Mike O'Brien (British Politician) - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

O'Brien contested Ruislip Northwood in 1983, and North Warwickshire in 1987.

He was elected as the Member of Parliament for the West Midlands constituency of North Warwickshire at the 1992 general election, defeating the Conservative incumbent Francis Maude, and lost his seat to the Conservative candidate at the 2010 general election.

He served on the Home Affairs Select Committee from November 1992 to May 1993 focusing on reports on Youth Justice and the defence of provocation in murder cases involving a spouse. In May 1993 he became the first Labour Parliamentary Adviser to the Police Federation in 20 years and subsequently transferred to the Treasury Select Committee where he worked on a report into the collapse of Barings Bank and other reports on City Fraud and Independence of the Bank of England.

He served as Immigration Minister in the Home Office from 1997 to 2001. He developed procedures to deal with suspected terrorists at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. He also took through major reforms in the Immigration and Asylum Act, including introducing fines for hauliers found to have illegal migrants in their lorry, whether or not the haulier knew of their presence. From May 1999 he became the Minister for Constitutional Affairs, taking through the Commons the Freedom of Information Act, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, two Representation of the People Acts and introducing a White Paper on Alcohol Licensing Reform. As Minister responsible for Race Relations he developed the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 which placed obligations on all public bodies to promote good race relations. He also worked to develop closer links between the Government and the Muslim community, something he continued to work on over the next decade, particularly after 9/11.

Then at the Foreign Office from 2002 to 2003 he was Minister for the Middle East. He went to Libya to hold the first meeting of a British Minister with Muammar al-Gaddafi which opened the way to better relations with the West and cooperation on ending controversial Libyan weapons research programmes. He was the first Western Minister into Baghdad after the Iraq War and worked on relationships with Iran, Syria and Afghanistan during this period.

He was then appointed Minister of State for Trade and Industry, dealing with talks with the WTO as part of the Doha Round and helping to write the 2004 Trade White Paper. He moved to become Minister of State for E-commerce, Energy & Competitiveness at the Department of Trade and Industry on 9 September 2004. After the 2005 General Election he replaced Harriet Harman as Solicitor General for England and Wales.

On 29 June 2007 he moved to be the Minister of State for Pension Reform in the Department for Work and Pensions under Secretary of State Peter Hain. Referring to the long running Pensions Action Group campaign and speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Moneybox programme on the day compensation was announced, pensions expert Ros Altmann, credited Peter Hain and O'Brien with "having been very different to deal with than their predecessors and ... willing and eager to engage and find a way to sort this out." The Pensions Act 2008 completed its major stages whilst O' Brien was minister and received Royal Assent in November 2008.

On 5 October 2008, he moved to be Minister of State for Energy in order to help create the new Department of Energy and Climate Change. He took through Parliament two Energy Acts making significant reforms to take account of the Climate Change debate and to enable the building of new nuclear power stations.

In June 2009 he became the Minister of State for Health. As well as taking through administrative reforms of the NHS in two Acts of Parliament, he negotiated a settlement of compensation for the victims of Thalidomide and introduced new rights for current and former service personnel injured in the line of duty to get priority treatment from the NHS.

In the 2010 general election Mike O'Brien lost North Warwickshire to Dan Byles (Conservative) by 54 votes.

Mike O'Brien has held the following positions:

• May 1997-July 1999 - Parliamentary under Secretary of State for Immigration
• July 1999-May 2002 - Parliamentary under Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs
• May 2002-June 2003 - Parliamentary under Secretary of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office
• June 2003-September 2004 - Minister of State for Trade and Investment
• September 2004-May 2005 - Minister of State for Energy
• May 2005-June 2007 - Solicitor General
• June 2007-October 2008 - Minister of State for Pensions
• October 2008-June 2009 - Minister of State for Energy
• June 2009-May 2010 - Minister of State for Health