Louise Sandher-Jones is the Labour Party MP for North East Derbyshire, having first been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Jones gained the North East Derbyshire seat for Labour, defeating the incumbent Conservative MP Lee Rowley. Jones received 17,591 votes (38.4%), Rowley received 15,838 votes (34.5%), and the Reform UK candidate, Andy Egginton, secured 7,899 votes (17.2%). Jones was duly elected with a majority of 1,753 votes.

The North East Derbyshire constituency was a Labour seat from 1935 until 2017 when it was won by the Conservatives.

Political Career

Sandher-Jones was appointed to the post of parliamentary under-secretary of state for veterans and people in the Ministry of Defence in the September 2025 ministerial reshuffle.

Previously, Sandher-Jones served as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in the Home Office (2024-2025).

Sandher-Jones delivered her maiden speech on 8 October 2024.

In it, she said: “The work of this government has already begun, and there is so much that I know will make a huge positive transformation for people in my constituency, whether that is renationalising railways so that we can be proud of the service they provide again, huge reforms to workers’ rights and renters’ rights so that we can end no fault-evictions, or the establishment of the child poverty taskforce so that we can drive down child poverty, just as Labour governments have done before, and I know we will do again.”

She added: “I am so proud to be part of a government who are putting state education at the heart of our mission.

“I have not been an MP for long, but I have already spent a lot of my time visiting schools in my constituency, and I have seen and heard for myself the very real challenges that they are facing because of the effects of austerity on their budgets.

“opportunities for young people are shrinking in front of our eyes. I am glad that we are making these decisions so that we can invest more in the state education that 93% of our children need.”

Before entering parliament, Sandher-Jones was elected as a Labour councillor on Charnwood Borough Council in 2023. She resigned from this role in March 2024.

Political views

Leadership elections

Labour deputy leadership 2025: Sandher-Jones 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

Fair elections APPG: Sandher-Jones has been listed as a supporter 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.

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Sandher-Jones 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

Sandher-Jones 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): Sandher-Jones 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

Louise Elizabeth Sandher-Jones grew up in a village in Leicestershire. She studied Chinese at the University of Edinburgh.

After university, she initially joined the civil service. In 2013, she joined the British Army, training at Sandhurst, and specialised in military intelligence. She was based in Germany and the UK and deployed on operations in Afghanistan.

In her 2024 maiden speech, Sandher-Jones said: “I served in the military, and nobody is so much affected by the decisions of this House as my former colleagues. The decisions that colleagues sat in the chamber have made and will make will have a direct impact on their lives.

“Those decisions could send them to dangerous places to do dangerous things. Indeed, some of my former colleagues in the armed forces have not come back.”

Sandher-Jones left the army in 2020.

She later joined Morgan Stanley and then McKenzie Intelligence Services.

Personal Life

In December 2024, Sandher-Jones announced her engagement to fellow newly elected Labour MP Jeevun Sandher (the MP for Loughborough). They met while campaigning in January 2023.

They married in August 2025.

In a post to Facebook, Sandher-Jones said: “Over August, I married my wonderful partner, Jeevun Sandher!

“We had a beautiful wedding that brought together traditions from our two different heritages which made it all the more special as we start the next chapter of our shared future.”

Trivia

Sandher-Jones enjoys walking in the Peak District.