Alison McGovern

Alison McGovern (born 30 December 1980) has been the Member of Parliament for Wirral South since 2010.

Political life
McGovern was first elected as a councillor for Brunswick Park in the London Borough of Southwark in 2006, later becoming the Deputy Leader of the borough council's 29-member group of Labour councillors.

Parliamentary career
McGovern was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Wirral South in December 2009, following Ben Chapman's decision to stand down at the next election for family reasons, and subsequently won the seat in the 2010 general election, defeating the Conservative candidate, Jeff Clarke, by 531 votes.

She became former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's parliamentary private secretary in July 2010. On 14 September 2010. she held her first adjournment debate regarding employment prospects for young people in Wirral. In November 2010. she was selected by the Parliamentary Labour Party to become a member of the International Development Select Committee.

In December 2010, she introduced a private member's bill before Parliament that would amend the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 to broaden the scope of the general duty of library authorities so as to include a duty to provide related cultural facilities alongside the library service. In March 2011, she visited India as part of an International Development Select Committee delegation.

In the 2013 Labour reshuffle, she was added to the Shadow International Development team. In 2014, she was moved to the shadow Children and Families portfolio.

In September 2016 McGovern was elected co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group Friends of Syria.