Louise Ellman - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

She unsuccessfully contested the Darwen constituency at the 1979 general election where she was defeated by the sitting veteran Conservative MP Charles Fletcher-Cooke by 13,026 votes.

She was elected to Parliament at the 1997 general election for the safe seat of Liverpool Riverside. She held the seat with a majority of 21,799 and has held the seat comfortably since. She made her maiden speech on 9 June 1997. She has been a member of the Transport Committee and its predecessor Transport, Local Government and the Regions since her election in 1997. Ellman is also the Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement and Vice Chair of Labour Friends of Israel and has been an active spokeswoman in Parliament on issues relating to transport, local government and the Middle East. She has also played an active effort in the effort to pressure the Bulgarian government to free Michael Shields and recently, Gillian Gibbons - the teacher jailed in Sudan for blasphemy who has now been pardoned. When elected in 2001, the turnout of the vote in her constituency was the lowest in the country at just 34.1%.

On 21 May 2008, she was selected to become the Chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee - the chair becoming vacant after the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody MP.