Ms Stella Creasy

Stella Creasy has been Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow since 2010. In 2024 she was returned with 27,172 votes (59.5 per cent) and a majority of 17,996. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics, where she won the 2005 Richard Titmuss Prize. She was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, reading Social and Political Sciences. She was Mayor of Waltham Forest at 25. She pioneered the concept of a "locum MP" to cover her constituency during maternity leave. She has seven rebellions in the current Parliament.

Born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield, she grew up in Colchester. She attended Colchester County High School for Girls. Her doctoral thesis at the LSE was titled "Understanding the Lifeworld of Social Exclusion." Before entering Parliament she worked as a researcher and speechwriter for Labour ministers, served as deputy director of Involve (a think tank focused on democratic participation), and was Head of Public Affairs and Campaigns at the Scout Association.

She was elected to Waltham Forest Council in 2002 for Lea Bridge ward and served as Mayor of Waltham Forest from 2002 to 2003, one of the youngest mayors in London at the time. She was 25. She served on the council until 2006.

The payday lending campaign established her reputation. Creasy's sustained pressure on high cost credit companies, particularly Wonga, helped make exploitative lending a mainstream political issue. The FCA cap on payday loan charges followed. Wonga's subsequent collapse owed to multiple factors but Creasy had done more than any other single MP to put the company and the industry under public and regulatory scrutiny.

The Northern Ireland abortion amendment was her most consequential parliamentary achievement. In 2017, she tabled an amendment allowing Northern Irish women to access free NHS abortions in England, which was adopted as government policy. In 2019, during the suspension of Stormont, she used the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill to table a further amendment that changed abortion law in Northern Ireland entirely, decriminalising abortion and making provision for services to be commissioned. This was legislative change with direct human consequences: women in Northern Ireland who had previously faced potential life imprisonment for ending a pregnancy gained legal access to healthcare. She continues to campaign for the full decriminalisation of abortion across the UK, with a petition debated in June 2025.

She pioneered maternity provision for MPs. In 2019 she became the first MP to appoint a "locum MP" to handle her constituency casework during maternity leave. In 2021, while seven months pregnant, she threatened to sue IPSA after they rejected her request for full maternity cover, arguing that functions such as Commons debates could only be undertaken by the elected MP. The confrontation exposed the absence of any formal maternity framework for parliamentarians.

Her shadow career included Shadow Minister for Crime Prevention (2011 to 2013) and Shadow Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills (2013 to 2015). She stood for the Labour deputy leadership in 2015, finishing second to Tom Watson. That result confirmed a following beyond Walthamstow but also marked the ceiling: admired, talked about, not ultimately chosen.

In the current Parliament she has voted in more than 450 divisions with seven rebellions, making her one of the more independently minded Labour MPs. She currently campaigns on statutory maternity pay (arguing that £4.99 per hour for a full time worker is 59 per cent less than the National Living Wage of £12.21), SEND education rights, and the full decriminalisation of abortion.