Andrew Lewin

MP for Welwyn Hatfield

Labour

Andrew Lewin is the Labour MP for Welwyn Hatfield, having first been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Lewin won 19,877 votes, representing 41.0% of the vote. The Conservative candidate, Grant Shapps, received 16,078 votes (33.2%), while the Reform UK candidate, Jack Aaron, secured 6,397 votes (13.2%). Lewin was duly elected with a majority of 3,799.

The Welwyn Hatfield constituency is located in Hertfordshire, in the East of England. The seat, created in 1974, has changed hands between Labour and the Conservatives on multiple occasions.

Lewin’s immediate predecessor as the MP for Welwyn Hatfield was Grant Shapps of the Conservative Party. Shapps, who had represented the seat since 2005, was the serving defence secretary at the time of his defeat in 2024.

Political Career

Lewin served as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in the Department for Business and Trade from May to July 2026. A PPS acts as an unpaid parliamentary assistant, providing a link between the senior frontbencher and backbench MPs.

Lewin’s appointment to this PPS role was part of a targeted reshuffle designed to stabilise Keir Starmer’s position as prime minister after a series of resignations. At least four PPSs stepped down calling for Starmer to resign or set out a timetable for his departure. The move followed the 2026 local elections and devolved elections to the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru. Conversely, Lewin’s appointment signalled their support for the prime minister.

As such, Lewin was among the over 100 Labour MPs who signed the May 2026 joint statement insisting it was “no time for a leadership contest.”

The statement read: “Last week we had a devastatingly tough set of election results. It shows we have a hard job ahead to win back trust from the electorate.

“That job needs to start today – with all of us working together to deliver the change the country needs.

“We must focus on that. This is no time for a leadership contest.”

Lewin left government as part of the July 2026 reshuffle conducted by Andy Burnham upon his appointment as prime minister.

In June 2025, Lewin was one of 22 newly elected Labour MPs who co-signed a letter to the leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) calling for improved paternity leave for parliamentary staff. The letter, organised in collaboration with the campaign group The Dad Shift, argued that the current provision of two weeks’ paid leave was “unfair” and left parliament trailing behind leading private and public sector employers.

The letter said current rules meant MPs were “unable to support our staff appropriately at some of the most important times of their lives”.

They added: “Dads in our offices get just two weeks off, a situation that is unfair and puts parliament many steps behind top employers across the country.”

In response, a government spokesperson told PoliticsHome: “We are committed to making sure parents receive the best possible support to balance their work and home lives as part of our Plan to Make Work Pay.”

In a December 2024 article for Politics.co.uk, Lewin called for a comprehensive reset of the UK’s relationship with the European Union. He wrote that to “grow the UK economy, a strengthened bond with our largest trading partner is not an optional extra, it is our essential and most important relationship.”

Lewin is listed as a member of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) for council and social housing, cricket (chair) and new towns.

Lewin has sat as a member of the House of Commons housing, communities and local government select committee (2025-2026).

Lewin delivered his maiden speech on 22 July 2024 during a debate on the economy, welfare and public services.

In it, he said: “Welwyn Hatfield blossomed when Attlee’s Labour Government put housing and carefully planned communities at the centre of their agenda for change. Nearly 80 years later, we have another majority Labour government with a mandate for national renewal.

“This is a moment of opportunity, and each of us on these Benches has a responsibility to play our part in realising it.”

He added: “In the last parliament, more than 200,000 Ukrainians were welcomed to our country under the Ukraine family scheme and the Ukraine sponsorship scheme, an initiative that I believe showed our country at its best, open and welcoming in an hour of grave need.”

Lewin previously stood for parliament unsuccessfully in 2010 as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Hertford and Stortford, losing to the Conservative candidate Mark Prisk. He joined the Labour Party in November 2010.

Lewin outlined his reasons for defecting in an article for LabourList.

He wrote: “As a Liberal Democrat activist and later their youngest parliamentary candidate in England, I had long believed the party was equally committed to the future of our young people.

“It was a belief supported by two manifesto commitments that I promoted time and again on the doorstep; the pledge to scrap university top-up fees and the guarantee of a place in training or work for any young person unemployed for more than 90 days.

“In the days after the formation of the coalition, my deeply held views didn’t waver, but those of the Lib Dem leadership readily did. It was the start of a journey that was to shatter my faith in the party.”

Between 2017 and 2021, Lewin founded and ran the pro-European campaign group Remain Labour as a response to Brexit.

In a June 2022 LabourList article, Lewin wrote that Labour should “look anew at a closer customs partnership with the EU, to help UK exporters who have been so badly hit by extra costs and bureaucracy post Brexit”

Political Views

Leadership elections

Labour deputy leadership 2025: Lewin was one of 175 Labour MPs who nominated Bridget Phillipson for the party’s deputy leadership in September 2025. The election followed the resignation of Angela Rayner, who stepped down as deputy prime minister and deputy party leader after an investigation into her tax affairs. It marked the first time since 2007 that Labour had held a deputy leadership contest while in government.

Phillipson, the serving education secretary, was widely viewed as the candidate favoured by Downing Street and the party leadership. She secured 175 nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), comfortably exceeding the 80 required to reach the final ballot. She was ultimately defeated by Lucy Powell.

Factional identity and party tradition

Living Standards Coalition: Lewin is a member of the Living Standards Coalition’s organising committee. Established in July 2025, the group’s stated aim was to develop and promote policy ideas that directly reduce everyday costs for households, particularly in areas such as food, energy, housing and childcare. In an open letter published upon its founding, addressed to Keir Starmer, the MPs wrote: “Our constituents will ask one question at the next election: did this Labour government make me better off?”

They added: “To raise living standards, we support government interventions that will help to increase incomes and lower costs.”

Upon the launch of the group, Lewin said: “It’s also a little bit less talking about the G7, a little bit more about groceries.”

He added: “There is an anxiety there because things have been so bad for the last 14 years. And even if we see wage growth… we see the savings ratio growing, which shows people do have a bit more but are keeping hold of it.”

Common Endeavour: Lewin has been identified with the Common Endeavour group, a collective of Labour MPs from the party’s “broad centre” which set out a series of essays alongside the Fabian society focused on how “Labour can apply its values to the problems we face in the second quarter of the 21st century.”

The Fabian Society pamphlet, Common Endeavour: Building a Stronger Britain (April 2026), defined four generational challenges: “affordability, capacity, security, and solidarity.”

The group’s platform, set out in the essays, included calls for a fundamental reappraisal of the UK’s international alliances, reduced strategic dependence on the United States and the pursuit of a closer, Swiss-style relationship with the European Union, including an “emergency brake” on freedom of movement.

The essays were penned by the Labour MPs Liam Byrne, Anna Gelderd, Luke Murphy, Anneliese Dodds, Alex Baker, Calvin Bailey and Jeevun Sandher, alongside Lewin.

The introduction to the group of essays referred to the phrase used in Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution, which argues that the movement achieves more by “the strength of our common endeavour”.

In a New Statesman article, the MPs rejected the “embrace of ethnocratic division and plutocratic Thatcherism” by their political opponents.

The piece added: “Their values will make us weaker by dividing us ever further. They would have us draw away from like-minded allies in Europe and leave us more dependent on mad fossil fuel-obsessed dictators from abroad.

“And they’d indiscriminately deport our friends, neighbours, and those that sit by our relatives’ bedsides as they suffer. They’d make our nation weaker, because they do not think we achieve more together than we achieve alone.”

In his essay, Lewin argued that Brexit has “failed on its own terms. It has left our economy weaker, limited our ability to deal with irregular migration, and reduced our influence in the world.”

He added: “It falls on this generation of Labour MPs, and this Labour government, to rebuild our alliances in Europe and to reimagine what is possible…

“We cannot fear the shadow of the 2016 referendum, we need to make the case for a renewed and stronger relationship with the EU and to do it with urgency and conviction.”

Lewin pointed to Switzerland’s unique bilateral treaties with the EU as a framework for a closer UK-EU relationship and called for Britain to learn from the “Swiss model”. He argued that “any option that increases our access to the single market has to be taken seriously.”

SERA: Lewin has been listed as a member of the Socialist Environment and Resources Association (SERA) – a socialist society affiliated with the Labour Party. Founded in 1973, SERA is the party’s official environmental campaign group. The organisation campaigns on a wide range of issues, including renewable energy, biodiversity, air quality and the transition to a green economy. SERA describes its member MPs as “champions for the environment”.

Labour Movement for Europe: Lewin was endorsed by the Labour Movement for Europe (LME) in the 2024 general election. Founded in 1981, LME is a pro-European socialist society affiliated with the Labour Party. It campaigns for a close relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The organisation refers to itself as the “home of the pro-Europeans in the Labour and trade union movement”.

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Lewin voted in favour of the government’s flagship welfare bill at second reading. The vote came after ministers agreed to significant concessions to avoid defeat via a mass rebellion of Labour MPs on 1 July 2025.

Assisted dying

Lewin voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the assisted dying bill, at both second reading (November 2024) and third reading (June 2025).

Social values and conscience issues

Abortion decriminalisation (2025): Lewin voted in favour of a backbench amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that sought to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales in June 2025. The amendment, which was passed by a majority of 242 votes, removed women from the threat of prosecution for ending a pregnancy at any stage. As an issue of conscience, MPs were allowed to vote according to their personal beliefs.

Before Politics

Born in Welwyn Garden City on January 7, 1987, Lewin attended Bishop’s Stortford High School.

He studied politics at the University of York, graduating in 2008.

Lewin worked for Clarion Housing Group, a large housing association, from 2017 to 2024. He was initially head of external communications before being promoted to director of communications in 2021.