Lilian Rachel Greenwood (born 26 March 1966) is a British Labour Party politician serving as the

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

(MP) for Nottingham South since 2010, and the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip of the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

since 2021. A former union official, she served as the

Shadow Secretary of State for Transport The Shadow Secretary of State for Transport is a political post in the United Kingdom. It has been consistently held by a member of the Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet since May 1979. The Shadow Secretary helps hold the Transport Secretary and ...

Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist ...

's shadow cabinet from 2015 until her resignation in 2016, and as a shadow transport minister under opposition leader

Ed Miliband Edward Samuel "Ed" Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero since 2021. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005. Miliban ...

from 2011 to 2015. On the back benches, Greenwood chaired the

Transport Select Committee The Transport Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the Committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Transport and its asso ...

from 2017 to 2020, and the Commons Finance Committee from 2020 to 2021.

Early life and career

Greenwood was born on the 26 March 1966 in Bolton, Lancashire. She attended

Canon Slade School ) , established = ''ante'' 1855 , closed = , type = Academy , trust = The Bishop Fraser Trust , religious_affiliation = Church of England , president = , head_label = Headteacher , head = Mrs K ...

, a local Church of England state secondary school, before attending

St. Catharine's College, Cambridge St Catharine's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1473 as Katharine Hall, it adopted its current name in 1860. The college is nicknamed "Catz". The college is located in the historic city-centre of Camb ...

. Moving to

Southwell, Nottinghamshire Southwell (, ) is a minster and market town in the district of Newark and Sherwood in Nottinghamshire, England. It is home to the grade-I listed Southwell Minster, the cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. The populat ...

in 1999, Greenwood worked in the county for

Unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...

, the public sector trade union, for 17 years.

Parliamentary career

Greenwood was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the 2010 general election after the incumbent Labour MP, Alan Simpson, announced in 2007 that he would not stand for re-election. She was elected as the MP with 37.3% of the vote, a margin of 4.4% over her closest rival. Shortly after her election, she joined the

, and was subsequently appointed as an assistant opposition whip. In late September 2011, she was promoted by Labour leader

to the role of Shadow Minister for Rail, a position she held up to her re-election at the 2015 general election. Following the election of

as Leader of the Labour Party, on 14 September 2015 she was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet as the

. Greenwood resigned from the Shadow Cabinet in the aftermath of the

2016 EU referendum The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country shoul ...

, among with dozens of her colleagues, in protest against what she saw as Jeremy Corbyn's weak leadership. She supported

Owen Smith Owen Smith (born 2 May 1970) is a former Labour Party politician and subsequently a British lobbyist, who has been the UK government relations director for pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb since 2020. Smith was Member of Parliamen ...

in the failed attempt to replace

in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election. As a backbencher, Greenwood has chaired the

and the Commons Finance Committee, and sat on the Liaison Committee,

Education Select Committee The Education Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Education and any asso ...

and

Regulatory Reform Committee The Regulatory Reform Committee was a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee was to examine subordinate provisions to amend primary legislation as created under the Deregulati ...

. She was re-elected at the

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...

and 2019 General Elections, and backed Lisa Nandy in the

2020 Labour Party leadership election Labour Party leadership elections were held in the following countries in 2020: * 2020 Labour Party leadership election (Ireland) *2020 Labour Party leadership election (UK) **2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election *2020 Scottish Labour deput ...

. On 14 February 2020, Greenwood self-quarantined herself after learning that she and Alex Sobel, another Labour MP, had attended a conference eight days earlier where a confirmed

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

case had also been in attendance. Greenwood returned to the opposition front bench in May 2021, when she was appointed by Labour leader

Keir Starmer Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (; born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and barrister who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras s ...

as the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip of the

for legislation, succeeding Alan Campbell following his promotion to Chief Whip.

References

External links

* , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Greenwood, Lilian 1966 births Living people Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge Trade unionists from Nottinghamshire Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies People from Bolton People from Southwell, Nottinghamshire Politicians from Nottingham UK MPs 2010–2015 UK MPs 2015–2017 UK MPs 2017–2019 UK MPs 2019–present English women trade unionists 21st-century British women politicians 21st-century English women 21st-century English people