Neil Coyle

MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark

Labour

Neil Coyle is the Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, and was first elected to parliament at the 2015 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Coyle won 16,857 votes, representing 44.8% of the vote. The Liberal Democrat candidate, Rachel Bentley, received 9,070 votes (24.1%), while the Green Party candidate, Susan Hunter, secured 4,477 votes (11.9%). Coyle was duly elected with a majority of 7,787 votes.

The Bermondsey and Old Southwark constituency is located in the London Borough of Southwark, covering areas south of the River Thames including Bermondsey, Borough, Walworth and Rotherhithe. The seat was held by former Liberal Democrat deputy leader and minister during the 2010-2015 coalition government Simon Hughes from 1983 until Coyle’s victory in 2015.

Political Career

At the beginning of the parliament elected in 2024, Coyle stood unsuccessfully for election as chair of the work and pensions committee. In the contest, the results of which were announced in September 2024, Coyle secured 128 votes, placing second. They were eliminated in the first round. They were ultimately defeated by Debbie Abrahams, who won the support of 304 colleagues.

Coyle was briefly parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to the shadow leader of the House of Commons following his election in 2015. A PPS acts as an unpaid assistant to a minister, providing a link between the senior frontbencher and backbench MPs.

In June 2016, Coyle was among those to resign from the shadow frontbench in protest at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and his approach to the Brexit referendum. In his resignation letter, Coyle criticised Corbyn for his “lack of energy and zeal” which made the “narrow margin” of the referendum result “less forgivable”.

He added: “[As leader,] you also promised a broader debate. This hasn’t emerged. We now face an earlier election without any substantive debate on Labour’s future having been had in nine months of your leadership.

“This is disappointing for the members who previously backed you and those MPs who were willing to broaden debate when you sought our nominations.”

https://x.com/coyleneil/status/747347451632222209

Coyle had the Labour whip suspended between February 2022 and May 2023 following allegations relating to his conduct. Political journalist Henry Dyer, who is of British-Chinese heritage, made a formal complaint to the parliamentary authorities alleging Coyle had made racist comments.

According to Dyer, while discussing Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP who it emerged recently had received funding from a suspected Chinese spy, Coyle said Gardiner had been funded by “Fu Manchu” — a fictional Chinese supervillain.

Dyer said he told Coyle he is British-Chinese, to which the MP replied he could tell “from how you look like you’ve been giving renminbi [the Chinese currency] to Barry Gardiner”. Later, Dyer said Coyle put two fingers up in a V gesture as he was leaving.

Coyle was also suspended from all bars on the Westminster estate by House of Commons speaker Lindsday Hoyle.

Following his suspension from the Labour Party, Coyle said he was “very sorry for my insensitive comments” and had “apologised to everyone involved”.

In a further statement, Coyle added that he was “devastated to be in this situation through my own fault” and would”take every step necessary to improve myself”. The MP said he hoped “to re-prove my Labour values and have the whip restored in due course.”

https://x.com/coyleneil/status/1492183548085903363

https://x.com/Direthoughts/status/1492139757878624261

In March 2023, parliament’s independent expert panel (IEP), which polices harassment rules, recommended Coyle face a suspension of five days for breaching parliament’s bullying and harassment policy. The panel found that Coyle had “engaged in foul-mouthed and drunken abuse of the parliamentary assistant” and “used abusive language with racial overtones” in an interaction with a parliamentary journalist.

In a statement to parliament, Coyle said: “I wish to specifically apologise to the two complainants subject to my drunken offensive behaviour and attitude … No one should leave any MP’s company so shocked and appalled at their inappropriate behaviour or failure to meet the standards rightly expected of this office.”

He added: “On 1 March this week, I celebrated a year since I stopped drinking… Going forward, I will remain abstinent to offer the greatest chance for my own health to continue to improve, for the best relationship with my daughter and family to continue to grow, and for the best service to my constituents to continue.

“I hope that in speaking out publicly about ending my alcohol dependency, I am also able to support others struggling to maintain or regain control.”

In May 2023, Coyle was readmitted into the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). It came after Sir Alan Campbell, then the opposition chief whip, told a PLP committee meeting that Coyle had undertaken two programmes regarding managing alcohol since his suspension and stopped drinking entirely.

In December 2023, The Independent reported that Coyle had claimed £295 for an anti-racism awareness course. Labour MP Kim Johnson said it was “an outrage for Neil Coyle to charge the taxpayer in his attempt to atone for his racist and abusive behaviour”, adding: “It begs the question – is he committed to learning his lesson?”

Coyle was a member of the work and pension committee from 2016-2024 and the foreign affairs committee from 2020-2024.

Coyle is listed as a member of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) for food banks, housing and care for older people, and Shakespeare.

Coyle delivered his maiden speech on 1 July 2015 during a debate on equal pay and the gender pay gap.

In it, he said: “I am proud of the food and banking sectors locally, but I am less proud of my constituency’s growing food bank sector. This year, 7,000 people are expected to use this central London food bank, including 700 who are in work. Low pay is a very serious concern for me.”

He added: “I hope that the government recognise that they cannot build one nation on such high levels of in-work poverty. One former Southwark resident, Charles Dickens, who lived just off what is now Marshalsea road, wrote about the best and worst of times, and it is very sad that he would probably still recognise those two cities in a constituency in the heart of London.”

Political views

Leadership elections and loyalty

Oppose leadership election: In May 2026, Coyle was among the over 100 Labour MPs who signed a joint statement insisting it was “no time for a leadership contest.” The letter was an intervention in the political crisis engulfing Keir Starmer’s premiership, after Labour suffered heavy losses in the 2026 local elections and devolved elections to the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru. It was organised as a counterweight to a mounting rebellion that had seen high-profile figures, including some ministers, call for Starmer’s resignation.

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.

Labour leadership 2020: Coyle was one of 21 Labour MPs who nominated Jess Phillips for the party’s leadership in early 2020. The election was triggered by the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn following the party’s defeat in the 2019 general election, which resulted in Labour’s fewest seats in the House of Commons since 1935.

Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, had been a prominent critic of Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. She withdrew from the contest on 21 January 2020, suggesting that she could not “unite all parts of our movement”.

According to a Southwark News report, Coyle said at the time: “The question for Labour members is, do we want to win the next election? And do we actually want to have the chance to turn around some of what the Tories have been doing.

“Or do we continue to want to just put up more placards and get on another protest? That’s the question for Labour members.”

Labour leadership 2015: Coyle was one of 10 Labour MPs who nominated Mary Creagh for the party’s leadership in June 2015. The election followed the resignation of Ed Miliband after the party’s defeat in the 2015 general election and was the first to be held under a “one member, one vote” system. Creagh, the shadow international development secretary, withdrew from the contest on 12 June after securing only 10 nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) – far short of the 35 required to reach the final ballot.

Coyle was later part of a group of MPs who lent their nominations to ensure Corbyn, a veteran backbencher, reached the threshold of 35 required to appear on the ballot, intending to “broaden the debate.”

Coyle later co-authored an article, alongside fellow Labour MP Jo Cox, titled: “We nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership. Now we regret it”.

The Guardian op-ed, published May 2016 after that year’s local elections, read: “Of course it would be wrong to view these results simply through the prism of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. But nor can we pretend that the leadership isn’t an issue.

“When the voters tell us on the doorsteps that they can’t picture our leader in No 10 we have to listen. When our candidates in London and Wales ask the leader to stay away, we have a problem. When the revival we were promised in Scotland with Corbyn’s ‘new’ politics proves to be a mirage, we have to ask what it has actually achieved.”

Coyle and Cox added: “We both nominated Corbyn for leader last year. We have never had cause to doubt his commitment to society’s most disadvantaged and to Labour’s values – a commitment we all share. But we have come to regret that decision.

“We helped put Corbyn on the ballot because we wanted a genuine debate within the Labour party. We didn’t expect to be debating things far from the priorities of most voters: unilateral nuclear disarmament, the Falkland Islands, the monarchy and all the rest.”

Coyle supported Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership contest.

In 2020, personal text messages between Corbyn and Coyle were revealed by the Sunday Times. Gabriel Pogrund, the author of book Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, tweeted photos of exchanges between the two from August 2016 to September 2017.

The screenshots showed Coyle telling Corbyn: “You make me ashamed to have ever tried to work with you”; “I have no idea how you sleep at night”; and “you’re weaker than a mosquito on an elephant hide”.

https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1301810193366384640

Corbyn loyalty list: In March 2016, Coyle was labelled as “core group negative” by the Corbyn leadership in a leaked list which categorised Labour MPs by their perceived loyalty. This label suggested the Corbyn leadership viewed Coyle as a critic but not openly hostile.

Brexit and Europe

Brexit referendum: Coyle campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, and therefore agreed with a majority of constituents, 73.9% of whom also voted to Remain.

Article 50: In February 2017, Coyle voted against the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. The legislation empowered the prime minister to notify the Council of the European Union of the UK’s intention to withdraw, formally triggering the process set out in Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. MPs supported the bill by 498 votes to 114 at second reading. In voting against the bill, Coyle defied the party whip – one of 47 Labour MPs to do so.

People’s vote support (2019): Coyle signed a January 2019 statement by Labour MPs calling for a “people’s vote” or second referendum. The statement, signed by 71 Labour MPs, read: “Defeat of the Tory [Brexit] deal in a public vote would give us all a chance to campaign for the anti-austerity policies and a Labour government that deals with the true causes of the Brexit vote, and a reformed Europe that works for all people.”

In a piece for LabourList, published April 2019, Coyle called on his party to support freedom of movement. Coyle wrote: “It seems absurd to me that any MP would back a ‘deal’ cooked up in Downing Street between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn that ignores 80% of our economy, leaving just a customs union on the table.

“Absurdly, this would mean allowing a can of beans to travel across the wealthiest trade bloc on the planet while locking human beings out of that same freedom.”

Brexit trade deal: In December 2020, Coyle was among the 37 Labour MPs to rebel against the leadership’s position on the EU (Future Relationship) Bill – which enabled the government to implement and ratify its post-Brexit trade deal with the EU. Keir Starmer, the newly elected Labour leader, argued that while the trade deal negotiated by Boris Johnson’s government was “thin” and flawed, the only alternative at that late stage was a “no-deal” exit. To enforce the leadership’s position, a three-line whip was imposed. Coyle abstained over the bill. One Labour MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, voted against the bill.

Rejoin debate: In March 2025, Coyle participated in a Westminster Hall debate on a public petition calling for the United Kingdom to rejoin the European Union as a full member. The debate was triggered by an e-petition signed by over 128,000 people.

In the debate, Coyle stated his longstanding opposition to leaving the EU.

He said: “I support rejoining and always opposed leaving, for the reasons around national security and our national interest.”

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Coyle 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

Coyle 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).

In a statement setting out his position, issued June 2025, Coyle said: “Backers of the bill have needlessly attacked the faith of some opponents of their plans, but have failed to answer the many concerns of disabled people or NHS professionals.

“Nor have they provided safeguards that respond to issues like coercion of some vulnerable people – voting down or opposing amendments that would improve their bill. This disappointing approach is harmful and leaves me even more concerned about the long-term plans behind bringing in this legislation and the slippery slope it opens, as seen in other jurisdictions where assisted dying is already policy.”

https://x.com/coyleneil/status/1842068788495126596

Social values and conscience issues

Abortion decriminalisation (2025): Coyle 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.

Foreign policy and security

Sanctioned (Russia): In April 2022, Coyle was among the group of MPs placed on a sanctions list by the Russian government. The measure barred them from entering Russia and was presented by Moscow as a retaliatory response to the UK’s stance on the invasion of Ukraine.

Trident renewal (2016): Coyle voted in favour of a government motion calling for the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent system in July 2016. The motion, which was passed by 472 votes to 117, committed the UK to constructing a new fleet of submarines to carry the nation’s nuclear weapons. Labour was split over the issue with 140 of its 230 MPs going against leader Jeremy Corbyn and backing the motion.

Syria airstrikes (2015): Coyle voted in favour of a government motion to extend UK airstrikes against Isis from Iraq into Syria in December 2015. The motion, which was passed by 397 votes to 223 after a 10-hour debate in the House of Commons, authorised the RAF to conduct strikes against Isis targets in Syria.

Palestine

LFPME: Coyle has been listed as a member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME). The organisation’s stated aim is to promote peace and justice in the region through the application of international law and respect for human rights.

Before Politics

Born Neil Alan John Coyle in Luton, Bedfordshire on 30 December 1978, he grew up in Luton and attended state schools before receiving a full scholarship to Bedford School.

He studied British Politics and Legislative Studies (BA) at the University of Hull. He lived in China from 2001 to 2003.

His career before parliament was in the charity and policy sector, focusing on disability rights and equality. He worked for the government’s equality commission (2003-2007), the National Centre for Independent Living (2007-2009), Disability Alliance (2009-2012), and Disability Rights UK (2012-2013).

He served as a Labour councillor for Newington ward on Southwark London Borough Council from 2010 to 2016 and was deputy mayor of Southwark from 2014 to 2015.