Ms Marie Rimmer

Marie Rimmer has been Labour MP for St Helens South and Whiston since 2015. She is 79 years old. She holds a CBE for services to local government. She started work at Pilkington Glass in St Helens in 1962 at the age of 15 as a messenger, rising to Health and Safety Adviser and buyer for the engineering division. She served as a councillor on St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council for 36 years from 1978 to 2014 and led the council at least twice. She secured the land for Willowbrook Hospice in 1994, which has served thousands of families. She secured two replacement hospitals for the borough, St Helens Hospital and Whiston Hospital, both rated outstanding by the CQC. She secured the site for the Totally Wicked Stadium, the home of St Helens Saints rugby league club, which opened in 2011. In April 2023 the council granted her Freedom of the Borough alongside Saints legend James Roby and World Darts Champion Michael Smith.

She ran a town for 36 years and built three of its major institutions.

Born on 27 April 1947 in St Helens, she has lived in the town all her life. Her predecessor as MP was Shaun Woodward, a former Conservative MP for Witney (the seat David Cameron later held) who defected to Labour in 1999 and was placed in St Helens South. Rimmer replaced an outsider with a local life. Her 2024 majority was 11,945 (31.4 per cent). Reform UK's presence in the constituency is noted but the seat remains safely Labour.

Since entering Parliament she has served on the Justice Committee (2015 to 2020), as Shadow Minister for Disabled People (February to October 2017), as an Opposition Whip (April 2020 to December 2021), and on the Public Accounts Committee. Her parliamentary career has been respectable but operates on a different scale from her council career. In local government she built hospitals and stadiums. In Parliament she scrutinised policy and kept the books.

The Scottish referendum assault charge must be addressed. In September 2014, before she was elected to Parliament, Rimmer was charged with assaulting a Yes campaigner outside a polling station in Glasgow during the Scottish independence referendum. The case went to trial in Scotland. The verdict was "not proven," the Scottish legal outcome that falls between guilty and not guilty. It was not a conviction. It should not be treated as one. It remains the most prominent public controversy attached to her name and it arrived before her parliamentary career began.