Jess Asato is the Labour MP for Lowestoft, having first been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Asato won 14,464 votes, representing 34.6% of the vote. The Conservative candidate, Peter Aldous, received 12,448 votes (29.8%), while the Reform UK candidate, June Mummery, secured 10,328 votes (24.7%). Asato was duly elected with a majority of 2,016.

The Lowestoft constituency was re-established for the 2024 general election, largely based on the former Waveney constituency.

The predecessor seat of Waveney had been held by the Conservatives since 2010. In the 2019 general election, Peter Aldous, the Conservative candidate and incumbent, secured 62.2% of the vote.

Jim Prior, who served in the cabinet under Conservative prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath, represented Lowestoft from 1959 to 1983.

Political Career

Asato is a member of the House of Commons education select committee (since October 2024). The education committee scrutinises the work of the Department for Education (DfE) and its associated public bodies.

In a July 2025 article for LabourList, Asato called on the Labour government to ban “nudification apps”, which use artificial intelligence (AI) to create sexually explicit “deepfake” images of real people.

She wrote: “Young people are being targeted by adverts on social media sites encouraging them to download apps on which you upload pictures of real people to nudify them or create pornographic videos through AI. This content is highly realistic and it is getting increasingly difficult to spot that it is fake.

“It is already illegal to share nude deepfakes or create, share, or be in possession of a nude deepfake of a child and this Labour government is making it a criminal offence to create sexually-explicit deepfake images without consent – but the tools and apps that generate this content remain legal and cheap; easy to use and easy to cause harm with.”

Asato is listed as the chair of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) for care-experienced children and young people, the East of England, and perpetrators of domestic abuse; co-chair of the APPG for children; a vice chair for commercial sexual exploitation; and an officer of the APPG on domestic violence and abuse.

Asato delivered her maiden speech on 26 July 2024 in a debate on making Britain a clean energy superpower.

In it, she described the late Dame Tessa Jowell as her mentor.

She said: “I would not be in this place if [Dame Tessa] had not encouraged me to follow my passion for change… I aim to channel her dedication to public service and, as she called it, the human-sized picture each day that I have the honour of representing the people of Lowestoft in this place.”

Asato added: “For me, politics is personal. I grew up near Lowestoft. I was a young carer for my grandmother and managed our precarious life on benefits. As a child, the daily struggle I faced was my normal, but it should not have been, not for any child.

“That is why I joined the Labour party 27 years ago. I know that when we are bold, we bring real and lasting change, such as the introduction of Sure Start. I know that when we are focused, we can eliminate the barriers to success; we can make people’s aspirations more than a dream; we can pull children out of poverty.”

Before entering parliament, Asato stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Norwich North in the 2015 general election, finishing second to Conservative incumbent Chloe Smith on 14,589 votes (33.5%). Asato was one of 15 candidates standing for Labour in 2015 who received a £10,000 donation from the former Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Oakeshott.

Following the 2015 election, Asato contributed to the Fabian Society’s book Never Again: Lessons from Labour’s Key Seats. She claimed that, during the 2015 campaign, ” voters simply did not believe that we would have been able to hire 20,000 new nurses”.

She concluded that voters “did not trust us to run public services competently, that they thought we wasted their money, and that they thought we were going to do that all over again.

“By focusing our thinking on how we can address those essential fears about a future Labour government, we can put in place one of the many blocks we need to be given a chance to govern again.”

Asato served as a Labour councillor for St George’s Ward on Islington London Borough Council from 2010 to 2013.

Political views

Asato’s is a supporter of electoral reform.

She served as a council member of the Electoral Reform Society from 2011 to 2015.

She was also director of the Labour YES! campaign for electoral reform.

Asato is currently listed as a member of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for fair elections – a cross-party group of MPs and peers that campaigns for electoral reform. The group’s stated aims include replacing the first past the post (FPTP) voting system with a form of proportional representation, eliminating “dark money” and “undemocratic influence” from politics, and countering disinformation.

Leadership elections and loyalty

Labour deputy leadership 2025: Asato 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

Asato was acting director of Progress, generally considered to be a Blairite think tank and campaign vehicle.

In an interview with LabourList in 2009, it was noted that under Asato’s directorship, Progress seemed to have become “less of a cheerleader group for Blairite politics than it was when it started”.

To this, Asato responded: “Look, the fact is that a lot of people think they know what Progress has been doing. They’ve been happy to pigeonhole Progress as whatever they want to make of it, as simply Blairite or New Labour. But actually we’ve been relatively consistent in the things that we espouse on our side of the Party.

“For example, constitutional reform and [proportional representation] have been very long term issues we’ve pressed in magazine after magazine after magazine…

“We’ve always been an organisation that’s been about promoting new progressive ideas, not necessarily to the detriment of having a stale debate about single issues, but by saying the only way in which we think Labour wins elections is when it can show that it is sticking with what the public wants to see from a Labour government and when the party looks hungry for governing with new ideas and ways of trying to make the world a better place.”

Asato was the “social media organiser” on David Miliband’s 2010 Labour leadership campaign.

Usdaw: Asato is a member of the Usdaw Union Parliamentary Group – a group of MPs who are members of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw) and work generally to represent the union’s interests within parliament.

SERA: Asato 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: Asato 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”.

Compass: Asato was endorsed by local groups of the cross-party organisation Compass during the 2024 general election. Compass is a thinktank and campaign group. As part of its “Win as One” campaign in the 2024 election, local Compass groups backed a slate of progressive candidates who had pledged their support for electoral reform. The central aim of the initiative was to elect a “caucus” of MPs who would champion the cause of replacing the first past the post (FPTP) electoral system.

Electoral reform

Electoral reform amendment: In May 2026, Asato was one of over 70 Labour MPs who signed an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill, calling on the government to establish a “national commission on electoral reform”. Tabled by Alex Sobel as chair of the fair elections APPG, the amendment aimed to force a rethink of the first past the post voting system.

At the time, Sobel described FPTP as “one of the biggest examples of a broken status quo in UK politics.” He invited colleagues to join this “common sense call to take a fresh look at how parliament is elected in modern Britain.”

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Asato 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

Asato voted against 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).

Asato was a prominent campaigner against the bill.

Speaking during the bill’s commons third reading debate, she stated that her primary concern was the potential for the legislation to harm the most vulnerable people in society.

Asato said she did not begin the process of scrutinising the bill “opposed to the idea of assisted dying”.

But she added: “Having worked in the field of domestic abuse, I found myself increasingly concerned about how this Bill would impact on those who are most vulnerable to coercion and abuse.

“As a Labour MP, I reflected on why I joined the Labour party. It was because of our commitment to protecting the vulnerable and fighting for equality, suspicious of individualism and narrow notions of choice that turn a blind eye to the impact of that choice on others.”

She concluded by urging colleagues to reject the bill, stating that “in a system designed to end life, there can be no room for doubt or human error.

“Coercion and abuse are real – they happen all around us all the time, whether or not we want to see them, as does feeling like a burden. Perceiving yourself as a burden is a common phenomenon associated with having a terminal illness, one that often leads to a desire to die.

“This bill allows that feeling of being a burden – to those closest to you, and to society more broadly – to be acted on, rather than treated.”

In February 2025, Asato was one of four Labour MPs who sent a mass email sent to their parliamentary colleagues that accused Kim Leadbeater, the sponsor of the assisted dying bill, of portraying a “one-sided view” of expert evidence.

The MPs said the public bill committee scrutinising the bill received evidence that was “weighted towards voices that were known to be supportive of the bill.”

The email was signed by Meg Hillier, the Treasury select committee chair, as well as Asato, James Frith and Antonia Bance.

In a May 2025 Daily Mirror article, Asato argued that the “cracks we see in our daily lives will become chasms for vulnerable people in a world where this life-or-death decision hangs ever over them – and many of them will fall through.”

Social values and conscience issues

Abortion decriminalisation (2025): Asato 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 Jessica Redmond-Withey Asato on 30 April 1981, she is of part-Japanese heritage.

Asato grew up partly in Gorleston-on-Sea and the Norfolk village of Rollesby, attending Flegg High School near Great Yarmouth, before moving to London aged 16 where she attended Francis Holland School.

She studied law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Asato has a background working in policy and campaigns roles within the Labour movement and third sector. On top of the aforementioned political roles, she worked as a political adviser to Dame Tessa Jowell.

Asato was also previously director of Left Foot Forward and a health policy researcher at the Social Market Foundation.

Asato was chair of the Fabian Society from 2012 to 2014.

Personal Life

Asato cared for her grandmother, who had serious health problems, during her time growing up in Norfolk.

She has served as chair of governors of Jack Taylor Special School and as joint acting chair of the sexual health charity Brook.

She has also sat on the advisory board of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

Trivia

In 2010, Asato was featured in a Total Politics Bucks Fizz-themed promotional video alongside Nigel Farage and Alistair Campbell among others.

In 2009, Asato was ranked no 78 among the Top 100 most influential left-wingers by The Daily Telegraph.

Her short bio read: “A former chair of the Young Fabians and a researcher at the Social Market Foundation, Asato’s work with Progress involves promoting discussion and debate of progressive ideas among Labour Party members.”