Quick Facts
Biography
David John Stewart (born 5 May 1956) is a Scottish Labour and Co-operative Party politician. Since 2007, he has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Highlands and Islands region. From 1997 until his defeat in 2005, he sat in the British House of Commons as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber.
Prior to his election in 1997, he had been a leading member of Labour’s Scottish Executive. He is married to Linda Stewart, who also stood in the 2007 Scottish elections as Labour Party candidate for the Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber Constituency. She however failed to be elected.
House of Commons
In 1997 he was the first Labour Member of Parliament for the Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber constituency in Scotland and was re-elected in 2001. In 2005 the constituency was reformed to Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, an election which he lost to Liberal Democrat candidate Danny Alexander. During his time as an MP, he was a member of the Scottish and Work and Pensions Select Committees and from 2003−05 was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Scotland.
During his time out of office, Stewart was employed as Assistant Director for Rural Affairs with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.
Scottish Parliament
In May 2007 he returned to parliamentary life, this time to the Scottish Parliament as a list MSP for the Highlands and Islands electoral region. In October 2008, the Labour Leader in the Scottish Parliament, Iain Gray, appointed him to the shadow cabinet as the Chief Whip of the Labour Party in Holyrood.