Biography

Steve Webb is the MP for Thornbury and Yate and the Minister of State for Pensions.

Steve Webb entered Parliament at his first attempt in 1997, gaining the Northavon seat from the Conservatives. He attended Dartmouth High School (Birmingham) and read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Hertford College, Oxford. He began work as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a non-political research institute, specialising in the workings of the personal tax and benefit system and publishing widely on trends in poverty and inequality in the UK. Steve achieved a number of distinctions, including acting as a Specialist Advisor to the Social Security Select Committee, then chaired by Frank Field, becoming a member of the Commission on Social Justice, and taking part in an IMF "technical assistance" mission to Ukraine to advise on Welfare Reform. In March 1995 he became Professor of Social Policy at Bath University. His interests are the internet and computing, music, and supporting West Bromwich Albion.

As an MP his work on local issues has included campaigns to save Frenchay and Thornbury Hospitals; to save Post Offices and pension books; for a cinema in Yate, broadband access across Thornbury and Yate, and Justice in Women's Pensions; and against the Council Tax and tuition fees. He is actively involved in the Christians in Parliament group.

He served as Shadow Secretary for Work and Pensions from 2001 to 2005 and was Shadow Health Secretary from 2005 to 2006, setting up www.libdemnhswatch.com to support his work in this role. In December 2006 he stepped down from this role to focus on his work as chair of the party's election manifesto team. He was appointed as Shadow Secretary for Environment, Energy, Food and Rural Affairs by Nick Clegg, before becoming Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in October 2008. He was reappointed Shadow Secretary for Work and Pensions in January 2009.

After the May 2010 General Election he was appointed Minister of State for Pensions in the new Coalition Government.

He started his blog: Here in January 2007 and actively uses Facebook: Here and Twitter: Here to engage with his constituents.

Publications: For Richer, For Poorer: The Changing Distribution of Income in the UK 1961-1991 (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 1994). He contributed a chapter on Children, the family and the state to the Orange Book and a chapter on Communicating social liberalism to Reinventing the State.

Experience

Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Professor of Social Policy at Bath University.

Parliamentary Experience

May 2010 to date - Minister of State for Pensions;
Jan 2009 to May 2010 - Shadow Secretary for Work and Pensions;
Oct 2008 to Jan 2009 - Shadow Secretary for Climate Change and Energy;
2007 to 2008 - Shadow Secretary for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs;
2005 to 2006 - Shadow Secretary for Health;
2001 to 2005 - Shadow Secretary for Work and Pensions.

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