Keith Vaz facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Keith Vaz
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Official portrait, 2017
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| Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee | |
| In office 26 July 2007 – 6 September 2016 |
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| Preceded by | John Denham |
| Succeeded by | Tim Loughton (acting) |
| Minister of State for Europe | |
| In office 9 May 1999 – 11 June 2001 |
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| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Geoff Hoon |
| Succeeded by | Peter Hain |
| Member of Parliament for Leicester East |
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| In office 11 June 1987 – 6 November 2019 |
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| Preceded by | Peter Bruinvels |
| Succeeded by | Claudia Webbe |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz
26 November 1956 Aden Colony (now Yemen) |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse | Maria Fernandes |
| Relations |
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| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (MA) |
| Website | Official website: http://www.keithvazmp.com |
Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz (born 26 November 1956) is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester East for 32 years, from 1987 to 2019. He was the British Parliament's longest-serving British Asian MP.
Vaz served as the Minister for Europe between October 1999 and June 2001. He was appointed a member of the Privy Council in June 2006. He was Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee from July 2007, but resigned from this role on 6 September 2016.
At the end of October 2016, Vaz was appointed to the Justice Select Committee; a parliamentary vote to block his appointment was defeated. On 10 November 2019, he said in a statement that he was retiring from Parliament and would not be standing for re-election at the general election the following month.
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Early and personal life
Keith Vaz was born in the British crown colony of Aden, on 26 November 1956, to Anthony Xavier and Merlyn Verona Vaz. The Vaz family hailed from Goa, now an Indian state, which accounts for his Goan-Portuguese surname. Vaz is a distant relative of Saint Joseph Vaz, a 17th-century missionary. He moved to England with his family in 1965, settling in Twickenham.
His father, previously a correspondent for The Times of India, worked in the airline industry, while his mother held jobs both as a teacher and simultaneously part-time in Marks & Spencer. Vaz's father died when Vaz was 14. Merlyn Vaz moved to Leicester when her son was selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for the Leicester East constituency. She was elected to Leicester City Council as a Labour councillor and served on the council for 14 years.
While in Aden, Vaz was educated at St Joseph's Convent. In England, he attended Latymer Upper School, Hammersmith, followed by Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read law. He graduated from Cambridge University with a BA first-class Honours degree (1979), later promoted to MA (1987).
Vaz has two sisters, Valerie (born 1954), who has been the MP for Walsall South since 2010, and Penny McConnell, who is a solicitor. He lives in London with his wife, Maria Fernandes, and their two children, a son and a daughter.
Early career
Before his political career, Vaz was a practising solicitor. In 1982, he was employed as a solicitor to Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council; and later as a senior solicitor to the London Borough of Islington. He was selected as the prospective Labour candidate for the Leicester East constituency in 1985. At that time, he found a job in Leicester as a solicitor at the City Council-funded Highfields and Belgrave Law Centre. He remained in this role until his election to Parliament in 1987.
Political career
Vaz has been a Labour party member since 1982. In 1983, Vaz stood in the general election as the Labour candidate in the Conservative-Liberal marginal Richmond and Barnes constituency, coming third with a swing away from Labour of 4.3% compared with a national average swing away of 9.3%. He stood as the Labour candidate in the European Parliament election in 1984 for Surrey West, coming third.
On 11 June 1987, Vaz was elected as the Member of Parliament for Leicester East by defeating the sitting Tory MP Peter Bruinvels with a majority of 1,924. Three other Labour Party Black Sections members, Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant, entered the House of Commons at the same election.
Vaz was re-elected in 1992 (majority of 11,316), 1997 (majority of 18,422), 2001 (majority of 13,442), 2005 (majority of 15,867), 2010 (majority of 14,082), 2015 (majority of 18,352) and 2017 (majority of 22,428).
Vaz has held a variety of parliamentary posts. Between 1987 and 1992, he was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, of which he was the chair from July 2007 to September 2016. Between 1993 and 1994, he was a member of the Executive Committee Inter-Parliamentary Union. Finally, between December 2002 and July 2007, Vaz acted as a senior Labour Member of the Select Committee for Constitutional Affairs.
In 1992, Vaz was given the role of Shadow Junior Environment Minister with responsibility for planning and regeneration, his first frontbench role. He remained in this position until 1997, when he was given his first Government post as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney General and Solicitor General. Vaz then served as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Department between May and October 1999. This was quickly followed by his appointment as the Minister for Europe, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He served in this position from October 1999 and June 2001.
Other positions he held included as an elected member of the National Executive Committee and as the vice-chair of Women, Race and Equality Committee of the Labour Party. He held both of these positions since March 2007. Since 2000, he has been a patron of the Labour Party Race Action Group and in 2006 he was appointed the Chairman of the Ethnic Minority Taskforce.
Vaz was also appointed to a public bill committee, which held its first meeting on 15 November 2016, looking at the Criminal Finances Bill which aimed to tackle money laundering and corruption.
Vaz signed several early day motions sponsored by David Tredinnick MP supporting the continued funding of homoeopathy on the National Health Service.
Vaz supported Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership election. He is a member of Labour Friends of Israel.
Resignation from Parliament
Following the vote in October 2019 by MPs to endorse Vaz's suspension in the wake of the preceding scandals, the Daily Telegraph published an article asking: "Why is Keith Vaz even in Parliament?" The article noted that: "He resigned as a minister in 2001, was suspended in 2002, named in the 2009 expenses scandal... His ability to survive certainly suggests something in our democratic system is broken."
On 10 November 2019 Vaz released a statement that he was retiring from Parliament. His six-month suspension meant he would have faced an automatic contested re-selection before standing for re-election.
After Parliament
He was elected chairman of the Leicester East constituency Labour Party (CLP) in January 2020.
In 2020, Vaz said of a petition entitled "Remove the Gandhi statue in Leicester", alleging that Mahatma Gandhi was a "fascist and racist", "This is a dreadful petition that seeks to divide communities in Leicester and in the country. If this is not withdrawn I will certainly refer it to the police to consider whether it incites racial hatred."
