Tom Harris
Former Labour MP and minister Tom Harris is a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, a member of the board of HS2 Ltd and founder of his own public affairs company.
Tom began his career as a journalist in Scotland before moving into public relations for the Labour Party and then into parliament, representing Glasgow Cathcart and then Glasgow South in the Commons between 2001 and 2015. He served as a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Northern Ireland minister John Spellar and then to Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health, before being appointed by Tony Blair as a minister at the Department for Transport. He stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the Scottish Labour Party in 2011 and served briefly as a shadow environment minister under Ed Miliband, before returning to the House of Commons’ Transport Select Committee.
On leaving parliament he set up his own public affairs company and led the Scottish Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum. In 2018 he was appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport as a member of the Expert Challenge Panel supporting Keith Williams’ independent review of the British railway industry. He now writes a daily column for the Telegraph Online and is a member of the board of HS2 Ltd. He is the author of “Ten Years in the Death of the Labour Party”, published by Biteback in 2018.