Andy Burnham

Profile

Andrew Murray “Andy” Burnham (born 7 January 1970) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Leigh since 2001. He is a candidate in the 2010 election for a new Leader of the Labour Party.

Burnham was Secretary of State for Health until 11 May 2010 when Gordon Brown resigned as Prime Minister; prior to that appointment, he was the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Early life

Burnham was born in Aintree in Merseyside, the son of a telephone engineer father and a receptionist mother, and brought up in Culcheth, near Warrington, close to the village of Lowton (which is at the southern end of the Leigh Parliamentary Constituency), where his family moved to when his father was promoted to a job in Manchester. He was educated at St. Lewis’ Primary School and St Aelred’s Roman Catholic High School (now St Aelred’s Catholic Technology College) in Newton-le-Willows, before going on to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he read for an MA in English.

Joining the Labour Party

He joined the Labour Party aged 14 in 1984, during the miners’ strike, and was a researcher to Tessa Jowell from 1994 until the 1997 election. He joined the Transport and General Workers’ Union in 1995.

After the 1997 election, he was briefly a Parliamentary Officer for the NHS Confederation from August to December 1997, before taking up the post as an administrator with the Football Task Force for a year.In 1998, he became a special adviser to the then-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, a position he remained in until his election to Parliament in 2001.

Following his election to Parliament, he became a member of the Health Select Committee from 2001 until 2003, when he was appointed the Parliamentary Private Secretary to then-Home Secretary David Blunkett. Following Blunkett’s first resignation in 2004, he went on to become the PPS to then-Education Secretary Ruth Kelly.

He was promoted to serve in the Government after the 2005 election as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, with responsibility for implementing the Identity Cards Act 2006.In the government reshuffle of 5 May 2006, Burnham was promoted from the Home Office to a Minister of State at the Department of Health.

Source: Wikipedia

Further Information:

• Guardian Summary
• BBC Summary