Member of Parliament
Raynsford was first elected a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour Party in a by-election in Fulham Constituency in 1986, but at the 1987 General Election lost to Conservative candidate Matthew Carrington.
He then became MP for Greenwich at the 1992 general election, and at the 1997 general election he won the re-drawn seat of Greenwich & Woolwich. He retained the seat at the 2001, 2005 and 2010 general elections, with majorities of 13,433, 10,146 and 10,153 respectively.
In Parliament, Raynsford was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Roy Hattersley and an Opposition spokesman 1986-87 and an Opposition frontbench spokesman from 1993-97. When Labour came to power in 1997 he was appointed a Parliamentary Under Secretary in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and was promoted to Minister of State in the department as Minister for Housing and Planning from 1999 to 2001, and Minister for Local Government 2001-02, and in the again reorganised Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2002-2005, with special responsibility for local government, English regions, electoral law, fire, health and safety and London.
After the 2005 general election Raynsford returned to the backbenches. In 2009 he publicly called for Gordon Brown to resign as Prime Minister.
On 28 March 2010, The Sunday Times reported that Raynsford earns £9,000 per month from jobs in industries connected to his ministerial career.
Read more about this topic: Nick Raynsford
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