Ian Austin

Ian Christopher Austin (born 6 March 1965) is a Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dudley North since the 2005 general election. He was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2009 to 2010.

Parliamentary career
Austin was selected as the Labour candidate for Dudley North following the retirement of Ross Cranston, and was elected at the 2005 general election with a majority of 5,432.

Austin was reprimanded by the Speaker of the House of Commons for heckling during Prime Minister's Questions on 18 October 2006, and he was subsequently described by David Cameron as one of Gordon Brown's "boot boys". The following week he was rebuked again by the Speaker for comments made towards the Conservative benches.

After Gordon Brown became prime minister in June 2007, Austin was tipped for a post in Brown's inner political circle. The following day, he was appointed a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Gordon Brown with a special provision to attend cabinet meetings. He was moved to a new position in the 2008 reshuffle, becoming an Assistant Whip for the Government. In the June 2009 reshuffle he entered Government as a minister for the first time, becoming Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government and Minister for the West Midlands.

He was re-elected at the 2010 general election, ahead of Conservative Party candidate Graeme Brown. While his own seat was a marginal in this parliamentary term, the other three Labour MPs for the borough of Dudley lost their seats. Austin nominated Ed Balls, who came third, for the Labour leadership election of 2010. Under Ed Miliband he served as Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport between 2010 and 2011 and Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions between 2011 and 2013.