Barry Gardiner has been the Labour MP for Brent North since 1997, being reelected in 2019 with a majority of 8,079.
The Brent North constituency is found within North West London and covers the areas of Wembley, Kingsbury, Sudbury, Alperton and Kenton. The constituency has a large Asian community, and according to the 2011 census had one of the UK’s highest proportion of residents born outside of the EU. Brent North was previously held by the Conservative Party up until 1997, but in the first quarter of the century, this area of London has turned heavily to Labour.
Gardiner served in Labour’s Shadow Cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn, most notably as Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade.
Gardiner also served in the last Labour government, variously as Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Trade and Industry, and Under-Secretary of State for biodiversity. He then briefly served as the Prime Minister’s special representative on forestry,
Barry Gardiner was born in Glasgow in 1957. His father died when he was eight and his mother when he was aged just seventeen. Gardiner studied at St. Andrews University and Cambridge University.
In 1983, he won a John F Kennedy scholarship to do research at Harvard in America. He ran a company of international maritime arbitrators for 10 years before entering Parliament.
Barry Gardiner was a City Councillor in Cambridge between 1988 and 1994, and became the youngest mayor in the City’s 800 year history.
In 2021, Mr Gardiner hit the headlines after it was reported that his office had received more than £500,000 over six years from Christine Lee, a lady who was subsequently accused of being an employee of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Ms Lee has been accused by the security agency MI5 of covert “political interference”.
Gardiner has three sons and a daughter, one of whom was a professional footballer for Wycombe Wanderers. Continuing the family tradition, Barry Gardiner’s father, John Gardiner, was himself an international footballer for Scotland. Gardiner employs his wife as Constituency Office Manager.
Barry Gardiner is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on International Conservation; and Nature. He is Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Thalassaemia; and Climate Change.
Email: barry.gardiner.mp@parliament.uk
Personal Website: http://www.barrygardiner.com/
Twitter: @BarryGardiner
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/barrygardinerMP
