13 Facts About Chris Mole

Christopher David Mole was born on 16 March 1958 and is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Ipswich from a by-election in 2001, after the death of Jamie Cann, and was re-elected in 2005.

Chris Mole was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, until his defeat in the 2010 general election by Ben Gummer of the Conservative Party.

Chris Mole gained a degree in Electronics from the University of Kent and moved to Ipswich in 1981 to work at the BT Laboratories at Martlesham Heath.

Chris Mole was first elected to Suffolk County Council in 1985 and represented a central Ipswich division for 18 years.

Chris Mole was Deputy Chair of EEDA, the regional development agency for the East of England, from 1998 and was Leader of Suffolk County Council from 1993, named Council of the Year 2001, until his election as Member of Parliament.

Chris Mole was a governor of Handford Hall Primary School, Ipswich.

Chris Mole steered his Private Member's Bill onto the Statute Book where it became the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, extending the concept of legal deposit to electronic records; the Bill was strongly promoted by the British Library.

Chris Mole was appointed in June 2005 to the position of Parliamentary Private Secretary PPS to the Local Government Minister Phil Woolas.

Chris Mole resigned from this position on 6 September 2006 after signing a letter calling on Prime Minister Tony Blair to step down.

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Chris Mole was recalled to a PPS position, taking the post of PPS to John Healey, the Minister of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government on 28 June 2007.

From 16 January 2007 until 20 August 2008, Chris Mole was a member of the Science and Technology Committee.

Chris Mole became a minister for the first time in the June 2009 reshuffle when he was appointed to the Department for Transport as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State.

Since leaving the House of Commons in 2010, Chris Mole has volunteered at the Ipswich and Suffolk Credit Union, becoming their general manager in June 2011.