Alison McGovern MP
Biography
Alison McGovern is the Labour Member of Parliament for Birkenhead and currently serves as Minister of State for Local Government and Homelessness. She has represented her hometown in Parliament since 2010, first for Wirral South and then for Birkenhead following boundary changes in 2024.
When Labour formed a government in July 2024, she was appointed Minister of State for Employment at the Department for Work and Pensions, before moving to her current role at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in September 2025. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, she returned to the frontbench in 2020 during the opposition years, leading on labour market policy after three years on the Treasury Select Committee responsible for scrutiny of the UK’s monetary and financial institutions.
She previously chaired Progress (now Progressive Britain), the organisation for Labour’s progressives, and as a pro-European, took a leading role in cross-party backbench liaison on Brexit. Before joining the House of Commons, she was Deputy Leader of the Labour group in the London Borough of Southwark. She is a regular on broadcast and in print on political and economic topics. Outside of politics, she is a season ticket holder at Liverpool Football Club and a regular at Birkenhead Parkrun. She studied philosophy at University College London and economics at Birkbeck College London.
Minister of State (Minister for Local Government and Homelessness)
- Local government finance (including local taxation, business rates and local government pensions)
- Local government policy (including stewardship, local audit, and governance reform)
- Local government reorganisation
- Homelessness and rough sleeping
- Supported housing and domestic abuse
- Resettlement
- Planning casework