page_title: Bridget Phillipson
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Bridget Phillipson / Political career
caption_attribution_description: English: Official portrait of Bridget Phillipson
context_page_description: Bridget Maeve Phillipson is a British Labour Party politician who was elected at the 2010 general election as the Member of Parliament for Houghton and Sunderland South. She was the first MP to be declared to be elected to the 2010 and 2015 Parliaments, the latter with a majority of 12,938. She was re-elected in 2017 and 2019. In 2020, she was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet by new Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
context_section_description: Phillipson was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Houghton and Sunderland South at the 2010 general election. After entering Parliament, she was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jim Murphy, who was then the Shadow Defence Secretary. Between October 2013 and September 2015, she served as Opposition Whip in the British House of Commons.
  She was elected to the Home Affairs Committee in July 2010, and remained a member until November 2013. She was a member of the Public Bill Committee for the Defence Reform Act 2014, and of the Procedure Committee between July 2010 and October 2011. She has also been a member of the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission since October 2010, and both the Committee on Standards and the Committee on Privileges since October 2017. She is currently also a member of the Public Accounts Committee and the European Statutory Instruments Committee. From 2010 to 2015, she was secretary to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Domestic and Sexual Violence, which published the report "The Changing Landscape of Domestic and Sexual Violence Services" in February 2015.
  Despite being an opposition MP since entering Parliament in 2010, she has campaigned successfully on a number of local issues, including forcing a government U-turn on the rebuilding of Hetton School, after plans to do so were cancelled by the Conservative-led government in 2010. The school was eventually rebuilt and reopened in 2016. She also led a campaign to improve standards and affordability of bus transport in Tyne and Wear, calling for the development of a quality contract scheme to be run by Nexus, the passenger transport executive for the North East Combined Authority. The government-appointed review board eventually refused permission for Nexus to advance the scheme.
  In the 2016 European Referendum, she campaigned for a Remain vote, and in 2018 was one of the first Labour MPs to call for a People's Vote on any eventual deal.
  Within the Labour Party, she voted for David Miliband as leader in 2010, Yvette Cooper in 2015, Owen Smith in 2016, and Keir Starmer in 2020.
  Following Starmer's leadership election victory in April 2020, Phillipson was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet for the first time, as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
caption: Phillipson in 2017
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