Kevin Barron

Early life

Kevin John Barron, the son of Richard and Edna Barron, was born at Hazlewood Castle, Tadcaster, Yorkshire and educated at Maltby Hall Secondary Modern School (now known as Maltby Academy), Ruskin College, and the University of Sheffield, where he earned a Diploma in Labour Studies in 1977, where he was reportedly a member of the Militant tendency.

On leaving school in 1962, Barron became an electrician at the local colliery in Maltby. He spent the next 23 years working in the coal industry. In 1982 he became president of the Rotherham Trades Union Congress. He was a member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), who later expelled him for speaking out against Arthur Scargill. Once, on picketing duty outside Maltby colliery he was struck on the arm by a police baton. He successfully sued South Yorkshire Police for this. He was a political ally of Arthur Scargill.

Parliamentary career

In 1983 Peter Hardy, Labour MP for Rother Valley, decided to switch constituencies to fight the equally safe neighbouring new seat of Wentworth. With NUM backing Barron secured the nomination and was duly elected as the Labour MP for Rother Valley at the 1983 general election.

In 1985 Barron was made a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock, a position he held until the 1988. Kinnock gave Barron a frontbench job in 1988 as an opposition spokesman on Energy he lost this position when John Smith took over the leadership and he refused another front bench position. Barron was returned to the front bench nine months later as a spokesman on Employment by the new leader John Smith, and after Smith's death Tony Blair moved Barron to speak on Health matters.

Barron was a leading figure in the campaign to rewrite Clause IV under the new leadership of Tony Blair and it came as a surprise that there was no job in government for him after the victorious 1997 general election. He served for eight years on the senior Intelligence and Security Committee and was made a Privy Councillor in 2001. He was made Chairman of the influential Health Select Committee after the 2005 general election.

Barron has been a Member of the General Medical Council since 1999, and is passionately anti smoking.

Following the MP's expenses row, Barron placed his expenses claims cover sheets in the window of his constituency office in Laughton Road, Dinnington. In the review of Past Additional Cost Allowance by Sir Thomas Legg QC Barron was found to have no issues and was not required to repay any monies. In May 2010, Barron was returned to Westminster as the MP for Rother Valley with a severely reduced majority. In July 2010, he was appointed chair of the parliamentary Standards and Privileges Committee and was returned unopposed to that post after the 2015 general election.

Barron was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for political and public service.

Personal life

Barron married Carol McGrath in 1969 in Rother Valley; the couple had a son and two daughters. Carol Barron died in June 2008. Kevin Barron remarried, to Andree Deane, in 2012. He became stepfather to her three children (two sons and a daughter).