John Francis Spellar was born on 5 August 1947 and is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament for Warley, formerly Warley West, since 1992.
18 Facts About John Spellar
2.
John Spellar served as a minister in numerous departments between 1997 and 2005 and later served as Comptroller of the Household in the Whips' Office between 2008 and 2010.
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John Spellar was Chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club in 1967.
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John Spellar was the Political Officer of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union from 1969 to 1992, and was a speech-writer for general secretaries Frank Chapple and Eric Hammond.
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John Spellar was a councillor in the London Borough of Bromley between 1970 and 1974.
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John Spellar stood for the constituency of Bromley at the 1970 general election as Labour's youngest candidate.
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John Spellar was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1982 Birmingham Northfield by-election but lost at the 1983 General Election to the Conservative candidate, Roger King.
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Tony Blair 8.
John Spellar returned to the House of Commons in the 1992 general election becoming the MP for Warley West with a majority of 5,472, and was appointed an opposition whip.
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In 1997, Warley West was abolished and John Spellar was selected to stand for Warley, which he won in that year with a majority of 15,451.
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When Tony Blair formed his government in 1997, John Spellar was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, being promoted to become Minister of State for the Armed Forces in 1999.
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John Spellar left the front benches in 2005, but in 2008, he rejoined the government as a whip and served until Labour entered opposition in May 2010.
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John Spellar is a Director of the centre-left Labour grouping, Labour First and of the Henry Jackson Society Advisory Council.
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In June 2016, John Spellar raised a formal objection to a parliamentary order creating the West Midlands Combined Authority, delaying its creation, because its size had been increased since its proposal and John Spellar believed its funding was not clear.
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John Spellar supported continued membership of the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
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In March 2019, John Spellar was the only Labour MP to vote against allowing compulsory LGBT education in schools, prompting criticism from the Liberal Democrats and LGBT Labour.
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John Spellar apologised two weeks later, highlighting the fact that he had made a mistake and was misguided.
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John Spellar is a supporter of domestic vaccine passports during the COVID-19 pandemic and criticised the decision to hold a review into the possibility of adopting them, stating that this shows "no sense of urgency".
18.
John Spellar was married to dentist Anne Wilmot from 1981 until her death in 2003.