Dr Marie Tidball is the Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, having first been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Tidball won 19,169 votes, representing 43.6% of the vote. The Conservative candidate, Miriam Cates, received 10,430 votes (23.7%), while the Reform UK candidate, Edward Dillingham, secured 9,456 votes (21.5%). Tidball was duly elected with a majority of 8,739.  

The Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency is located in South Yorkshire.

Political Career

Tidball serves as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (previously the Department for Business and Trade) (since September 2025). A PPS acts as an unpaid parliamentary assistant, providing a link between the senior frontbencher and backbench MPs. The role is widely regarded as the first step on the ministerial ladder. Although they cannot speak for the government in debates, a PPS is bound by collective responsibility and becomes part of the so-called “payroll vote”, expected to support the official line in all divisions.

At the beginning of the parliament elected in 2024, Tidball stood unsuccessfully for election as chair of the education committee. In the contest, the results of which were announced in September 2024, Tidball secured 97 votes, placing third. They were eliminated in the first round.

Tidball was ultimately defeated by Helen Hayes, who won the support of 312 colleagues in the second and final round.

In their official campaign statement, Tidball said: “Whilst I’m a newly elected MP, I’ve spent over a decade breaking down barriers to opportunity in education in my professional life – as an academic specialising in inclusive education, as a higher education researcher, local government cabinet member and nationally renowned disability expert.

“Earlier this year, I published my book Disabling Criminal Justice, highlighting the barriers disabled people face within the justice system and the need for joined-up public services, including education and social care.”

Tidball has sat as a member of the House of Commons education committee (2024-2025). She was also a member of the public bill committee for the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill from January to March 2025.

Tidball delivered her maiden speech on 21 October 2024.

In it, she said: “When I was born, the room in Barnsley hospital was filled with flowers. No one knew how long I would live for or what operations I might need.

“Our communities in Penistone and Stocksbridge nurtured me growing up, and world-class NHS care at Barnsley and Sheffield children’s hospitals enabled me to walk and follow my ambitions. My local state education in Penistone helped me to catch up, and to go on to study law at university and fulfil my potential.

“My inimitable parents taught me that there was no such word as ‘can’t’, as well as the values of fairness, equality and justice.”

She added: “Love, tolerance and doing things for other people are values knitted across the place I call home like the blankets woven from the yarn of Penistone sheep.

“To the people across Penistone and Stocksbridge: it is the privilege of my life to serve you. As your MP, I will work hard every day to be a strong voice for our communities and ensure that people growing up and growing old in our constituency can fulfil their potential.”

Before entering parliament, Tidball served as a Labour councillor on Oxford City Council from 2016 to 2022.

Tidball previously stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon in the 2017 general election.

Political Views

Leadership elections

Labour deputy leadership 2025: Tidball 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: Tidball is a member of the Living Standards Coalition. 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.”

SERA: Tidball 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”.

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Tidball voted against 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.

During the bill’s second reading, Tidball – one of the few visibly physically disabled MPs in the commons – delivered an impassioned speech. She spoke of her pledge to create a Britain “that treats disabled people with dignity and respect.”

She said: “We must seize this moment to do things differently and move beyond the damaging rhetoric and disagreements of recent weeks. There is an alternative approach, in line with the prime minister’s statement that reform should be implemented with Labour values of fairness.

“A reset requires a shift in emphasis to enabling disabled people to fulfil our potential.”

Assisted dying

Tidball 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): Tidball 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

Tidball grew up in the Penistone and Stocksbridge area. She attended Penistone Grammar School. Her mother was a nursery headteacher and her father was a teacher and Labour county councillor.  

Tidball studied law at University of Oxford, graduating in 2006. She obtained a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice from the same institution.

Tidball was awarded a doctor of philosophy (DPhil) degree from Oxford in 2017. Her doctoral thesis examined the treatment of autistic adult defendants within the English criminal justice system. The thesis was titled The governance of adult defendants with autism through English criminal justice policy and criminal court practice.

Tidball published a book based on this research, Disabling criminal justice, in 2024.  

Tidball undertook a journalism placement at Channel 4 News from 2007 to 2008. She was a policy and legal officer at Autism West Midlands from 2010 to 2015.

Personal Life

Tidball was born with a congenital disability affecting all four limbs. She had her right foot amputated when she was just 11 months old.

Tidball missed three years of schooling due to surgery.

Trivia

Tidball is a leading disability rights campaigner.

In her 2024 maiden speech, Tidball claimed to be the first Penistone and Stocksbridge MP “in over 100 years to have grown up there.”

Tidball was named the Spectator magazine’s Parliamentarian of the Year 2025.