Judith Cummins is the Labour MP for Bradford South, having first been elected at the 2015 general election.

In the 2024 general election, Cummins won 11,833 votes, representing 35.8% of the vote. The Reform UK candidate, Ian Eglin, received 7,441 votes (22.5%), while the Conservative candidate, Zaf Shah, secured 4,853 votes (14.7%). Cummins was duly elected with a majority of 4,392 votes.

The Bradford South constituency covers the southern part of the city of Bradford in West Yorkshire, including areas such as Great Horton, Queensbury, Tong, and Wibsey. It has been represented by the Labour Party continuously since 1945.

Political Career

Cummins currently serves as a deputy speaker of the House of Commons (first deputy chairman of ways and means). She was elected to this post on 23 July 2024. In this role, she presides over debates in the commons in the absence of the speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, and the chairman of ways and means, Nusrat Ghani.

During the brief campaign, Cummins pledged to apply the rules fairly and to foster a tolerant atmosphere. “Tolerance and respect rules here, the same as you’d expect if you’re at work anywhere else, to be treated with dignity and respect. I feel really strongly about that”, she told PoliticsHome.

She also vowed to call for a regular review of systems to ensure parliament “does work for everybody”, saying: “I recognise that this place has had its problems, will always have its problems like any other workplace in a way. But I think we need to be held to a higher standard than any other workplace.”

She added: “It’s unfortunate that every member in this place gets the flak, really, from the worst behaviour of the worst members of this place, rather than the best. And that is not always… It’s not at all reflective of the workplace that we’re in: this is a great place to work in.”

Cummins said she did not favour a ban on mobile phones either. “I don’t think you can ban mobile phones in the chamber. You can’t even ban them in schools, let alone the chamber!”, she said.

Cummins was elected alongside Ghani and Caroline Nokes (first deputy chairman of ways and means). This was the first time all three deputy speakers were women, and it represented the most diverse group ever to hold the roles.

Hoyle responded: “This parliament is breaking more glass ceilings than ever before, with the biggest number of women MPs ever – and now an all-female team of deputies.

“All three MPs are incredible politicians who are well-respected by this House, and I am looking forward to working with them.”

Cummins served as an acting deputy speaker in July 2021, in place of Dame Rosie Winterton who was self-isolating due to Covid-19.

Previously, Cummins served on the Labour frontbench as shadow minister for international trade from January 2018 to April 2020. Before that, she was an opposition whip from September 2015 to January 2018.

During her tenure as a parliamentarian, Cummins has introduced bills regarding the maximum noise levels of fireworks which may be sold to the public; (Fireworks (Noise Limits) Bill 2023-24); to require quad bike riders on public highways to wear helmets (Quad Bikes Bill 2021-22); and to reform the electoral system by automatically adding eligible voters to the register (Automatic Electoral Registration Bill 2019-21).

https://x.com/JudithCummins/status/1272916540460093440

Writing for the Huffington Post in June 2020, Cummins said the latter bill would improve the “resilience and reliability of the electoral system”

She added: “Its basic principle is that the state should do all that it can to ensure the electoral roll is as comprehensive and accurate as possible. It does this by using data already held by the government and public services to automatically register people to vote and to ensure their details are kept up to date.”

Cummins was a member of the business and trade committee from 2020 to 2022. From 2020 to 2024, she served as a member of the panel of chairs. The panel of chairs is made up of those MPs chosen by the House of Commons speaker at the beginning of every parliament to chair public bill committees and other commons general committees. In this capacity, Cummins also chaired debates in Westminster Hall. She could also act as temporary chair during a committee of the whole House.

Cummins delivered her maiden speech on 9 July 2015 during a debate on the budget.

In it, she said: “I am in the chamber today to pursue the same struggle that led Keir Hardie to this House some 115 years ago – the fight for social justice. People living across Bradford deserve social justice, a phrase that is sometimes overcomplicated by academics and commentators alike.

“To me, it is not complicated; nor is it to the people of Bradford. By the same token, neither is injustice complicated – the upwelling of discomfort in the pit of your stomach in the face of injustice will be familiar to all.”

She added: “We see injustice on pensions… We see injustice in housing… We see injustice in access to healthcare services… We also see injustice in access to further education… We also see injustice when we look at the number of jobs that pay a fair day’s wage…

“I conclude with words of warning from Martin Luther King, who said: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”

Before entering parliament, Cummins served as a local councillor on Bradford City Council for the Royds ward (2004-2007) and later on Leeds City Council for the Temple Newsam ward (2012-2016).

Political views

Leadership elections and loyalty

Labour leadership 2020: Cummins was one of 82 Labour MPs who nominated Keir Starmer 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.

Starmer’s 82 nominations were the highest of any candidate. The shadow Brexit secretary won a decisive victory in the first round with 56.2% of the vote, defeating Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy.

Labour leadership 2015: Cummins nominated Yvette Cooper 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. It was the first contest held under the “one member, one vote” system, which replaced the previous electoral college.

Cooper, the shadow home secretary, secured 59 nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), comfortably exceeding the 35 required to reach the final ballot. She ultimately finished third in the contest with 17% of the vote.

In March 2016, Cummins was labelled as “neutral but not hostile” by the Corbyn leadership in a leaked list which categorised Labour MPs by their perceived loyalty.

Labour leadership 2016: Cummins was one of 162 Labour MPs who nominated Owen Smith for the party’s leadership in July 2016. The election was triggered by a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn following the EU referendum, which led to a wave of shadow cabinet resignations and a vote of no confidence supported by 172 MPs. Smith, the former shadow work and pensions secretary, was ultimately defeated by Corbyn, who won with an increased mandate of 61.8% of the vote.

Factional identity and party tradition

Tribune group (2017): Cummins was listed among the supporters of the Tribune parliamentary group – a caucus generally described as representing the party’s “soft left”.

The Tribune group was initially formed in 1964 to support the newspaper of the same name. It served as a prominent forum for those parliamentarians situated on the left of the Labour Party – but it split over Tony Benn’s campaign for the deputy leadership in 1981. Benn’s supporters founded the Campaign group – which evolved into the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG). Today, the Bennite SCG is strongly associated with the Labour left tradition.

During the 1980s, the Tribune group emerged as a more natural home for those on Labour’s “soft left”.

In 2017, Efford officially re-launched the group with a new mission statement calling for “opportunity and aspiration” to be placed at the heart of the party’s programme. Efford said he had reformed the group to ensure that the centre-left of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) “have a space in which to put forward ideas and debate which has not been there under successive leaders”.

He added: “The view of Labour MPs at the moment tends to be that too much are just Blairites who want to stab Jeremy Corbyn in the back. We want to show that is not where we are, and that we want to develop our own ideas that represent the centre-left of the party.”

Brexit and Europe

Brexit referendum: Cummins supported Remain in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU), and therefore disagreed with a majority of constituents, 63.6% of whom voted to Leave.

Article 50: In February 2017, Cummins voted in favour of 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.

Foreign policy and security

Sanctioned (Russia): In April 2022, Cummins 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.

Syria airstrikes (2015): Cummins voted against 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 ten-hour debate in the House of Commons, authorised the RAF to conduct strikes against Isis targets in Syria.

Ceasefire vote (November 2023): Cummins was among 56 Labour MPs to vote in favour of a Scottish National Party (SNP) amendment to the King’s Speech in the House of Commons calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza – defying the instruction set out by the party’s frontbench. Labour had tabled its own motion, making a more moderate appeal for a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict and ordered its representatives to support that stance.

Before Politics

Born Judith Mary Black on 26 June 1967, she attended the University of Leeds, and later, Ruskin College, Oxford, with a Trade Union scholarship as a mature student.

Prior to entering politics, she worked as a benefits advisor and with further education colleges across Yorkshire.

Personal Life

Cummins is married to Mark Cummins, who she employs as a parliamentary researcher (per the July 2025 register of members’ financial interests). They live in the Bradford South constituency and have two children.

Trivia

Cummins was the first woman MP elected to parliament from Ruskin College, Oxford.