Joan Ryan (politician)

Joan Marie Ryan (born 8 September 1955) is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Enfield North from 1997 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2019.

She was first elected as a Labour Party MP but later defected to join Change UK.

She graduated in 1979 and went on to study for a master's degree in sociology at Polytechnic of the South Bank, graduating in 1981.

She taught sociology and politics in Hammersmith at William Morris Academy and also worked as an interviewer for the Imperial War Museum in the 1980s.

Ryan studied sociology and worked as a teacher, before becoming a Labour councillor on Barnet London Borough Council in 1990, serving as deputy leader of the council from 1994 to 1998.

Ryan was elected as a councillor for the East Finchley ward on Barnet London Borough Council, representing the Labour Party, in 1990.

She became chair of the policy and resources committee in 1994, before becoming deputy leader of the council later that year.

Ryan was elected as the Labour Member of Parliament for Enfield North in the 1997 general election.

In her first years as an MP, she was known as an advocate for Greek Cypriots in her constituency and in the Commons, and also as an opponent of Ken Livingstone during the creation of the Greater London Authority (GLA).

She sat on the board of the London Labour Party and defended a vetting panel for mayoral candidates that was accused of bias.

In response to Livingtone's campaign to get on the ballot, Ryan said "It is not acceptable. I think the public are fed up with it. He should wait his turn."

She served on the council and as deputy leader until 1998.

Ryan was appointed as parliamentary private secretary to Andrew Smith in 1998, and as an assistant whip in 2002.

A parliamentary question from Ryan in January 2000, on the topic of businesses breaking the UN sanctions on Angola, led Foreign Office minister Peter Hain to name three businessmen who he claimed had been breaking the sanctions.

In January 2001, Ryan voted in favour of a ban on hunting.

She was a government whip under Tony Blair from 2002 to 2006, a junior Home Office minister responsible for ID cards from 2006 to 2007, and the Prime Minister's Special Representative to Cyprus from 2007 to 2008, when she was sacked.

She was appointed as a junior minister at the Home Office in Tony Blair's May 2006 reshuffle.

From 2006 until 2007, Ryan was the minister responsible for the then government's controversial ID card scheme.

In July, a report authored by Ryan was leaked to The Mail on Sunday; it said that a surge in immigration from eastern Europe in 2007 could put pressure on Britain's education, health, and welfare services, and could also lead to "potentially serious" consequences for community cohesion.

In April 2007, she launched a campaign to promote the achievements and financial struggles of 'supplementary schools', based on the concerns of Enfield Turkish School in her constituency, and she sent a dossier to Andrew Adonis to that effect.

In June 2007, she became vice-chair of the Labour Party.

She was also removed as a Home Office minister and appointed as the Prime Minister's Special Representative to Cyprus.

In July 2007, she was sworn as a Member of Her Majesty's Privy Council, entitling her to the prefix 'The Right Honourable' for life.

In October 2007, the Evening Standard reported that Ryan had claimed £173,691 in expenses in the 2006/2007 tax year, the highest of any MP in London.

She had been the second-highest claimant in the previous tax year.

In May 2007, Ryan had voted in favour of David Maclean's Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, which would have kept details of parliamentary expenses secret.

In September 2008, she was revealed by Siobhain McDonagh to have requested leadership nomination papers ahead of the party's annual conference.

Ryan said that it was time for the party's "direction and leadership" to be debated openly.

Gordon Brown subsequently sacked her from her Cyprus and Labour Party roles.

In 2009, Ryan led delegations of MPs on two international trips, one to Canberra and Melbourne in Australia, and the other to Cameroon.

During the parliamentary expenses scandal, The Daily Telegraph revealed in May 2009 that Ryan had spent £4,500 of expenses on a second home in Enfield before "flipping" it with her main home, a flat in south London.

She lost her seat in the 2010 general election after an expenses scandal and was deputy campaign director of NOtoAV in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum.

A man was acquitted of harassing Ryan in March 2010 on the grounds of insanity.

Ryan, who lived on the same street as the man, had stayed away from her house with her family since January, following two incidents that had left her "terrified".

Ryan was re-elected in Enfield North in the 2015 general election and became chair of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).

She was highly critical of party leader Jeremy Corbyn and lost a motion of no confidence put forward by her constituency party in 2018.

She left Labour to join The Independent Group, later Change UK, in February 2019.

In September, she announced she would stand down at the next general election and was subsequently succeeded by Labour's Feryal Clark.

Ryan was born in Warrington, Lancashire.

She attended local schools before studying history and sociology at the City of Liverpool College of Higher Education.