Joanna Meriel Stevens (born 6 September 1966) is a Welsh politician serving as

Shadow Secretary of State for Wales The Shadow Secretary of State for Wales or Shadow Welsh Secretary is a member of the UK Shadow Cabinet responsible for the scrutiny of the Secretary of State for Wales and his/her department, the Wales Office , agency_type = Ministerial ...

since 2021, and previously from 2016 to 2017. A member of the Labour Party, she has been

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) for Cardiff Central since 2015. Stevens previously served as Shadow Secretary of State for Wales from 2016 to 2017, and was

Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport The Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), previously Shadow Secretary of State for National Heritage and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, is a position in the Official Opposition Shadow Ca ...

from 2020 to 2021.

Early life and career

Stevens was born in

Swansea Swansea (; cy, Abertawe ) is a coastal city and the second-largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Swansea ( cy, links=no, Dinas a Sir Abertawe). The city is the twenty-fifth largest in ...

West Glamorgan , HQ= County Hall, Swansea , Government= West Glamorgan County Council (abolished 1996) , Status= , Start= 1974 , End= 1996 , Arms= ''Coat of arms of Wes ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

and grew up in

Mynydd Isa Mynydd Isa (; cy, Mynyddisa) is a village in Flintshire, in north-east Wales. It lies between the county town of Mold, and Buckley (which it is contiguous with) in the community of Argoed which had a population of 5837 according to the 2011 cen ...

Flintshire , settlement_type = County , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , image_flag = , image_shield = Arms of Flint ...

. She attended Argoed High School and

Elfed High School Elfed High School () is an 11–16 mixed, English-medium community secondary school in Buckley, Flintshire, Wales. History Opened in 1954, the school was named after Hywel Elfed Lewis 1860-1953, the renowned bard and scholar who served as ...

. She studied

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

Manchester University , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

and completed the Solicitors' Professional Examination at

Manchester Polytechnic Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...

in 1989. Prior to becoming an MP, Stevens was People and Organisation Director of

Thompsons Solicitors Thompsons Solicitors, formerly Robin Thompson & Partners, is a large firm of solicitors founded in 1921 with longstanding links to the trade union movement. It is 45th on the list of largest United Kingdom-based law firms. It specialises in perso ...

Member of Parliament

Stevens was elected as MP for Cardiff Central on 7 May 2015 with a majority of 4,981, defeating incumbent Liberal Democrat MP

Jenny Willott Jennifer Nancy Willott OBE (born 29 May 1974) is a British politician. She was the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Cardiff Central from 2005 to 2015. Willott became a junior minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Ski ...

. In 2014 she accused her then Liberal Democrat opponent Jenny Willott of having “neglected her constituency” by taking a ministerial role. In a 2015 interview Stevens said that, if elected, she'd be “happy as a backbench MP” adding she was “not a professional politician.” Stevens later went on to serve in the shadow cabinets of Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer. In

Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist ...

's January 2016 reshuffle, she was appointed shadow solicitor general and shadow

justice minister A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...

. She supported

Owen Smith Owen Smith (born 2 May 1970) is a former Labour Party politician and subsequently a British lobbyist, who has been the UK government relations director for pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb since 2020. Smith was Member of Parliamen ...

in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election. In the October 2016 reshuffle, after Corbyn's re-election as party leader, Stevens became

. She resigned on 27 January 2017 in order to vote against the

three-line whip A whip is an official of a political party whose task is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. This means ensuring that members of the party vote according to the party platform, rather than according to their own individual ideology o ...

obliging Labour MPs to vote in favour of

Article 50 Withdrawal from the European Union is the legal and political process whereby an EU member state ceases to be a member of the Union. Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union ( TEU) states that "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from t ...

. In March 2019, Stevens voted against the Labour Party whip and in favour of an amendment tabled by members of

The Independent Group The Independent Group for Change, also known as Change UK, was a British centrist, pro-European Union political party, founded in February 2019 and dissolved ten months later, shortly after all its MPs lost their seats in the 2019 general e ...

for a second public vote on

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or ...

. Stevens chairs the GMB parliamentary group, which ensures that issues of importance to GMB members are raised in the House of Commons. Stevens supported

Keir Starmer Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (; born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and barrister who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras ...

in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election. He subsequently appointed her

, shadowing

Oliver Dowden Oliver James Dowden (born 1 August 1978) is a British politician who has served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster since October 2022. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hertsmere since 2015. Dowden served in the Johnson gover ...

. On 29 November 2021, she was reshuffled back to the position of

by Keir Starmer.

Personal life

In January 2021 Stevens was treated in hospital for

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

References

External links

* * , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Stevens, Jo 1966 births Living people 21st-century British women politicians Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Welsh constituencies Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester Welsh Labour Party MPs Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Cardiff constituencies UK MPs 2015–2017 UK MPs 2017–2019 UK MPs 2019–present British abortion-rights activists Politicians from Swansea Politicians from Cardiff People from Mold, Flintshire