Simon Lightwood was elected as the Labour MP for Wakefield in the June 2022 by-election, gaining the seat from the Conservative Party with a majority of 4,925. The by-election was caused following the resignation of Ahmad Khan, who was jailed in May 2022 for sexually assaulting a 15 year old boy in 2008.
Up until the Conservative party gained the seat with a majority of 3,358 in the 2019 General Election, Wakefield had been won by Labour in every general election since the Second World War. Containing the city of Wakefield, the constituency also covers the smaller town of Horbury and the surrounding rural area. It’s electorate voted by 62.8% to leave the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Prior to being elected to parliament, Simon Lightwood served as the Head of Communications for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation. Mr Lightwood had also previously worked for Mary Creagh, the former Labour MP for Wakefield.
Prior to his election to parliament, Mr Lightwood was a member of the party’s national policy forum and sat on Yorkshire Labour’s regional board
Born in 1980, Mr Lightwood has detailed how he grew up in poverty, with seven members of his family living with his grandmother in a two bedroom house. He joined the Labour party in his early twenties.
Mr Lightwood had previously lived in Wakefield for 10 years. He then moved to Calderdale so his husband could be ‘closer to work’.
After Mr Lightwood’s selection as the Labour candidate for the Wakefileld by-election, the entire executive committee of Wakefield’s local Labour group resigned in a row over the selection process.
