Ian Austin (politician)

Early life

Austin was born on 6 March 1965 and was adopted as a baby by Dudley school teachers Fred and Margaret Austin. Having failed the eleven-plus to attend King Edward's School, Birmingham, he was educated at the Dudley School from 1977 to 1983. He studied government and politics at Essex University.

His adoptive father, Fred (a Czech Jew who was adopted by an English family on the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia), was head of the Dudley School from its formation in 1975 until his retirement in 1985. Fred Austin, born Fredi Stiller, was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List for 2006 in recognition of his service to the communities of Dudley.

Austin was keen to obtain a National Union of Journalists card and took a job with Black Country Publishing in Netherton where his personal interest in sport, especially cycling (he is now chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group) and football, led him to work as a journalist on Midland Sport Magazine.

Austin was elected as a councillor in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in 1991, and served until 1995. He then moved to become press officer for the West Midlands Labour Party until 1998, when he spent a year as deputy director of communications for the Scottish Labour Party.

In 1999 he was appointed a political advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (later Prime Minister), Gordon Brown. He held the position until his election in 2005, and was known as one of Brown's closest lieutenants.

Parliamentary career

Austin was selected as the Labour candidate for Dudley North following the retirement of Ross Cranston, and was elected at the 2005 general election with a majority of 5,432.

Austin was reprimanded by the Speaker of the House of Commons for heckling during Prime Minister's Questions on 18 October 2006, and he was subsequently described by David Cameron as one of Gordon Brown's "boot boys". The following week he was rebuked again by the Speaker for comments made towards the Conservative benches.

After Gordon Brown became prime minister on 27 June 2007, Austin was tipped for a post in Brown's inner political circle. The following day, he was appointed a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Gordon Brown with a special provision to attend cabinet meetings. He was moved to a new position in the 2008 reshuffle, becoming an Assistant Whip for the Government. In the June 2009 reshuffle he entered Government as a minister for the first time, becoming Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government and Minister for the West Midlands.

He was re-elected at the 2010 general election, ahead of Conservative Party candidate Graeme Brown. While his own seat was a marginal in this parliamentary term, the other three Labour MPs for the borough of Dudley lost their seats. Austin nominated Ed Balls, who came third, for the Labour leadership election of 2010. Under Ed Miliband he served as Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport between 2010 and 2011 and Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions between 2011 and 2013.

On 1 June 2012, he apologised after claiming that a Palestinian human rights group had denied the Holocaust happened. Members of Friend of Al-Aqsa made reference to the fact that Austin had written about the group in an article written on the Labour Uncut website in 2011.

During the last day of the Queen's Speech debate, Deputy Speaker Dawn Primarolo told Austin to apologise after he referred to a Conservative MP as an "idiot".

In the 2015 Parliament, Austin joined the education select committee, and was appointed as chair of the Labour Party's education committee. Regarded as to the right of the party, he has been critical of party leader Jeremy Corbyn's approach, calling for him to stop acting like a "student union president".

In July 2016, Austin was reprimanded by the Speaker of the House of Commons for heckling the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by shouting "sit down and shut up" and "you're a disgrace", as Corbyn criticised the 2003 invasion of Iraq in his response to the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry.

Expenses controversy

In May 2009, The Daily Telegraph reported that Austin had tried to split a claim for stamp duty on buying his second home in London into two payments and tried to claim the cost back over two financial years. This allowed him to claim the majority of the money (£21,559, just £75 short of the maximum) under his second-home allowance in the 2005/06 financial year. He then claimed for the remaining £1,344 stamp duty cost in 2006–2007, together with his legal fees. In all, he went on to claim £22,076 (£34 short of the maximum)in the next financial year.

It also reported that Austin "flipped" his second-home designation weeks before buying a £270,000 London flat, and that he had claimed £467 for a stereo system for his constituency home, shortly before he changed his second-home designation to London. He then spent a further £2,800 furnishing the new London flat.

Austin denied any wrongdoing, and defended his actions in an interview with local newspaper Dudley News.

Personal life

Austin is married with two sons and one daughter. The family live in Kingswinford in Dudley and the children attend local schools. His listed interests are cycling, football and literature.