Neil Gerrard

Neil Francis Gerrard (born July 3, 1942) British politician He is the Labour Member of Parliament for Walthamstow.

Born in Farnworth, Lancashire and educated at the Manchester Grammar School and Wadham College, Oxford where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in natural science in 1964. He later studied at the Chelsea College where he received a master's degree in education in 1973. He received a graduate diploma in professional studies in education from the South Bank Polytechnic in 1983.

From 1965 he taught at the Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, leaving in 1968 to take up the position of lecturer in computing at the Hackney College, where he remained until his election to parliament some 24 years later.

He was elected as a councillor in the London Borough of Waltham Forest in 1973, and was the leader of the Labour group from 1983, and the leader of Council the from 1986 until he left the council in 1990. He was selected to contest the Chingford constituency at the 1979 general election but was defeated by the sitting Conservative MP Norman Tebbit by some 12,383 votes. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1992 general election for Walthamstow, when he unseated the one-term Tory Hugo Summerson by 3,022 votes, and has remained the MP there since. He made his maiden speech on May 12, 1992.[1]

In Parliament he served on the environment select committee from 1995 until he was made a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury Dawn Primarolo following the 1997 General Election. He resigned as Primarolo's PPS just a few months later in 1997 over lone-parent benefits cuts introduced by the Secretary of State for Social Security Harriet Harman. He has served on several select committees and has been a member of the administration committee since the 2005 general election.

He is a left-winger within the Labour Party, and is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group. He used to be a member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's national council. He is a director of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. He was married to Marion Fitzgerald in 1968 and they have two sons and a granddaughter, they divorced in 1983. He has lived in Walthamstow for the past thirty years, and he used to own a racing greyhound with fellow MP Harry Cohen which, although now retired, raced at the Walthamstow Dog Track. He is the chairman of the all-party groups on AIDS and on refugees.