Parliamentary Career
He contested the Richmond and Barnes seat in the 1992 general election. He was elected to Parliament in a by-election on 16 February 1995, to replace Neil Kinnock (party leader from 1983 to 1992), who had resigned. From 1996-7, he was on the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. He served as parliamentary private secretary to Gordon Brown and as a whip before becoming a minister. He had to resign in 1999 when he confessed to receiving a leaked Social Security Select Committee report on Child benefit. He was later suspended for three days from the Commons. He was succeeded by John Healey. He was a junior minister at the Ministry of Defence, with special responsibility for veterans, but left government in the May 2006 reshuffle. He was made a Member of the Privy Council on 19 July 2006.
In Paul Flynn's 1999 book Dragons and Poodles, he was described as being the seamstress-in-chief of stitch ups, and that he could be ambitious and can be pompous.
On 29 January 2010, Touhig announced that he would stand down at the 2010 General Election.
Read more about this topic: Don Touhig
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)