Hilary James Wedgwood Benn is a British politician who has served as Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland since 2023. A member of the Labour Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds Central since the 1999 by-election. He served in the Cabinet from 2003 to 2010, under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He also served as Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2015 to 2016 and as Chairman of the Brexit Select Committee from 2016 to 2021.
Born in Hammersmith, he is the second son of veteran Labour MP Tony Benn and educationalist Caroline Benn. He studied Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Sussex and went on to work as a policy researcher for two trade unions, ASTMS and MSF. Benn was elected as a councillor on Ealing Borough Council in 1979 and was Deputy Leader of the Council from 1986 to 1990. He was also the unsuccessful Labour parliamentary candidate for the Ealing North constituency at both the 1983 and 1987 general elections. Following the 1997 general election, Benn was appointed as a special adviser to David Blunkett before winning a by-election in Leeds Central in 1999.
Benn served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development from 2001 to 2002 and for Prisons and Probations from 2002 to 2003. He returned to DFID as Minister of State in May 2003. In October 2003, he was appointed to Tony Blair's Cabinet as the Secretary of State for International Development. In 2007, Benn was a candidate for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, which he lost to Harriet Harman, finishing in fourth place. Benn later served under Gordon Brown as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2007 to 2010.
Following Labour's defeat at the 2010 general election, Benn served in Ed Miliband's Shadow cabinet as Shadow Environment Secretary in 2010 and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons from 2010 to 2011. He then served as Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2011 to 2015. Following the 2015 general election, Benn was appointed as Shadow Foreign Secretary, retaining this role after Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour Leader. After criticising Corbyn's leadership and phoning other Labour MPs to seek to remove Corbyn as leader, he was dismissed from this position by Corbyn on 26 June 2016, precipitating a number of shadow cabinet resignations. Benn was later elected chairman of the Brexit Select Committee. He sought to extend Article 50 to delay Brexit beyond the 31 October 2019 deadline through passing the Benn Act. He wished to have a second referendum in which he would have voted to remain; however, the Benn Act was nullified once Boris Johnson won a Conservative majority in the 2019 general election and the UK left the European Union.
