Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP

Liam Byrne was elected in the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election in July 2004, on the same night Labour lost in Leicester East. He was made a Department of Health minister within nine months, where he introduced pioneering individual budgets, oversaw the 2006 White Paper and put dignity in care centre-stage. Help the Aged nominated him as Older Peoples' Champion of the Year for his work. Liam was made Minister of State for Police and Counter-Terrorism in May 2006 before the Home Secretary asked him to lead the re-organisation of the immigration system and the Home Office.

In October 2008, Liam was made Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster, attending Cabinet, where he led the charge for public sector change, helped co-ordinate the Government’s Real Help Now campaign, and co-chaired the Council of Regional Ministers.

Before entering Parliament, Liam, aged 29, co-founded the venture capital backed eCommerce company, eGS Group, spending four years building the business into what is now the most successful public sector e-procurement exchange in Europe. He previously worked for multi-national consulting firm Accenture and merchant bankers NM Rothschild. Between 1996 and 1997, he advised the Labour Party on the re-organisation of Millbank and helped lead its national business campaign. Born in Warrington in October 1970, Liam joined the Labour Party when he was 15 and today lives in Birmingham with his wife Sarah and three children, Alex, John and Elizabeth. He is a member of Unite, the Fabian Society and the Christian Socialist Movement. He co-founded the Young Fabian magazine, Anticipations, was one of Progress' first editors, was founding treasurer of the Centre for European Reform, and is a former Associate Fellow of the Social Market Foundation.

Comprehensive school educated, Liam started working life as a part-time worker at McDonalds. He went on to graduate at the top of his class with first class honours in Politics and Modern History at Manchester University, winning the Robert McKenzie Prize for political science, his first book contract and election to the sabbatical leadership of the students' union, Labour Students' National Committee and NUS National Council. He took his MBA with honours at the Harvard Business School where he was a Fulbright Scholar, co-chaired the summer ball committee and the Leadership and Ethics Forum, and co-wrote the Tara column for Harbus from a bar off Brattle Street.

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