Richard Burden



Richard Haines Burden MP (born 1 September 1954) has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham, Northfield since 1992. He served as a Shadow Transport Minister from 2013 to 2016 and again from 2016 to 2017. He is now a member of the House of Commons International Development Committee.

Political career
He contested the parliamentary seat of Meriden at the 1987 general election, where he was defeated by the sitting Conservative MP Iain Mills by a margin of 16,820. He was then selected to fight the Conservative-held marginal seat of Birmingham, Northfield at the 1992 general election. Burden defeated the sitting Tory MP Roger King by just 630 votes and became a Labour MP.

After Labour formed the government following the 1997 general election, Burden was appointed the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and fellow Birmingham MP Jeff Rooker, and he remained Rooker's PPS when he became the Minister of State at the Department of Social Security.

Following the 2001 general election Burden became a member of the Trade and Industry Select Committee, and after the 2005 election moved to the International Development Committee.

His Birmingham Northfield constituency was long dominated by the local car manufacturer MG Rover, which went into administration after negotiations with Chinese car manufacturer Shanghai Automotive failed in April 2005.

He was present at the meeting in Birmingham with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and Tony Woodley on the same day as the Pope's funeral in Rome in 2005, when the future of MG Rover was apparently decided. The decision made not to further support MG Rover resulted in the company going into administrative receivership, and 6,500 employees being made redundant in addition to many other employees of its car dealerships and component suppliers in the UK Burden has repeatedly raised the issue in Parliament, in relation to the local economy, jobs and skills.

Burden is not a particularly frequent Labour rebel, but has voted against the government on a few occasions, most notably on the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the 2005 anti-terror bill, which included provision to hold terrorist suspects for 90 days without trial.

He was re-elected at the May 2010 general election.

Burden became Shadow Transport Minister under Ed Miliband in 2013, with responsibility for roads and road safety, motor agencies, cycling and future transport.

He retained a Shadow Ministerial role under Jeremy Corbyn after the new leader was elected in 2015. He rejoined the frontbench as Shadow Transport Minister in October 2016, with responsibility for aviation, maritime, roads and future transport. He stayed in this post until the 2017 General Election, after which he stood down from the frontbench to join the International Development Committee.