Tan Dhesi is the Labour MP for Slough, having first been elected to parliament at the 2017 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Dhesi won 14,666 votes, representing 33.9% of the vote. Independent Network candidate Azhar Chohan received 11,019 votes (25.5%), while the Conservative candidate, Moni Nanda, secured 7,457 votes (17.2%). Dhesi was duly elected with a majority of 3,647 votes.

The Slough constituency is located in Berkshire, South East England. Following boundary changes in 2024, the constituency now comprises specific wards of the Borough of Slough. It is an ethnically diverse seat with significant Sikh and Muslim communities. Once a marginal seat, it has been held by Labour since 1997.

Dhesi’s immediate predecessor as the MP for Slough was Fiona Mactaggart, a former justice minister.

Political Career

Dhesi currently serves as chair of the defence select committee (since September 2024). The committee is responsible for monitoring the expenditure, administration and policy of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and its associated public bodies. The committee’s remit includes oversight of the British Armed Forces.

By virtue of this role, Dhesi sits on the liaison committee – the “super committee” composed of the cross-party chairs of all the other commons select committees. It has a broad oversight role, but is best known for its questioning of the prime minister in sessions that take place two or three times a year.

Dhesi is also a member of the national security strategy (joint committee) (since December 2024).

Prior to the 2024 general election, which saw the Labour Party returned to government after fourteen years in opposition, Dhesi served in several shadow ministerial roles. He was shadow minister for exports (November 2023 – May 2024), shadow exchequer secretary to the Treasury (September – November 2023), and shadow minister for railways (April 2020 – September 2023).

Dhesi was briefly parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, in January 2020. A PPS acts as an unpaid assistant to a senior frontbencher, providing a link between them and backbench MPs.

Alongside his tenure as chair, Dhesi was previously a member of the defence committee from March 2020 to May 2020. He served on the housing, communities and local government committee from July 2018 to November 2019.

Dhesi made his mark in parliament with widely covered contributions taking aim at Boris Johnson, prime minister from 2019-2022. Speaking at prime minister’s questions in 2019, Dhesi demanded Johnson apologise for comments he made about Muslim women in a newspaper column in August 2018.

Dhesi asked the PM to “finally apologise for his derogatory and racist remarks”, referencing a column Johnson wrote for the Telegraph newspaper in which he wrote that women who wear the burka look like “letter boxes”.

Dhesi said: “For those of us who, from a young age, have had to endure and face up to being called names such as towelhead or Taliban, or to people saying we come from bongo-bongo land, we can appreciate full well the hurt and pain felt by already vulnerable Muslim women when they are described as looking like bank robbers and letterboxes.”

He also called on the prime minister to order an inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative party.

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Dhesi’s contribution won a round of applause from MPs on the opposition benches – a rare and symbolic breach of parliamentary convention. The traditional method for an MP to show approval for a speech is to shout “hear, hear”.

In July 2021, speaking in the commons during the Covid-19 pandemic, Dhesi listed the funerals and other events he had missed because of official guidelines, and demanded Johnson apologise for not having sacked Dominic Cummings, his chief adviser. Cummings was accused of breaking rules after driving 260 miles from his home to Durham during lockdown.

Dhesi said: “Having experienced such painful, personal sacrifices, like many others, imagine our collective disgust when in order to curry favour with the prime minister’s chief adviser, we see sycophantic, spineless, hypocritical government ministers lining up to defend the indefensible.”

He added: “What an absolute disgrace, and they should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. So when is the prime minister finally going to apologise to the nation for not mustering up some courage and integrity, for not doing the honourable thing and sacking his chief adviser who so shamelessly flouted his own government guidance?”

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Dhesi is listed as a member of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) for Malaria and neglected tropical diseases, the South East and Western Rail Link to Heathrow.

Dhesi delivered his maiden speech on 18 July 2017 during a debate on drugs policy. In it, he stated: “In addition to human rights abuses elsewhere in the world, forget being embraced, even acceptability is still a huge problem, for example in our neighbouring France.

“I find it extremely disappointing and incredibly ironic that more than 80,000 turbaned Sikh soldiers died – yes, died; not injured – laid down their lives to liberate the very country where their descendants cannot even have their ID photos taken without having to remove their turbans, and cannot even send their children to most state schools without removing their turbans.”

He added: “The only way to fight such ignorance, to overcome the politics of hate and division, including the Islamophobia that is so prevalent in certain sections of our society and media, is to call it out and condemn it, and to espouse the politics of integration.

“These are not just hollow words; I believe strongly in community cohesion and integration. When I served as mayor in 2011, integration was my mayoral theme.”

Before entering parliament, Dhesi served on Gravesham Borough Council representing Northfleet North from 2007 to 2015, including a term as mayor of Gravesham (2011-2012).

He was also a member of Kent County Council representing Northfleet and Gravesham West from 2017 until his resignation in 2019.

Dhesi previously stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Gravesham in the 2015 general election, finishing second on 15,114 votes (30.1%).

Political views

Leadership elections and loyalty

Labour leadership 2020: Dhesi was one of 31 Labour MPs who nominated Lisa Nandy 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.

Nandy, the MP for Wigan, argued that the party needed a “bridge” to reconnect with traditional working-class voters in northern England. She finished third in the contest with 16.2% of the vote.

Factional identity and party tradition

Living standards coalition: Dhesi 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?”

Brexit and Europe

Brexit referendum: Dhesi supported Remain in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU), and therefore disagreed with a majority of now-constituents, 54.1% of whom voted to Leave

Welfare

Welfare ‘reasoned amendment’ (June 2025): Dhesi was one of the over 120 Labour MPs to sign the reasoned amendment to the government’s flagship welfare bill which aimed to reject the proposed legislation.

The amendment, in the name of senior Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, objected to the fact that the bill had not been subject to a “formal consultation with disabled people” and that “250,000 people will be pushed into poverty” as a result of it, according to a government impact assessment.

The motion also called on the government to wait for the publication of the review into the Personal Independence Payment (Pip), helmed by minister Sir Stephen Timms, and the independent review, conducted by Sir Charlie Mayfield, into how the employment of disabled people could be boosted.

Assisted dying

Dhesi 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 late November prior to the bill’s second reading, Dhesi said: “While I appreciate the immense pain and suffering endured by some in the later stages of their life, I ultimately do not want to vote for legislation which may lead to the unnecessary and avoidable deaths of others, who may fall through the safeguards of this legislation.

“I certainly would not want that on my conscience.”

He added: “I worry this bill would forever change the relationship and power dynamic between doctors and their patients. Many doctors I have spoken to feel that their primary duty is to save lives, rather than be involved in a process that ends life.”

Welfare vote (July 2025): Dhesi 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.

Foreign policy and security

Sanctioned (Russia): In April 2022, Dhesi 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.

Palestine

LFPME: Dhesi 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.

Palestinian recognition letter (July 2025): In July 2025, Dhesi was among the over 254 MPs to sign a cross-party letter calling for the government to immediately recognise the state of Palestine. The letter called on the prime minister and foreign secretary to recognise Palestine at the UN Conference then taking place in New York.

Before Politics

Born Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi in Slough, Berkshire on 17 August 1978 to Indian immigrants, he spent his early years in the village Chalvey – a suburb of Slough.

Dhesi received a large part of his primary education in Punjab, India, before returning to the UK aged nine.

He holds a BSc in mathematics with management studies from University College London, an MSc in applied statistics from Keble College, Oxford, and an MPhil in the history and politics of South Asia from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Following his studies, he worked in his family’s construction business and ran his own construction company in Scotland. He served as Director for Dhesi Construction Limited (which became insolvent) from 2002 to 2007 and DGP Logistics PLC from 2005 to 2011.

Personal Life

Dhesi is married to Manveen Kaur Sandhu, a descendant of the family of Bhagat Singh – the Indian anti-colonial revolutionary.

Trivia

Dhesi became the UK’s first turbaned Sikh MP upon his election in 2017.

Commenting on this milestone in his maiden speech, Dhesi said: “Slough is a town of firsts. It elected the UK’s first ever black lady mayor and now, more than three decades later, it has elected the first ever turbaned Sikh to the British parliament – indeed, I believe, the first ever to be elected to any European parliament.

“A glass ceiling has truly been broken. I sincerely hope that many more like me will follow in the years and decades to come.”

Dhesi is fluent in Punjabi, Hindi, French and Urdu. His official website suggests he has a working knowledge of German, Italian and Latin.