Yasmin Qureshi

Yasmin Qureshi has been a Labour MP for Bolton since 2010, now representing Bolton South and Walkden, and was the first woman elected to the predecessor seat of Bolton South East. Born in Gujrat City, Punjab, in July 1963, she came to Britain aged nine, settling in Watford, read Law at London South Bank University and took an LLM at University College London. A Pakistani born child who arrived at nine and became a UCL educated barrister, UN legal director and MP has a more significant trajectory than first appears.

Her career before Parliament was substantial. A barrister who prosecuted for the Crown Prosecution Service, she went on to head the Criminal Legal Section of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and then direct its Department of Judicial Administration, leadership roles in post conflict justice building rather than generic advisory work, and served as Human Rights Adviser to Ken Livingstone during his second term as Mayor of London.

In Parliament her interests are heavily international and legal. She completed the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme across the Royal Navy and RAF, is a UK delegate to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and Trade Envoy to Egypt, and chairs the APPGs on Hormone Pregnancy Tests (Primodos), Pakistan, Dentistry, and Hajj and Umrah. She resigned from the frontbench in November 2023 over the party's stance on Gaza, and her most substantial recent legislative work has been on the Courts and Tribunals Bill. She has voted in 313 divisions with no whipped rebellions, and was elected again in 2024 with a majority of 6,743 (18.3 per cent), with Reform UK on 24.3 per cent.