Steve Reed

Steven Mark Ward Reed OBE (born 12 November 1963) is a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Croydon North since 2012. He was previously the Leader of Lambeth Council from 2006 to 2012.

Reed was born and raised in St Albans, Hertfordshire, and his family worked at Odhams printing factory in Watford until it closed down in 1983. Around this time, he joined the Labour Party before going on to study English at Sheffield University. He worked in the educational publishing industry from 1990 to 2008.

In March 2008 he narrowly lost out to Chuka Umunna for selection as Labour's 2010 election candidate for the Streatham constituency.

Reed first stood for the Lambeth London Borough Council in the 1998 election and won the Town Hall ward (now Brixton Hill). In 2002 Labour lost control of Lambeth council to a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, and in response, Reed was elected leader of the opposition.

After Labour won back control of Lambeth Council in 2006, Reed was appointed the council's leader. During his tenure, Lambeth went from being rated London's worst-run borough, with a one-star rating in the Audit Commission's annual inspection in 2006, to having a three-star rating in 2009. At the 2010 election, Labour gained seats from the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, making it the first time that Labour had been re-elected to lead in Lambeth for twenty years.

Reed held a number of significant positions in local government. He was:

• Deputy Leader of Local Government Labour, an association representing Labour councillors nationally;
• Deputy Chairman of the Local Government Association;
• London Councils board member for Children's Services and Employment;
• Chairman of Central London Forward, a lobbying group representing five inner-London boroughs;
• A board member representing London’s boroughs on the London Enterprise Partnership;
• Co-Chair of the Vauxhall-Nine Elms-Battersea regeneration board;
• Chairman of the London Young People’s Education and Skills Board
• Served as a member of the London Board of the Homes and Communities Agency between 2009–11

In May 2010, Reed launched a consultation on plans to turn Lambeth into the country’s first co-operative council intending to deliver better services more cost-effectively by giving more control to communities and service users, reported in The Guardian newspaper as a possible new model for Labour in local government. The final report of Lambeth Council's Cooperative Council Commission laid out the plans for achieving this objective and Lambeth Council put a transformation plan into effect.

Reed was reported to the Standards Board by a Conservative councillor after he disclosed that she was barred from voting on financial matters because of her refusal to pay council tax on one of her properties for several years. This information was legally disclosable and no sanction was imposed.

Reed was named one of the three most influential council leaders in the country by the Local Government Chronicle in 2011 and was the highest-ranked Labour politician in the 2010 Pink List compiled by The Independent on Sunday.

Reed was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to local government.

Reed's first attempt to enter Parliament was in Lambeth, contesting the Labour nomination for the Streatham Constituency in 2008, on the retirement of Keith Hill. In March of that year, Reed was beaten to the nomination by Chuka Umunna. On 3 November 2012, Reed narrowly defeated former Croydon Council leader Val Shawcross by only three votes, to become the Labour candidate for the historically safe Labour seat of Croydon North, following a selection meeting of the local Croydon North Constituency Labour Party. The by-election followed on from the death of the former MP for Croydon North Malcolm Wicks and was won by Reed on 29 November 2012.

In October 2013 Reed was appointed a Shadow Home Office Minister by Labour Leader Ed Miliband.

In the 2015 general election, Reed again stood for the Croydon North constituency. He was elected as MP with 33,513 votes (a 62.5% share, up 6.6% from the previous General Election in 2010) and a majority of 21,364 (39.9%) with a 62.3% turnout.

On 27 June 2016, Reed resigned as Shadow Minister for Local Government as part of the mass resignation of the Labour Shadow Cabinet against Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour party. He supported Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership election.

In June 2018 Reed attempted to get a bill through parliament to make hospitals reveal details about how and when they use physical force against patients. Hospital staff would also under the bill get training about the possibility of unconscious bias against minority groups like young black men with mental health problems. Reed notes the death of his constituent, Olaseni Lewis, who died aged 23 during use of restraint at Bethlem hospital. A filibuster by Philip Davies prevented the bill succeeding. Reed's bill was passed on 6 July 2018; it requires that police attending mental hospitals to apply restraints to wear body cameras.

Reed noted flammable cladding involved in the Grenfell Tower fire. Reed stated, “You (James Brokenshire) have not yet gone far enough to guarantee public safety. We urge you to reconsider and extend the scope of the ban on flammable cladding so everyone in our country can be reassured the buildings they use are safe from fire.”