Ken Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party in relation to his earlier comments. On an unrelated issue, six months earlier, Mann had repeatedly called Livingstone a "bigot" in a radio phone-in, following Livingstone's attack on MP Kevan Jones' mental health and that he was "obviously very depressed and disturbed".

Drug policy
One of Mann's earliest campaigns in his constituency was his inquiry into heroin use in the area. In September 2002, Mann called for more treatment for heroin users in North Nottinghamshire. The inquiry he instigated called for heroin addicts to be given the choice between treatment or prison. At the same time more local GPs were trained to help heroin addicts get their lives back under control. Following the reforms the number of addicts in treatment in Bassetlaw rose from 2 to 400, and acquisitive crime fell by 75%.

Following a local newspaper story in October 2005, Mann raised an Early Day Motion calling for Salvia divinorum to be banned in the UK (EDM796). The motion only received 11 signatures. It was later reported that John Mann had written to the Home Secretary in October 2008, urging her to take action with regard to salvia's legal status. The same report said that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs had met to discuss salvia, among other substances, in April 2009, and that there would be a follow-up meeting in May.

The Observer newspaper gave the content of Mann's letter to Jacqui Smith. "Sadly the issue has come to light again as our young people are using the internet and sites like YouTube to broadcast their friends taking the drug and witnessing the hallucinogenic effects. Our young people are at risk and a wider cultural attachment to this drug seems to be developing that I am sure you agree - regardless of its legal status - needs nipping in the bud".

Local campaigns
Mann is an active campaigner in his constituency Bassetlaw and an advocate of using campaigning strategies he refers to as "organising to win" elsewhere. He has organised numerous campaigns in his constituency, examples of which include campaigning to save Bassetlaw Hospital Accident and Emergency Department, helping former coal miners fight double charging solicitors to get their compensation back, and fighting Bassetlaw District Council's policy of "topple testing" headstones in local cemeteries. Mann keeps a weekly column in the Worksop Guardian and – along with other local figures – writes occasional pieces for the Retford Times.

Personal life
He married Joanna White in July 1986 in Leeds. His wife is a Labour councillor and deputy leader of Bassetlaw District Council, and is also employed by John Mann as a part-time office manager, remunerated through his parliamentary expenses. The couple have two adult daughters and a son. He supports Leeds United.