Karen Buck was first elected as the Labour Party MP for Westminster North in 1997, being reelected in 2019 with a majority of 10,759.
The Westminster North constituency covers the areas of Maida Vale, Bayswater, Queen’s Park and St John’s Wood. Lords’ Cricket Ground and the Abbey Road Studios are both found in this seat. The Notting Hill carnival is held here each year. A mixed seat containing some very affluent areas and some pockets of deprivation, this seat was for many years a very tight Conservative – Labour marginal, but it has bucked the national trend since 2015 and become safer territory for the Labour Party. Two thirds of the electorate here opposed Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum.
Buck currently serves as the Shadow Minister for Social Security.
Buck became a member of Tony Blair’s government as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport between 2005 and 2006. She later served as Shadow Minister for Education, and as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition by Ed Miliband.
Born in 1958 in Castlederg, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, Buck was educated at the Chelmsford County High School for Girls and the London School of Economics.
Buck nominated Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership in 2020, and voted for Owen Smith in his 2016 challenge against Jeremy Corbyn. She previously voted against the Gulf War, and then against the triggering of Article 50 following the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Before becoming an MP, Buck worked as a research and development worker with Outset, a charity working with disabled people, and then for Hackney Borough Council as a senior disability officer, and then as a public health officer.
She went to work for the Labour Party in 1987 as a health directorate researcher, becoming a campaign strategy coordinator in 1992.
Buck was elected as a councillor to the City of Westminster Council in 1990 and remained on the council until her election to parliament in 1997.
In 2018, Karen Buck successfully introduced a Private Member’s Bill that became the Home (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act which allowed tenants to take landlords to court if they failed to maintain their property in a condition that was fit for human habitation.
Karen Buck is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on the Short Lets Sector; and Legal Aid. She is Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Air Pollution; British Jews; and the Private Rented Sector;
Email: buckk@parliament.uk
Personal Website: www.karenbuck.org.uk/
Twitter: twitter.com/KarenPBuckMP
