Bill Rammell
William Ernest Rammell (born 10 October 1959) is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Harlow from 1997 until 2010, and served as a Minister of State in several departments from 2002. From August 2012 to December 2019 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire. He was chair of the university consortium MillionPlus from June to December 2019. In August 2021 he became president of the University of Kurdistan Hewler in Iraqi Kurdistan. Political career. Rammell joined Tony Blair's government in October 2002 as an assistant whip but was  promoted two weeks later to be a spokesperson for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Rammell, a pro-European, was supportive of joining the Single European Currency, as until 2002 he was Chair of Labour Movement for Europe. In September 2004, he was the first British government minister to visit North Korea. In the 2004 documentary Stealing a Nation Rammell defended the British government's continued racist policy of exiling the Chagos islanders in order to maintain a US military installation on Diego Garcia. In the 2005 general election, Rammell had the third smallest majority of any Labour MP, at just  97 votes. The result was so close that the final declaration had to be delayed until two days after voting, to give exhausted counting officials time to rest. In May 2005, Rammell was made Minister of State for Higher Education. He was strongly supportive of top-up fees, claiming that without the income from such fees, estimated to be £1.4 billion, it would be necessary to put "3p or 4p on the standard rate of tax" or "put up income tax by 3%". In September 2007, he withdrew funding from some adult and continuing education courses in universities. In  February 2008, Rammell announced plans to create a national database of children's school records and exam results which would make up a publicly owned CV. The CV and "Learner Number" would stay with the child throughout adult life until retirement and only the British government would be able to remove records from their database entry. The plan would only have applied to English children, with education being a devolved matter. In October 2008, Rammell returned to the Foreign Office, this time in the role of Minister of State, and in June 2009, was moved again to the Ministry of  Defence as Minister of State for the Armed Forces. He defended the Brown government's levels of spending on equipment in Afghanistan, following a soldier's death because of a lack of available helicopters. In September 2009, Rammell confirmed he had told Libya that the Prime Minister did not want to see convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who had been serving a life sentence, die in prison. In October 2009, following Sir Thomas Legg's audit, Rammell was ordered to repay £2,782 of wrongful expenses claims. In the 2010 general election, Rammell was defeated in Harlow by Conservative  candidate Robert Halfon, who gained the seat with a majority of 4,925 votes. On 13 April 2012, it was announced Rammell was to become the new Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire, taking up his post in August 2012 for the start of the new academic year. He had previously worked for Plymouth University as Deputy Vice-Chancellor with responsibility for student experience and internationalisation. In November 2019, it was announced that Rammell would step down from his role as Vice-Chancellor at the end of the year. Voting record. How Rammell voted on key issues since 2001: Bill