Margaret Moran - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

For the 1997 election, she was selected to stand for Labour in Luton South through an all-women shortlist.At the election she was elected, gaining the seat from the Conservatives.

Following her re-election in the 2001 election she was promoted to the position of assistant whip attached to HM Treasury between 2003 and 2005. While serving as a whip, Moran was obliged to vote along with the Government line, and did so. She was re-elected for a third term in the 2005 election, with a reduced majority. There had been significant opposition among Luton's large Muslim population to her support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Moran supported plans to negotiate with Spain over the status of Gibraltar, describing Gibraltar as "effectively an outpost colony within a major European partner", although she accepted that any change must have the consent of Gibraltarians. From 2006, Moran was a member of the Home Affairs Committee, where she took an interest in helping female victims of domestic violence and in issues of child protection. She was for a time chairwoman of the All-Party Group on Domestic Violence and worked with Women's Aid to launch online projects such as WomenSpeak and KidSpeak.

Moran's interest in child protection led her to go to the Internet Governance Forum at Rio de Janeiro in November 2007 and was involved in the launch of the UK Internet Governance Forum. on 6 March 2008. Moran became a member of the Hansard Society Commission on the Scrutiny of Parliament. She also worked with the Fawcett Society producing a publication on women's participation on the internet.