Stephen Twigg



Stephen Twigg (born 25 December 1966) has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool, West Derby since 2010. He previously served as the Member of Parliament for Enfield, Southgate from 1997 to 2005.

Political career
He came to national prominence in 1997 by winning the seat of Defence Secretary Michael Portillo. Twigg was made the Minister of State for School Standards in 2004, a job he held until he lost his seat in 2005. He returned to parliament in 2010, after he was elected Member of Parliament for Liverpool West Derby.

Following Edward Miliband's election to the Labour leadership, he made Twigg a Shadow Foreign Office Minister. In his October 2011 reshuffle, Miliband promoted Twigg to the post of Shadow Secretary of State for Education. However, on 7 October 2013 he was replaced in the reshuffle.

In the 1997 election he was elected to Parliament for Enfield Southgate with a majority of 1,433. There had been a large 17.4% swing to him from his Conservative opponent, Michael Portillo. Portillo, a cabinet minister, had been widely tipped to be the next Tory leader, and the loss of his seat was one of the most unexpected results of the election.

In the 2001 election Twigg held the seat with an increased majority of 5,546 over Conservative John Flack. Following the 2001 election, Twigg was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook, and in 2002 became a junior minister in the Department for Education and Skills, from where he led the London Challenge initiative. In 2004, in the government changes following the resignation of David Blunkett, he was promoted to Minister of State for school standards.

Whilst an MP he served as chairman of two All Party Parliamentary Groups—on epilepsy and on youth issues. He is a former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel.

In the 2005 election, Twigg lost his seat to the Conservative Party candidate, David Burrowes, by a margin of 1,747 votes (a swing of 8.7%). During his concession speech, Twigg claimed that he would not be the last Labour MP for Enfield Southgate. He was proved correct in 2017, with the election of Bambos Charalambous, the Labour candidate, on 8 June.

Twigg was selected as the Labour Co-operative candidate for the Liverpool West Derby constituency at the 2010 general election. He was elected with a majority of 18,467, garnering 64.1% of the vote.

In October 2010 he unsuccessfully contested the election for the Shadow Cabinet, coming in 36th out of the 49 candidates and winning 55 votes. He was subsequently appointed to the Labour front bench as a shadow minister in the Foreign Affairs team.

On 7 October 2011 he was appointed to the post of Shadow Secretary of State for Education, following the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle.

In the 2013 Shadow Cabinet Reshuffle, Twigg lost his position of Shadow Education Secretary and was demoted to the Shadow Justice Team as Shadow Minister for Constitutional Reform.

On 19 June 2015, he was announced as having been elected to the chairmanship of the International Development Select Committee.