Gerry Sutcliffe

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Gerry Sutcliffe MP

Member of Parliament
for Bradford South
Incumbent
Assumed office 
9 June 1994
Preceded by Bob Cryer

Born 13 May 1953 (1953-05-13) (age 55)
Salford
Nationality British
Political party Labour
Religion Roman Catholic

Gerard Sutcliffe (born May 13, 1953), known as Gerry Sutcliffe, is a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. He is Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford South and a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and is Minister for Sport and Tourism.

Born in Salford, Sutcliffe was educated in Bradford at Cardinal Hinsley Grammar School, but left aged sixteen, and then worked as a salesman and for a printers company, becoming a deputy branch secretary of the print workers trade union SOGAT. He was a member of Bradford City Council from 1982 to 1994, serving as the council's leader from 1992-94.

When Bradford South's Labour MP Bob Cryer was killed in a car crash in April 1994, Sutcliffe was selected as the Labour candidate for the resulting by-election. He won the 1994 Bradford South by-election with 55% of the vote[1], and has held the seat since.

In Parliament, he served on the Public Accounts Committee from 1996 to 1998, and was a member of the Unopposed Bills Panel from 1997 to 1999.

After the 1997 general election, when a Labour government took power under Tony Blair, Sutcliffe was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Harriet Harman, the Secretary of State for Social Security. After Harman was dismissed from the Cabinet in July 1998, he served as PPS to Stephen Byers, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. When Byers was promoted to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in December 1998, Sutcliffe remained his PPS.

From 2003 to 2006 he was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, with responsibility for employment and for consumer and competition policy. In the May 2006 reshuffle he was moved to the Home Office, as Minister for Prisons and the Probation Service. As part of the reorganisation of the Home Office he became Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the newly formed Minstry of Justice in May 2007. He stayed there only a short time until the reshuffle on 29 June 2007, when he was moved to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

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Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Bob Cryer
Member of Parliament for Bradford South
1994present
Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by
Graham Allen
Vice-Chamberlain of the Household
2001–2003
Succeeded by
Jim Fitzpatrick
Preceded by
Richard Caborn
Minister for Sport and Tourism
2007present
Incumbent
Languages