Political Archive

Chuka was elected to the UK Parliament as the Member of Parliament for Streatham from May 2010 until November 2019.

He served first as Shadow Minister for Small Business in HM Official Opposition and then as Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills from 2011-2015.

As Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills he was a leading advocate in Parliament of the responsible capitalism agenda and how businesses can create shared value in society. He helped lead the successful campaign against the takeover of AstraZenca by Pfizer to protect the UK’s science base.  He instigated the establishment of the annual Small Business Saturday campaign in the UK in 2013.  He also led trade delegations for business organisations to West Africa and China whilst in post.

He left the Shadow Cabinet in September 2015 and subsequently resigned the Labour whip to sit as an independent MP in February 2019 due to policy differences with the Labour leadership over Brexit, the economy, national security, and because of anti-Jewish racism in the party.

He was a leading figure in the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign during the 2016 EU referendum, and subsequently co-founded the People’s Vote campaign.

During his time in the House of Commons, Chuka served on both the Treasury Select Committee (2010-2011) and the Home Affairs Select Committee (2015-2017).  After leaving the latter, he was appointed by the government to sit on HM Government's Serious Violence Taskforce from 2018 to 2019 (he is pictured leaving the Prime Minister's serious youth violence summit in Downing Street in April 2019).

In June 2019 Chuka joined the Liberal Democrats and was immediately appointed to become the party’s Treasury and Business spokesperson, before being appointed in August 2019 as the party’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, also leading on international trade.

He stood as the Liberal Democrats’ candidate in the Cities of London and Westminster in the 2019 General Election, in which he was endorsed by The Economist and The Observer newspapers and by people from across the political spectrum including the former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Michael Heseltine. Though he was not elected, whilst the Conservative MP lost 6.7% of their vote in the seat, he almost trebled the Lib Dem share of the vote increasing it by 19.6%.

Here you will find speeches, articles, videos and statements related to Chuka’s time in the UK Parliament.

Video
  • Rebuilding Trust in Business

  • If we want to end the controversies over bonuses and high pay, we need to give employees a stake in the businesses they work for.

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  • Britain in the world

  • We are a big country but sometimes we can act and behave as if we are small.

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  • How to Deal with Youth Violence

  • I have accepted an invitation from the Home Secretary to join a new Serious Violence Taskforce, to help tackle the problem of Youth Violence.

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  • Tackling Climate Change

  • A priority for Britain abroad must be tackling climate change and its impact on food and water security.

Video
  • Tackling Domestic Abuse

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  • Funding the NHS

  • The NHS is not just in crisis, it is at breaking point.

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  • How to respond to Immigration

  • Labour governments have always chosen to address the problems that feed anti-immigrant sentiment by improving working conditions, funding the NHS, building houses, and providing jobs.

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  • Industrial Strategy

  • We're the sixth most wealthy country in the world and yet 1 in 5 people lives in absolute poverty.

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  • Keynote speech to Liberal Democrat Conference

  • My Keynote speech to Liberal Democrats Conference 2019, on foreign affairs, Brexit, and the liberal rules-based order.

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  • Make Votes Matter

  • The current system of electing MPs is no longer fit for purpose. We need to ensure that those who are entitled to vote have a vote that counts – and counts equally.