Dr Peter Prinsley is the Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, having first been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election.

In the 2024 election, Peter Prinsley won 16,745 votes, representing 32.9% of the vote. The Conservative candidate, Will Tanner, received 15,293 votes (30.0%), while the Reform UK candidate, Scott Hussey, secured 8,595 votes (16.9%). Prinsley was duly elected with a majority of 1,452 votes, gaining the notionally Conservative seat for Labour.

The Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket constituency was newly created ahead of the 2024 election, formed from parts of the former Bury St Edmunds and West Suffolk constituencies. It is located in Suffolk in the East of England and was notionally Conservative based on the 2019 election.

In fact, Prinsley overturned a notional 22,000-vote majority in 2024. It marked the first time that Labour had won any Suffolk constituencies not centred on Ipswich or Lowestoft. His victory was described as one of the “biggest upsets for the Conservatives in the general election.”

Will Tanner, Prinsley’s opponent in 2024, was the serving prime minister Rishi Sunak’s deputy chief of staff.

Political Career

Prinsley is a member of the House of Commons home affairs select committee (since October 2025) – the committee responsible for scrutinising the work of the Home Office and its associated bodies. It examines government policy, spending and the law in areas including immigration, security and policing.

In May 2026, Prinsley 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.”

In September 2025, Prinsley was denied entry to the occupied West Bank alongside fellow Labour MP Simon Opher. The MPs were travelling in a parliamentary delegation to see medical and humanitarian work being carried out by organisations including Medical Aid for Palestinians. A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office described the treatment of Prinsley and Opher as “totally unacceptable and deeply concerning”.

Prinsley is listed as a member of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) for British Jews (co-chair), emergency care, healthcare workers and prostate cancer.

In November 2025, Prinsley was one of 34 cross-party MPs and peers who signed a letter to Ofcom demanding an investigation into the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). The letter, led by Joani Reid, chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on antisemitism, called on the regulator to determine whether the platform was in breach of its legal duties under the Online Safety Act following a reported surge in antisemitic content and calls for violence against Jews on X.

In December 2025, Prinsley was announced as a new honorary vice chair of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). LFI is one of the most established and prominent advocacy groups within Labour, campaigning for a strong bilateral relationship between the UK and Israel and working to bolster ties with its sister party, Israeli Labor. The organisation advocates for a two-state solution, with a secure Israel alongside a “viable, democratic and independent” Palestinian state.

Prinsley delivered his maiden speech on 19 July 2024 during a debate on planning, the green belt and rural affairs.

In it, he said: “I am a surgeon from East Anglia, and it is an honour beyond my imagining to have been elected to parliament to serve the people of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket in the most beautiful county of Suffolk.

“I thank its voters for putting their faith in me and in Labour, and for giving us the chance to change Britain.”

He added: “Very few surgeons are ever elected to parliament and I will bring my experience of 42 years as an NHS doctor to this place to do something to help mend a service that the secretary of state for health and social care [Wes Streeting] has described as broken.

“Many of our hospitals are indeed in poor repair and we have seen very little progress on the 40 new hospitals famously promised by the last government…

“But I am optimistic for our NHS. Britain leads the world in scientific advances. Right in my own region of East Anglia we have world-beating biomedical science and leading universities.”

Before entering parliament, Prinsley was elected as a Labour councillor on Norwich City Council in May 2023. He stood down as a councillor in 2025.

Political Views

Leadership elections

Labour deputy leadership 2025: Prinsley 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: Prinsley 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.”

Electoral reform

Fair elections APPG: Prinsley is 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.

Electoral reform amendment: In May 2026, Prinsley 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.”

Proportional representation bill: In December 2024, Prinsley voted in favour of the Elections (Proportional Representation) Bill – introduced by Liberal Democrat frontbencher Sarah Olney under the 10-minute rule procedure. The bill sought to “introduce a system of proportional representation for parliamentary elections and for local government elections in England”.

A total of 138 MPs supported the bill – with 136 opposed. Notably, 59 Labour MPs backed Olney’s bill.

Introducing the bill, Olney told the House: “First past the post is a broken and unfair system. This summer, the Labour party won a landslide election victory, securing 63% of seats in the House of Commons in return for just 34% of the vote.

“The system leaves millions of voices unheard and creates a divisive, adversarial political climate where collaboration is discouraged and accountability is often sidestepped.”

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): Prinsley 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

Prinsley 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).

Before Politics

Peter Richard Prinsley was born on 8 April 1958 in Ilkley, Yorkshire. He attended Guisborough Grammar School. His father was an RAF medic who joined the RAF in 1948.

Prinsley studied medicine at the University of Sheffield, graduating in 1982. He qualified as an otorhinolaryngologist.

Prinsley worked as an consultant ENT surgeon for several decades before entering parliament. He is a former chair of the Norfolk Deaf Association.

Prinsley stepped back from his job as an ear, nose and throat surgeon in April 2025 to focus on his parliamentary duties.

In a statement at the time, Prinsley said: “It was with a heavy heart that I completed my last operating list after more than 40 years as a surgeon in the NHS.

“However, representing the people of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket is the privilege of my life and one that deserves my undivided attention.”

Personal Life

Prinsley is Jewish. He is married and has three children.

His wife, Dr Marian Prinsley, served as sheriff of Norwich from 2019 to 2021. One of his sons is an A&E doctor in London, according to his 2024 maiden speech.

His uncles George Jeger and Santo Jeger, and aunt Baroness (Lena) Jeger, were all Labour MPs.

Trivia

According to his maiden speech, Prinsley is the first ear, nose and throat surgeon ever elected to parliament.

Prinsley spent the 2024 general election campaign in an old Post Office van, decorated with photographs of himself in surgical scrubs.

Prinsley, aged 66 at the time of the 2024 election, was one of the oldest first-time MPs.