Stephen Hesford (born 27 May 1957) is a British Labour politician and barrister who served as the member of parliament (MP) for

Wirral West Wirral West is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament by Matthew Patrick of the Labour Party since 2024. Constituency profile The constituency is one of four covering the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. It in ...

from

1997 Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 1 ...

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

Early life

Born in Lowton St Mary's, near

Leigh Leigh may refer to: Places In England Pronounced : * Leigh, Greater Manchester, Borough of Wigan ** Leigh (UK Parliament constituency) * Leigh-on-Sea, Essex Pronounced : * Leigh, Dorset * Leigh, Gloucestershire * Leigh, Kent * Leigh, Staffor ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, Hesford was educated at Urmston Grammar School. In 1978, he received a BSc in

Social Science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

from the

University of Bradford The University of Bradford is a public research university located in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. A plate glass university, it received its royal charter in 1966, making it the 40th university to be created in Britain, but ...

, and earned an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

at the

Polytechnic of Central London The University of Westminster is a public university based in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1838 as the Royal Polytechnic Institution, it was the first polytechnic to open in London. The Polytechnic formally received a Royal charter in Au ...

in 1980. Hesford was

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

Gray's Inn The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and Wale ...

in 1981 and worked as a criminal law

barrister A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdiction (area), jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include arguing cases in courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, jurisprud ...

Altrincham, Cheshire Altrincham ( , locally ) is a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, south of the River Mersey. It is southwest of Manchester, southwest of Sale and east of Warrington. At the 2021 census, the built up area had a populatio ...

until his election to

Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

Parliamentary career

Hesford was an assistant to

Joan Lestor Joan Lestor, Baroness Lestor of Eccles (13 November 1927 – 27 March 1998) was a British Labour politician. She was MP for Eton and Slough between 1966 and 1983, and MP for Eccles from 1987 to 1997. Early life Lestor was born in Vancouver, Br ...

, Labour MP for Eccles, in 1992, and unsuccessfully contested

South Suffolk South Suffolk is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by James Cartlidge, a Conservative. History South Suffolk is one of seven constituencies in the county of Suffolk and was created by boundary c ...

in the general election of the same year. He was elected to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, 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 ...

at the 1997 General Election for

, defeating former Cabinet minister David Hunt with a 13.8% swing. Making his

maiden speech A maiden speech is the first speech given by a newly elected or appointed member of a legislature or parliament. Traditions surrounding maiden speeches vary from country to country. In many Westminster system governments, there is a convention th ...

on 3 July 1997, Hesford recalled a constituency predecessor and former

House Speaker The speaker of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body, is its presiding officer, or the chair. The title was first used in 1377 in England. Usage The title was first recorded in 1377 to describe the role of Thomas de Hung ...

Selwyn Lloyd John Selwyn Brooke Selwyn-Lloyd, Baron Selwyn-Lloyd (28 July 1904 – 17 May 1978), was a British politician who served as Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom), Speaker of the House of Commons from 1971 to 1976, having previously hel ...

. Hesford served on the

Northern Ireland Affairs Committee The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee (or simply the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee) is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The committee's remit is to examine the expenditure, admini ...

from 1998 to 2000, and the Health and Social Care Committee from 1999 to 2001 and again from 2007 to 2010. He was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Valerie Amos,

Leader of the House of Lords The leader of the House of Lords is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom who is responsible for arranging government business in the House of Lords. The post is also the leader of the governing party in the House of Lords who acts ...

, after the 2005 General Election until September 2006. Serving as

PPS PPS commonly refers to: * Post-postscript, an afterthought, usually in a document. PPS may also refer to: Aviation * Puerto Princesa International Airport, Palawan, Philippines (by IATA code) * Priority Passenger Service, in Singapore Airlines#Fre ...

Vera Baird Dame Vera Baird (' Thomas; born 13 February 1950) is a British barrister and politician who has held roles as a government minister, police and crime commissioner, and Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales. A Labour Party Member of P ...

Solicitor General A solicitor general is a government official who serves as the chief representative of the government in courtroom proceedings. In systems based on the English common law that have an attorney general or equivalent position, the solicitor general ...

, he resigned in September 2009 in protest over

Baroness Scotland Patricia Janet Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, (born 19 August 1955), is a Dominican-British barrister and politician who served as the sixth secretary-general of the Commonwealth of Nations from 2016 to 2025. She was the first woman to ...

remaining as

Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general (: attorneys general) or attorney-general (AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have executive responsibility for law enf ...

after breaking employment laws. On 23 January 2010, Hesford announced that he would not stand at the 2010 general election for "family reasons".

Personal life

Hesford married Elizabeth Anne Henshall in 1984, with whom he has two sons. He is a member of the

Fabian Society The Fabian Society () is a History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom, British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in ...

and the

Lancashire County Cricket Club Lancashire Cricket Club represents the Historic counties of England, historic county of Lancashire in Cricket in England, English cricket. The club has held first-class cricket, first-class status since it was founded in 1864. Lancashire's ho ...

. Since leaving Parliament, he has become a guest lecturer at the

University of Chester The University of Chester is a public university located in Chester, England. The university originated as the first purpose-built teacher training college in the UK. As a university, it now occupies five campuses, campus sites in and around Ch ...

References

External links

Guardian Unlimited Politics – Ask Aristotle: Stephen Hesford MP

TheyWorkForYou.com – Stephen Hesford MP

BBC Politics Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hesford, Stephen 1957 births Living people Alumni of the University of Bradford English barristers Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Members of Gray's Inn People educated at Urmston Grammar People from Lowton Politics of the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral UK MPs 1997–2001 UK MPs 2001–2005 UK MPs 2005–2010 Alumni of the Polytechnic of Central London