Jacob Young is the Conservative MP for Redcar, having been first elected in 2019, gaining the seat from the Labour Party with a majority of 3,527.
Located on the Cleveland coast, Redcar was one of the Conservative Party’s biggest gains in the 2019 General Election, with the party not having won here for over 60 years. An industrial constituency, whose steel works closed in 2009,some 67.7% of the electorate voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
To emphasise the change in the political landscape in recent years, Jacob Young stood in the same seat in 2015 for the Conservatives and came fourth.
Jacob Young was appointed an Assistant Government Whip in September 2022.
Jacob Young was previously a PPS at the Department for Levelling Up but resigned in July 2022 in protest at Boris Johnson continuing to remain as prime minister.
Born in 1993, Jacob Young was educated at the local Redcar and Cleveland College, and then at Teeside University. Now one of the youngest Conservative MPs, he twice previously stood in this constituency, first in 2015 at the age of 22, and then again in 2017.
Before becoming an MP he trained as a chemical engineer and worked as a process operator in the local petrochemicals sector at Sabic UK Petrochemicals. His father and grandfather also worked in the local chemical industry. Young is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on the Chemical Industry, and on Hydrogen.
Young was elected to Middlesbrough Council in 2017. He is a practising Christian and was involved in the creation of the Middlesbrough food bank in 2012.
Young is openly gay and has called for gay conversion therapy to be banned. He has described how his wedding was put back by the 2020/21 Covid pandemic.
He supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum on the European Union.
He is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Switzerland, British Bioethanol, Carbon Capture, and Steel and Related Metal Industries.
Email – jacob.young.mp@parliament.uk
Website – www.jacobyoung.org.uk
Twitter – @JacobYoungMP
