Sir Stephen Timms

Sir Stephen Timms has been Labour MP for East Ham since 1994 and is Minister of State for Social Security and Disability. Born in Oldham in July 1955 and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he spent 15 years in the telecommunications industry at Logica and then Ovum, and served ten years as a Newham councillor, four of them as council leader. He is also the Labour Party's Faith Envoy.

His ministerial record under Blair and Brown was unusually extensive: ten ministerial roles across three departments, including Financial Secretary to the Treasury twice, Chief Secretary to the Treasury (2006 to 2007), and Ministers of State for Schools, Pensions, and Employment and Welfare Reform.

On 14 May 2010 Roshonara Choudhry stabbed him twice in the abdomen at a constituency surgery in Beckton, motivated by his vote for the Iraq War and radicalised by online jihadist material; she was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 15 years. It was the first jihadist assassination attempt on a sitting British MP, and he returned to serve.

He chaired the Work and Pensions Committee from 2020 to 2024, succeeding Frank Field, before being appointed Minister of State for Social Security and Disability at the DWP in July 2024, a brief that maps directly onto that committee expertise and to which he has made 360 debate contributions. He has voted in 375 divisions with no whipped rebellions. In 2024 he was elected again with a majority of 12,863 (33.9 per cent), reduced from past landslides but still one of the largest in the country.