Liz Kendall was first elected as the Labour Party MP for Leicester West in 2010, being reelected in 2019 with a majority of 4,212.
As part of Keir Starmer’s September 2023 shadow cabinet reshuffle, Kendall was appointed as shadow secretary of state for work and pensions.
The constituency of Leicester West is the least ethnically diverse of the three Leicester seats. Containing the local authority estates at Braunstone and Beaumont Leys, close to a third of the housing is owned by the local authority. A relatively deprived area, unemployment in this constituency has frequently been amongst the highest anywhere in the UK. This is Labour’s longest standing seat in Leicester having been held by the party ever since the Second World.
Kendall served as Shadow Minister for Social Care from 2020 to 2023. Under Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party, she was a Shadow health spokesperson between 2010 and 2015, and was given cabinet-attending privileges in 2011.
Kendall stood for the Labour leadership in 2015, and was widely seen as the Blairite candidate. She came fourth with less than 5% of the vote.
Kendall supported Owen Smith in his 2016 challenge to Jeremy Corbyn. In the 2020 Labour leadership election, she backed Jess Phillips.
Born in 1971, Kendall was educated at Cambridge University. Before her election to Parliament in 2010, Kendall was director of the Ambulance Service Network – the national body that represents NHS ambulance services. She was also Director of the Maternity Alliance charity.
Kendall has also previously spent time in think tank world. She worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), where she was the Associate Director for health, social care and children’s early years; and at the King’s Fund, where she was a researcher on the public health programme.
She was previously a Special Advisor to the former Labour Cabinet Minister, Patricia Hewitt, herself the former MP for Kendall’s Leicester West constituency.
In January 2022, having stepped down from the opposition front bench, Kendall became a mother at the age of 50. Her son was born through a surrogate mother. Ms Kendall previously revealed the struggle she and her partner faced to become parents, commenting on the birth that, “It has been a really difficult time getting here, so we feel unbelievably lucky and happier than we ever imagined”.
Email: liz.kendall.mp@parliament.uk
Personal Website: www.lizkendall.org
Twitter: @Leicesterliz
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/LabourLiz
