Torsten Bell

Torsten Bell is the Labour MP for Swansea West and Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Pensions, also a Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury. Born in Greenwich in September 1982 and educated at Mansfield College, Oxford, he is an economist, author and newspaper columnist.

His career has run through the centre of economic policy. He was a Treasury civil servant working on youth unemployment and child poverty before becoming a special adviser to Chancellor Alistair Darling during the 2008 financial crisis, a political appointment at the heart of crisis management rather than a generic advisory role. He then served as Director of Policy for Ed Miliband and, from 2015 to 2024, as Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, the think tank focused on living standards for working people.

His route into Parliament was abrupt and contested. He was selected for Swansea West on 31 May 2024, just five weeks before the election, after Geraint Davies was suspended over allegations and could not stand. Bell has no prior connection to Swansea or Wales, and the party was accused of parachuting a favoured candidate against local members' wishes. He won comfortably with a majority of 8,515 (23.9 per cent), served as PPS to the Cabinet Office, and in January 2025 was appointed to his pensions ministerial brief, the first Swansea West MP to become a government minister in half a century. The former Pensions Minister Steve Webb said he would arrive "with a deeper knowledge of pensions than many of his predecessors".