Stephanie Peacock

Stephanie Peacock is the Labour MP for Barnsley South and Minister for Sport, Tourism, Civil Society and Youth. Born in Birmingham in 1986, she read History at Queen Mary University of London and took a master's at University College London, a more substantial academic foundation than "history teacher" alone implies. A Labour member since her teens, she came to Parliament with unusually deep party machinery experience: four years on the National Executive Committee and a decade on the National Policy Forum, the party's policymaking body. She worked for the Black Country MP Sylvia Heal, then as a trade union education officer training activists across northern England, and spent four years as a GMB Political Officer.

She has been Parliamentary Chair of Hope not Hate, the anti fascist campaign, chairs the APPG for Industrial Heritage and is joint chair of the APPG for Veterans. Her record is not as thin as is sometimes claimed: she campaigned successfully to raise the maximum sentences for causing death by dangerous driving, and led the campaign for justice for retired miners, demanding an end to the government taking from miners' pensions, a sum she puts at over £4 billion. Both are concrete outcomes.

She was first elected for Barnsley East in 2017, succeeding Michael Dugher, and won the new Barnsley South in 2024 with 16,847 votes (46.7 per cent) and a majority of 4,748 (13.5 per cent), with Reform UK second on 33.2 per cent. She resigned as an opposition whip in March 2019 after defying the party to vote against a second referendum amendment, understanding that 71 per cent of Barnsley had voted Leave. Since July 2024 she has held her ministerial brief, retitled from Sport, Media, Civil Society and Youth to Sport, Tourism, Civil Society and Youth in September 2025 as the portfolio expanded.