Ivan Lewis

Ivan Lewis (born 4 March 1967) is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bury South from 1997 to 2019, initially as a member of the Labour Party then as an independent from 2017.

Lewis also served as a Councillor on Bury Metropolitan Borough Council for the Sedgley ward, being elected in 1990 at 23 years of age and held the position of Chairman of the Social Services Committee.

Before his election in 1997, he worked in the voluntary sector from 1986 to 1997 for the learning disabilities support group Contact Community Care Group and as Chief Executive of the Manchester Jewish Federation.

Lewis was first elected to Parliament in the 1997 Labour landslide with a 13% swing and a majority of over 12,000 votes over the incumbent Conservative David Sumberg who had served since 1983.

He served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Stephen Byers from July 1999 to June 2001.

After serving in various ministerial positions, including Foreign Affairs, International Development, Education and Health under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 2001 to 2010, Lewis was Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport until October 2011, when he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

He further increased his majority in the 2001 General Election.

Between June 2001 and June 2002, Lewis was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Young People and Learning within the Department for Education and Skills and then for Adult Learning and Skills.

From June 2002 to May 2005, he became Under-Secretary of State for Skills and Vocational Education in the same department.

As a junior minister Lewis was responsible for the White Paper 21st Century Skills: Realising our Potential, launched in 2003.

It proposed increased support for adults seeking to gain technical and craft qualifications where regional skills shortages existed, removing the age limit for Modern Apprentices and making information and communications technology the third essential "skill for life" alongside literacy and numeracy.

Lewis was also involved with a scheme to introduce apprenticeships for 14-year-olds alongside their schooling, commenting that Britain needed to challenge "uniquely snobbish" attitudes toward vocational education

Lewis then served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury from May 2005 to May 2006.

He was moved to a junior ministerial position in the Department of Health in the Cabinet reshuffle in May 2006.

On 29 June 2007, in Gordon Brown's first reshuffle as Prime Minister he was re-appointed to the post of Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department of Health, the only junior minister to survive the reshuffle where he held on to the brief for social care and added mental health services.

As Minister for Care Services, Lewis led the introduction of Putting People First, the then government's policy (accepted by the incoming coalition government) to personalise the provision of social care services for the elderly and people with disabilities.

The policy offered adults eligible for care services the ability choose their own care services from a "personal budget", and shifted some responsibilities from the NHS to councils.

Lewis described his own policy changes as "arguably the biggest redistribution of power from the state to the citizen that we have ever seen", while David Brindle of The Guardian praised him for having done a "huge amount" to raise the profile of social care.

In March 2008, Lewis warned that the Labour Party was losing touch with ordinary people under the leadership of Gordon Brown in an article written for Progress Online.

Lewis stated he believed the Government had lost touch with what fairness meant to the mainstream majority.

He wrote:

We cannot afford to be reticent or selective about what fair means in today's Britain.

Fairness means everyone paying an appropriate level of tax.

It is true there is nothing wrong with being 'stinking rich' providing you pay a significantly higher proportion in tax than your fellow citizen with a modest disposable income.

Fairness means a Labour government not remaining silent when any company rips the consumer off or directors of poorly performing organisations in the public or private sector receive extortionate bonuses.

Fairness means equal treatment and opportunities for women and ethnic minorities in the workplace, not skilled white men denied career opportunities in the name of equality.

In 2008, the Department of Health confirmed Lewis had made an apology for his behaviour when in 2007 he began sending increasingly intimate text messages to then aide Susie Mason, which ultimately led to her registering concern, and successfully seeking an alternative position within the Civil Service before leaving for the private sector.

Nick Cohen pointed out in The Observer on 14 September 2008 that the revelations about Lewis's private life followed articles by Lewis which constituted coded attacks on Gordon Brown.

In his book The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour, the journalist Andrew Rawnsley suggested that Lewis was a target of "Gordon Brown's Hit Squad".

In relation to the Susie Mason story, Rawnsley wrote: "Yet there were few Labour MPs who doubted that the story was planted by No. 10, which was privy to a confidential Whitehall report about the civil servant. The hit on Lewis stunned Ministers who regarded themselves as unshockable".

The story was leaked twelve months after the events occurred.

Senior civil servants dealing with the Mason issue advised that no action should be taken against Lewis.

In the October 2013 Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, he became Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

After Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader in September 2015, Lewis was dismissed from the shadow cabinet.

Lewis was suspended from the Labour Party in November 2017 after sexual misconduct allegations.

He resigned from the Labour Party in December 2018, citing his concerns about antisemitism in the party and the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Lewis sat as an independent MP until the 2019 General Election, when he stood as an independent candidate in Bury South.

During the campaign Lewis urged voters to support the Conservatives rather than himself when it became clear his candidature could allow Labour to win and inadvertently boost Corbyn's chances of becoming Prime Minister.

Lewis was born in Prestwich, in the Bury South constituency which he later represented, into a British Jewish family.

He was educated at Manchester Jewish Day School in Prestwich (primary school) and at William Hulme Grammar School in Manchester, followed by Stand Sixth Form College and Bury College.