Peter Kyle (politician)

Peter John Kyle (born 9 September 1970) is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology since July 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hove and Portslade, formerly Hove, since 2015. Kyle previously served as Shadow Minister for Victims and Youth Justice, Shadow Minister for Schools, and Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary.

Early life and career

Peter Kyle was born on 9 September 1970 and grew up in West Sussex, where he was educated at Felpham Comprehensive School (now Felpham Community College), near Bognor Regis. It was at school that he found out he had dyslexia and left school, in his own words, "without any usable qualifications".

During an interview on the Rest is Politics, Kyle stated that his parents went through a messy divorce when he was 18.

By the age of 25, he was accepted on his third attempt to become a student at the University of Sussex, where he gained a degree in geography, international development, and environmental studies, and later a doctorate in community development.

After university, Kyle worked as an aid worker and as a project director for the charity Children on the Edge in Eastern Europe and the Balkans helping young people whose lives had been affected by the political instability created by the Bosnian War and Kosovan War, helping to establish an orphanage in Romania.

In 2006, Kyle became a Cabinet Office special adviser focusing on social exclusion policy.

From 2007 to 2013, he was deputy chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO). In 2013, he became chief executive of Working for Youth, a newly formed charity focusing on helping unemployed youth.

Parliamentary career

At the 2015 general election, Kyle was elected to Parliament as MP for Hove with 42.3% of the vote and a majority of 1,236.

Kyle backed Liz Kendall in the 2015 Labour leadership election, and supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour leadership election.

In December 2015, Kyle voted in favour of the United Kingdom carrying out targeted air strikes against Islamic State in Syria. He was subsequently the subject of harassment and intimidation by anti-war activists who sent him a picture of a dead baby. In response he said, "People have put deep thought and a lot of anguish into this decision and are taking a very principled stance. We need to have respect for each other's views on this".

Kyle sat on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee between 2016 and 2020. In May 2016, he questioned Mike Ashley, boss of Sports Direct, over poor working practices in his warehouses. Ashley accused Kyle of making "defamatory comments" against him and called for the MP to stand down from the committee.

He campaigned for remaining in the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum. In 2018, he rebelled against the Conservative government and the Labour Party whip in order to vote in favour of an amendment which would have kept the United Kingdom in the European Economic Area (EEA) in the event of the country leaving the European Union.

Kyle has championed apprenticeships, pledging in August 2016 to create 1,000 apprenticeships in 1,000 days in co-operation with the council and via the creation of a Greater Brighton Employer Skills Task Force.

Kyle was re-elected as MP for Hove at the snap 2017 general election with an increased vote share of 64.1% and an increased majority of 18,757.

In May 2018 Kyle called for the voting age to be lowered to 16 and put forward his own bill to this effect. The bill failed to pass after the Conservative Party employed a filibuster to prevent a vote on the bill being held in the House of Commons.

In March 2019, alongside fellow Labour MP Phil Wilson, Kyle put forward an amendment to Theresa May's Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Dubbed the "Kyle-Wilson" amendment, it aimed to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on the condition that the deal on offer would go back to the British people through a confirmatory vote. Whilst failing to pass twice in the House of Commons, it came 12 votes short on its second attempt. Both Kyle and Wilson signalled that they would bring back the amendment if Boris Johnson were to return with a Brexit deal in October 2019. Alongside deputy leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson, Kyle advocated for this position to become Labour policy.

At the 2019 general election, Kyle was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 58.3% and a decreased majority of 17,044.

Following Labour's defeat in the 2019 general election, Kyle urged Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to resign, saying that the loss was not related to Labour's position on Brexit but rather to "dissatisfaction with our leadership and seeming incompetence".

Kyle endorsed Jess Phillips in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election.

In September 2020, Kyle was appointed a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel. A vocal critic of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour party, in a 2019 meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, he challenged Corbyn "to consider what it is about his world view – separate from a political platform – that has attracted these people into our party in the first place." He also signed an open letter to the Jewish Labour Movement pledging to stamp out antisemitism in the Labour Party, and "urges members of the group not to leave the party and apologises for letting its Jewish supporters down." He endorsed the publication of the report by the EHRC which concluded that the Labour Party was guilty of breaches of the Equality Act 2010 in relation to antisemitism and apologised to the Jewish community. In 2014 Kyle attended a party delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Territories along with Dame Tessa Jowell and others party figures.

In the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas massacre in Israel, Kyle condemned the Hamas atrocities. On 23 November 2023, he attended and spoke at the March Against Antisemitism in London along with Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis and Conservative MP Robert Jenrick. In December he said that "This is something we must never forget. The Hamas terror attack was done in order to stop processes leading to peaceful existence, not to deliver one. They have sought to wreck any chance of peace. That can't be allowed to happen".

In September 2022, he spoke in favour of Labour accepting Brexit and presenting a "positive vision for a better Britain" outside of the European Union.

Due to the 2023 periodic review of Westminster constituencies, Kyle's constituency of Hove was renamed Hove and Portslade. At the 2024 general election, Kyle was elected to Parliament as MP for Hove and Portslade with 52.4% of the vote and a majority of 19,881.

Shadow Minister for Victims and Youth Justice

In April 2020, he became the Shadow Minister for Victims and Youth Justice. He has campaigned on the issue of 'sex for rent' and demanded a change to the law for landlords who engage in sexual exploitation of tenants.

In February 2021, Kyle presented a bill for victims to Parliament which had the aims of:

* Ensuring victims are read their rights at the same time as perpetrators
* Creating a register for people who run departments in the justice system which routinely ignore victims' rights
* Giving victims of persistent anti-social behaviour the same rights as victims of crimes
* Making the Victims' Commissioner independent of government and able to launch their own investigations.

Shadow Minister for Schools

In a minor Labour reshuffle in May 2021, Kyle was promoted to succeed Wes Streeting as the Shadow Minister for Schools.

Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary

He was appointed Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary in the November 2021 British shadow cabinet reshuffle.

Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology

Peter Kyle was appointed as Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in September 2023.

In October 2023 at the Labour Party Conference, Kyle said that a future Labour government would reduce regulations on technology companies in the development and use of Artificial Intelligence and "put it to work for everyone from every background." This led to some resistance by trade unions over concerns about intellectual property and the risk of "rampant profiteering".

In November 2023, Kyle outlined Labour policies to impose stricter regulations on general artificial intelligence research companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic with stronger requirements for reporting, data-sharing, and user safety. Kyle has also proposed the creation of a 'Regulatory Innovation office', which would expedite important regulatory decisions, the use of 10-year research and development budget settlement, in order to ensure stable long-term private investment, and a new body called 'Skills England', which would bring together "representatives of tertiary education, local and central government with representatives from business leaders and trade unions. In addition to strategic oversight of skills needs across England, the new body will also be responsible for assessing bids for colleges to become 'Technical Excellence Colleges'."

In February 2024, Kyle announced that Labour would scrap the existing voluntary testing agreement between technology companies and the British government, instead creating a statutory regime in which Artificial Intelligence businesses would be required to share with the government the results of their test data. He claimed that this would enable the government to better understand the risks involved in AI and the challenges it could pose to different industries and society in general. He also met with representatives of the United States government and AI companies in Washington, United States, including Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Peter Kyle has endorsed the use of artificial intelligence technology to improve public services, including in the National Health Service and British education system. He also said that "I have seen AI tools which I believe would have caught my mum's cancer earlier. It is personal for me to get this technology used in a way which keeps families together for longer. UK businesses can benefit hugely from the innovation this latest wave of technology can bring."

Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology

Following the Labour Party's victory in the 2024 United Kingdom general election, he was appointed to cabinet as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology at the subsequent formation of the Starmer ministry.

Personal life

From 2016 to 2017 Kyle was chair of governors of Brighton Aldridge Community Academy.

For eight years he was in a relationship with Czech-born Vlastimil Tiser, until Tiser's death in 2012. His mother died of cancer six days later. He said in an interview with ''The Times'' that "2012, the year of the Olympics, one of the best years for many people, was the worst year of my life. ..I was on autopilot. There was constant adrenaline. Then afterwards, silence."

Kyle was sworn of the Privy Council on 10 July 2024, entitling him to be styled "The Right Honourable" for life.

References

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kyle, Peter
1970 births
Living people
Alumni of the University of Sussex
Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
UK MPs 2015–2017
UK MPs 2017–2019
UK MPs 2019–2024
UK MPs 2024–present
British Secretaries of State
British special advisers
English gay politicians
LGBTQ members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
Politicians from Brighton and Hove
Politicians with dyslexia
British politicians with disabilities
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom