Louise Ellman



Dame Louise Joyce Ellman DBE (born 14 November 1945) has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool, Riverside since 1997.

Parliamentary career
She was elected to Parliament at the 1997 general election for the safe seat of Liverpool, Riverside. She held the seat with a majority of 21,799 and has held the seat comfortably at successive general elections. She made her maiden speech on 9 June 1997. When she was re-elected in 2001, the turnout of the vote in her constituency was the lowest in the country at just 34.1%.

She has been a member of the Transport Committee and its predecessor Transport, Local Government and the Regions since she was first elected. On 21 May 2008, she was selected to become the Chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, the post having become vacant after the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody MP. She was returned unopposed to that position after the 2015 general election.

She voted "very strongly for" the Iraq War, "very strongly against" an investigation into that war, and "very strongly for" renewal of Trident, Britain's nuclear weapons programme. She is a supporter of gay rights and an opponent of foundation hospitals, the un-elected House of Lords, and fox-hunting. In her time in Parliament she has very rarely voted against the Party line.