Luciana Berger

Luciana Clare Berger (born 13 May 1981) is a British Labour Co-operative politician who has been the member of parliament (MP) for Liverpool Wavertree since 2010. She was appointed Shadow Minister for Public Health on 8 October 2013, before becoming Shadow Minister for Mental Health on 14 September 2015.
Her activities in Parliament have included campaigning against dangerous dogs and their owners, raising the issue of loopholes that allow companies to avoid their health and safety responsibilities, and food poverty. In November 2012 Berger created a film, Breadline Britain, dealing with food poverty and its implications. She resigned from the Shadow Cabinet on 27 June 2016.

Born in London, and from Wembley, Berger is the great-niece of trade union official and Labour MP Manny Shinwell, who rose be a Minister in the Attlee government. Her father runs a furnishings shop, and her mother was a counsellor in a palliative care unit. The family, according to Berger, was more culturally Jewish than religiously so. She was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, a private school in Elstree, Hertfordshire. She subsequently gained a degree in Commerce with Spanish from the University of Birmingham in 2004. She spent a year studying in ICADE in Madrid.

Berger took on and completed a part-time master's degree in Government, Politics and Policy at Birkbeck, University of London after graduation.

Berger was a National Executive Committee member of the National Union of Students. She co-convened the NUS Anti-Racism/Anti-Fascism Campaign. In April 2005, she resigned from the Executive Committee, accusing other NEC members of anti-Semitism.

An independent inquiry later cleared the NUS of failing to tackle anti-Semitism, but criticised it for not having rigorous complaints procedures in place and reacting too slowly to allegations. The report was also critical of Berger, who attended a meeting with the head of the School of Oriental and African Studies following complaints from Jewish students that the union was tolerating anti-Semitism. It stated that "Miss Berger should not have attended the meeting, which was implicitly critical of the union, when she was a national executive member. Protocol dictates she should have sought to support the union in tackling the problem first".

Berger was the Director of Labour Friends of Israel for three years, but stepped down before the 2010 general election to stand in Liverpool. She was a committee member of the London Jewish Forum, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of Jewish life in London, but stepped down when she was elected to Parliament in 2010.

Selection as parliamentary candidate

Berger's selection was controversial within the Liverpool Wavertree party. Frank Hont, regional secretary of the union UNISON, lodged protests about the selection process. During the selection process, Berger lived for about a month at the home of Jane Kennedy, then the sitting MP, whose boyfriend was Labour official Peter Dowling, who ran the selection process. The completed ballot papers were returned to Kennedy's home address. In the run up to the 2010 election, the Labour leadership was accused of "parachuting" Berger in as a candidate.

Kennedy insisted that she and Dowling acted properly. Nearby MP Peter Kilfoyle claimed that there had been a deliberate operation by Blairites to get Berger selected. Unison instead supported Liverpool city councillor Wendy Simon for selection to be Labour's candidate. Berger was selected as Labour candidate for Liverpool Wavertree by "a margin of around 2-1" according to Liverpool Echo, beating Liverpool councillor Wendy Simon and Joyce Still.

A further source of controversy was the Labour National Executive Committee's imposition of an all-women shortlist on the local party. Berger criticised the process after her victory, stating "I would like to have won in an open contest. People have already said I didn't deserve to win."

In the run-up to the General Election, the Liverpool Echo tested Berger with a four-question quiz on Liverpool life and history. She scored two out of four, not knowing who performed Ferry Cross the Mersey and not recognising the name of former Liverpool F.C. manager, Bill Shankly. In her defence, Berger said, "You can't ask a girl a football question" and added "I'm not new to the city. I've been coming here for the past decade through all different jobs."

First parliamentary term (2010–15)

Berger was elected at the 2010 General Election with 53.1% of the vote.

Berger was elected to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee but left the role when she was appointed a junior shadow minister for Energy and Climate Change.

On 31 October 2010, Berger "sparked outrage online" after appearing in a Radio Five Live show which featured Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun. MacKenzie was editor at the time of the Hillsborough disaster and the paper's coverage of the story which led to an ongoing boycott of the paper on Merseyside and vilification of MacKenzie. The Echo wrote that Berger responded to the criticism on her Twitter feed, writing, "Was there for the MP bit with Amber Rudd, wasn't told before who the other guests were."

Berger spoke in support of allowing MPs to tweet in the House of Commons during a debate on 13 October 2011. The Jewish Chronicle reported in September 2011 that Berger had been criticised by the Jewish community in Liverpool and supporters of Israel for not using her position to defend Israel for the sake of career advancement. After sixteen months in parliament, she had not mentioned Israel in any of her parliamentary interventions.

Shadow Minister posts

As Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Berger has been critical of the Government's actions on the environmental agenda, particularly focusing on the Green Investment Bank and the Green Deal, writing in the environment section of The Guardian about the need for a pro-environmental-business agenda. In the run up to the 2011 Budget, Berger also contributed an article to the Left Foot Forward Labour blog challenging the Chancellor of the Exchequer to meet "three Climate Change tests" in order for the Government to reach the Prime Minister's aim of being the "Greenest Government ever".

In June 2011, Berger secured an amendment to the Energy Bill, the Green Deal apprenticeship programme. The amendment states that The Secretary of State will report to parliament on proposals for an apprenticeships scheme within the Green Deal. She later criticised the Green Deal saying in the Independent "Because of sky-high interest rates, hidden charges and penalty payments, the reality for most people will be that the Green Deal ends up costing them more than they save."

On 8 October 2013, Berger was appointed Shadow Minister for Public Health following a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. She had previously signed parliamentary motions in support of NHS funding for homeopathy. A Labour Party spokesman said: "Luciana fully supports the scientific evidence on the use of homeopathy. These old petitions will have no impact on her work as a shadow Health minister."

"Save BBC Radio Merseyside" campaign

In response to proposals by the BBC to consider reducing locally produced content on their local radio network to cover only the breakfast and drivetime periods and syndicating Five Live during the daytime, Berger launched a campaign to Save BBC Radio Merseyside.

Berger also signed Early Day Motion 1640 in Parliament to raise awareness of the topic, which was co-sponsored by other Merseyside MPs Louise Ellman, Bill Esterson, George Howarth, Steve Rotheram and Stephen Twigg.

Second parliamentary term (2015–present)

In May 2015, the UK Independence Party suspended Jack Sen, a candidate who wrote to Berger on Twitter that she would rather have part of the budget sent to Poland/Israel than have it spent on child benefits.

In the 2015 general election Berger was returned with an increased majority.

Shadow Minister for Mental Health

Following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party Leader in September 2015, Berger was appointed as the newly established Shadow Minister for Mental Health. The position does not have an identical counterpart in the current Conservative Government. She resigned from the post on 27 June 2016 in the mass resignation of shadow ministers from the Labour frontbench over concerns about the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Metro Mayor of Liverpool Contest

In 2015, Luciana Berger applied for selection as Labour Party candidate for the position of Metro Mayor of Liverpool, but on 10 August 2016 failed to be selected. There are four imminent mayoral elections in England, the only woman campaigning to be a Labour candidate was Berger.

In January 2013, it was reported that a Merseyside music promoter, Philip Hayes, had been convicted of a racially aggravated public order offence and fined £120 after an 'antisemitic tirade' against Berger at the Liverpool Music Awards.

In October 2014, Garron Helm, a member of the small Neo-Nazi National Action youth group was imprisoned for four weeks after he sent an anti-Semitic tweet to Berger in August 2014; he served two weeks before being released. Following the conviction, it has been reported that similar messages to her are being posted on Twitter. According to Berger in December 2014: "At the height of the abuse, the police said I was the subject of 2,500 hate messages in the space of three days" using the same hashtag. She has had to take security measures at her bases in Liverpool and London, and has accused Twitter of insufficient action to counter the problem, In her view, the site "could start by proactively banning racist words which aren’t allowed to be printed in newspapers or broadcast on TV that could never be used in a positive way."

John Nimmo was charged on 13 July 2016 with sending Berger "a message causing anxiety or distress", and was remanded in custody the following day at South Tyneside Magistrates' Court until a further hearing on 27 July. He had sent her a series of messages via Twitter, including death threats. Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a supporter of Helm, was convicted of racially-aggravated harassment of Berger in December 2016 and sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

Berger was shortlisted for the Grassroot Diplomat Initiative Award in 2015 for her campaign against food poverty, in which she had produced a film to highlight the growing concerns of some of her constituents reliant on food banks. She remains in the directory of the Grassroot Diplomat Who's Who publication.