Luciana Berger

Luciana Clare Berger (/ˈbɜːrdʒər/; born 13 May 1981) is a British Member of Parliament serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Twickenham since 2010. Initially a member of Labour Co-op, in 2019 she left and co-founded The Independent Group, later Change UK, before joining the Liberal Democrats. She was a member of the Official Opposition frontbench, under the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Minister for Mental Health from 2015 to 2016.
Born in London, Berger attained degrees at the University of Birmingham and Birkbeck, University of London. She served as a National Executive Committee member of the National Union of Students, but resigned to protest against what she considered the committee's apathy towards antisemitism. Berger also joined Labour and served as director of Labour Friends of Israel. Selected as Labour candidate for Liverpool Wavertree—her selection attracted criticism for its centrally-imposed all-women shortlist—she was then elected to Parliament in the 2010 general election.
As an MP, Berger joined the Official Opposition frontbench under Ed Miliband's Labour leadership; first as Shadow Minister for Climate Change from 2010 to 2013 and later as Shadow Minister for Public Health from 2013 to 2015. As a backbencher, she campaigned against dangerous dogs and their owners, food poverty and loopholes allowing companies to avoid their health and safety responsibilities. She was re-elected in the 2015 and 2017 general elections.
Following Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader in September 2015, Berger was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as the first Shadow Minister for Mental Health. However, she was critical of Corbyn and resigned in June 2016. In February 2019, members of her local party briefly proposed motions of no confidence in her for "continually" criticising Corbyn. Later that month, she joined other former Labour and Conservative MPs in forming Change UK, but left this group in June 2019 to sit as an Independent MP, before joining the Liberal Democrats in September 2019. She stood successfully for Twickenham in the 2019 general election.
== Early life ==
Berger was born in London, and is from Wembley in north-west London. She is the great-niece of trade union official and Labour MP Manny Shinwell, who rose to be a Minister in the Ramsay MacDonald government and in the Attlee government, as War Secretary in the latter. He was of Polish Jewish extraction, and was the last MP to throw a punch in Parliament, after taking exception to a Tory MP suggesting that he "get back to Poland".
Her father, Howard, initially studied law at university and practiced as a solicitor, and now runs a home furnishings shop. Her mother, Antonia, is an interior designer and children's book writer, wrote a musical hit that made the French charts in the 1960s, and was a counsellor in a palliative care unit. Her grandfather sold ladies’ fashions from a market stall, and her brother is a professional musician. According to Berger, the family was more culturally Jewish than religiously so. She said of her Jewish heritage: "I went to the synagogue a lot, and I was part of a strong community. One of its values, ‘Tikkun Olam’, literally means 'repairing the world', and it instilled strong values in me at quite young age."
== Education ==
Berger was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, a private school in Elstree, Hertfordshire. Berger subsequently gained a degree in Commerce with Spanish from the University of Birmingham in 2004. She was named the University of Birmingham 2012 Alumna of the Year. She spent a year studying in ICADE in Madrid, Spain. Berger then took on on a part-time basis and completed a master's degree (MSc) in Government, Politics and Policy at Birkbeck, University of London.
Berger was a National Executive Committee member of the National Union of Students, Britain's main student representative organisation, serving as an elected member for two years. She co-convened the NUS Anti-Racism/Anti-Fascism Campaign.
In April 2005, Berger resigned from the Committee along with two other Committee members, saying "While I accuse no one of anti-semitism, this year NUS has been a bystander to Jew-hatred". A later independent inquiry later cleared the NUS of failing to tackle antisemitism, but on the other hand criticised the union for not having rigorous complaints procedures in place, and for "lack of proactive response to allegations of anti-semitism". The report recommended that the union apologise. The report was also critical of Berger, for—following complaints from Jewish students that the union was tolerating antisemitism—attending a meeting with the head of the School of Oriental and African Studies, inasmuch as the report suggested that given that she was a national executive member Berger should not have attended the meeting (which it said was implicitly critical of the union), and instead should have sought to support the union in addressing the problem first.
== Parliamentary career ==
=== Liberal Democrats (2019-present) ===