Khalid Mahmood is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Labour PartyThe Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
politicianA politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
who has been the
Member of ParliamentA Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MP) for Birmingham Perry Barr since
2001The United Kingdom general election, 2001 was held on Thursday 7 June 2001 to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. It was dubbed "the quiet landslide" by the media, as the Labour Party was re-elected with another landslide result and only suffered a net loss of 6 seats...
.
Political career
Mahmood is a graduate of
UCE BirminghamBirmingham City University is a British university in the city of Birmingham, England. It is the second largest of three universities in the city, the other two being the Aston University and University of Birmingham...
and a former engineer with a trade union background. He was a
Birmingham City CouncilThe Birmingham City Council is the body responsible for the governance of the City of Birmingham in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. It is the most populated local authority in the United Kingdom with, following a reorganisation of boundaries in June 2004, 120 Birmingham...
lor from 1990–1992.
In 2001, Mahmood was selected for the Perry Barr seat by an election of local Labour party members.
Though Khalid held the seat for Labour in the
2001 electionThe United Kingdom general election, 2001 was held on Thursday 7 June 2001 to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. It was dubbed "the quiet landslide" by the media, as the Labour Party was re-elected with another landslide result and only suffered a net loss of 6 seats...
, his share of the vote fell by 16.5%, much of which went to the
Liberal DemocratThe Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
candidate Jon Hunt, who ran on an 'anti-sleaze' ticket. Mahmood subsequently increased his share of the vote slightly at the
2005 electionThe United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....
, though his majority fell by 805 votes. He was again elected in 2010.
Khalid rarely rebels against the Labour Party and voted in agreement with
Tony BlairAnthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
93.1% of the time during the previous parliament. He has voted strongly for the introduction of national ID cards, student top-up fees, anti-terrorism laws and he voted very strongly against investigating the
Iraq war.
He served as
Parliamentary Private SecretaryA Parliamentary Private Secretary is a role given to a United Kingdom Member of Parliament by a senior minister in government or shadow minister to act as their contact for the House of Commons; this role is junior to that of Parliamentary Under-Secretary, which is a ministerial post, salaried by...
to Home Office Minister
Tony McNultyAnthony "Tony" James McNulty is a former British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Harrow East from 1997 to 2010 and was a government minister from 2002 to 2009. He was Minister for London and Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform at the Department for...
from 10 November 2005 until 6 September 2006, when he resigned after signing a letter calling for Prime Minister Tony Blair to step down. Pakistani-born Mahmood stated that he was "flabbergasted and shocked" after he learned that bin Laden was living in a city with thousands of Pakistani troops, reviving questions about alleged links between al-Qaeda and elements in Pakistan's security forces.
UK MP expenses row
In May 2009 it was revealed, as part of
a series of leaked UK MPs expense detailsThe United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal was a major political scandal triggered by the leak and subsequent publication by the Telegraph Group in 2009 of expense claims made by members of the United Kingdom Parliament over several years...
, that Mahmood claimed for £1,350 to stay in a five-star west London hotel with his girlfriend. Mahmood also claimed more than £35,000 in expenses for food over the course of his eight years as an MP.
External links