Ed Balls

The Right Honourable  Ed Balls  MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Education
Incumbent
Assumed office  11 May 2010
Leader	Harriet Harman
Preceded by	Michael Gove (Children, Schools and Families)
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
In office 28 June 2007 – 11 May 2010
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	Alan Johnson (Education and Skills)
Succeeded by	Michael Gove (Education)
Economic Secretary to the Treasury
In office 6 May 2006 – 28 June 2007
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Ivan Lewis
Succeeded by	Kitty Ussher
Member of Parliament for Morley and Outwood
Incumbent
Assumed office  6 May 2010
Preceded by	Constituency Created
Majority	1,101 (2.3%)
Member of Parliament for Normanton
In office 5 May 2005 – 6 May 2010
Preceded by	Bill O'Brien
Succeeded by	Constituency Abolished
Born	25 February 1967 (1967-02-25) (age 43) Norwich, United Kingdom
Political party	Labour Co-operative
Spouse(s)	Yvette Cooper
Children	Ellie Joe Maddy
Residence	Castleford
Alma mater	Keble College, Oxford John F. Kennedy School of Government
Religion	Anglican [1]
Website	Official website

Edward Michael "Ed" Balls (born 25 February 1967) is a British Labour politician, who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 2005, currently for Morley and Outwood.

Educated at Oxford University and Harvard, Balls worked as a leader writer for the Financial Times. Although he was not elected to Parliament until 2005, he was an adviser to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 1994, and as such he was regarded as one of Brown's key lieutenants. From June 2007 to May 2010, Balls served as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

Balls is currently the Shadow Education Secretary, and a candidate in the Labour Party's 2010 leadership election.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Economist 3 Member of Parliament 3.1 Ministerial career 3.2 Political activities 3.3 Children, Schools and Families Bill 3.4 Allegations over allowances 3.5 2010 general election 3.6 2010 Labour Party leadership election 4 Personal life 5 Notes 6 External links

[edit] Early life

His father is Michael Balls, a zoologist Emeritus Professor at Nottingham University. Balls was born in Norwich, Norfolk and educated at Bawburgh Primary School in Norwich, Crossdale Drive Primary School in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, and then the private all-boys Nottingham High School. Ed Balls studied PPE at Keble College, Oxford, where he obtained a First-Class Honours degree, and later attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar.^[2]

Balls joined the Labour Party when he was 16 years old.^[3] Whilst at Oxford he was an active member of the Labour Club, but also signed up to the Conservative Association in order attend their lectures.^[4]

[edit] Economist

His career began as a writer at the Financial Times (1990–94) before his appointment as an economic adviser to shadow chancellor Gordon Brown (1994–97).

When Labour won the General Election of 1997, Brown became Chancellor and Balls continued to work as an economic adviser to him. He went on to serve as chief economic adviser to HM Treasury from 1999 to 2004, in which post he was once named the 'most powerful unelected person in Britain'.^[5]

While he was chief economic adviser to the Treasury Balls attended the Bilderberg annual conference of politicians, financiers and businessmen in 2001 and 2003, and returned to the United Kingdom on Conrad Black's private jet on both occasions. In 2010 when after details were reported in the press, Balls commented, "It saved the taxpayer the cost of a plane fare and on both occasions I declared it at the time to the permanent secretary in the normal way."^[6]

In July 2004, Balls was selected to stand as Labour and Co-operative candidate for the parliamentary seat of Normanton in West Yorkshire, a Labour stronghold whose MP, Bill O'Brien, was retiring. He stepped down as chief economic adviser to the Treasury, but was given a position at the Smith Institute, a political think tank. He reportedly was paid £100,000 for less than a year's work. HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office confirmed that "the normal and proper procedures were followed."^[7]

[edit] Member of Parliament

In the 2005 general election he was elected MP for Normanton with a majority of 10,002 and 51.2% of the vote. After the Boundary Commission proposed boundary changes which would abolish the constituency, Balls ran a campaign, in connection with the local newspaper the Wakefield Express,^[8] to save the seat and, together with the three other Wakefield MPs (his wife Yvette Cooper, Mary Creagh and Jon Trickett), fought an unsuccessful High Court challenge against the Boundary Commission's proposals.

In March 2007 he was selected to be the Labour Party candidate for the new Morley and Outwood constituency, which contains parts of the abolished Normanton and Morley and Rothwell constituencies.^[9]

[edit] Ministerial career

Balls became Economic Secretary to the Treasury, a junior ministerial position in HM Treasury, in the government reshuffle of May 2006. When Gordon Brown became prime minister on 29 June 2007, Balls was promoted to Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

In October 2008, Balls announced that the government had decided to scrap SATs tests for 14-year-olds,^[10] a move which was broadly welcomed by teachers, parent groups and opposition MPs.^[11][12] However, the decision to continue with SATs tests for 11-year-olds was described by Head teachers' leader Mick Brookes as a missed opportunity.^[13]

[edit] Political activities

Balls has played a prominent role in the Fabian Society, the think tank and political society founded in 1884 which helped to found the Labour Party in 1900. In 1992 he authored a Fabian pamphlet advocating Bank of England independence, a policy that was swiftly enacted when Gordon Brown became Chancellor in 1997.^[14]

Balls was elected Vice-Chair of the Fabian Society for 2006 and Chair of the Fabian Society for 2007. As Vice-Chair of the Fabian Society, he launched the Fabian Life Chances Commission report in April 2006^[15] and opened the Society's Next Decade lecture series in November 2006,^[16] arguing for closer European cooperation on the environment.

Balls has been a central figure in New Labour's economic reform agenda. But he and Gordon Brown have differed from the Blairites in being keen to stress their roots in Labour party intellectual traditions such as Fabianism and the co-operative movement as well as their modernising credentials in policy and electoral terms. In a New Statesman interview in March 2006, Martin Bright writes that Balls "says the use of the term "socialist" is less of a problem for his generation than it has been for older politicians like Blair and Brown, who remain bruised by the ideological warfare of the 1970s and 1980s".^[17]

"When I was at college, the economic system in eastern Europe was crumbling. We didn't have to ask the question of whether we should adopt a globally integrated, market-based model. For me, it is now a question of what values you have. Socialism, as represented by the Labour Party, the Fabian Society, the Co-operative movement, is a tradition I can be proud of", Balls told the New Statesman.^[17]

Ed Balls is an official backer of Norwich's bid to become the UK's first City of Culture in 2013.^[18]

[edit] Children, Schools and Families Bill

Balls sponsored the Children, Schools and Families Bill which had its first reading on 19 November 2009.^[19] Part of the proposed legislation will see regulation of parents who home educate their children in England, introduced in response to the Badman Review, with annual inspections to determine quality of education and welfare of the child. Home educators across the UK petitioned their MPs to remove the proposed legislation.^[20]

Several parts of the bill, including the proposed register for home educators, and compulsory sex education lessons, were abandoned as they had failed to gain cross party support prior to the pending May 2010 election.^[21]

[edit] Allegations over allowances

In September 2007, with his wife Yvette Cooper, he was accused of "breaking the spirit of Commons rules" by using MPs' allowances to help pay for a £655,000 home in north London.^[22] Balls and his wife bought a four-bed house in Stoke Newington, north London, and registered this as their second home (rather than their home in Castleford, West Yorkshire) in order to qualify for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance. This is despite both spouses working in London full-time and their children attending local London schools. Through a spokesman, Balls and Cooper asserted that "The whole family travel between their Yorkshire home and London each week when Parliament is sitting. As they are all in London during the week, their children have always attended the nearest school to their London house."

Additional allegations have been made about Balls' and his wife's "flipping" of their second home three times within the space of two years.^[23]

[edit] 2010 general election

At the 2010 general election, Balls narrowly won the newly created Morley and Outwood seat with 37.6% of the vote.^[24][25]

[edit] 2010 Labour Party leadership election

The Right Honourable  Ed Balls  MP
Candidate for Leader of the Labour Party
Election date announced 25 September 2010
Opponent(s)	Diane Abbott Andy Burnham David Miliband Ed Miliband
Incumbent	Harriet Harman (pro tempore)
Website	Campaign website

Ed Balls announced, in Nottingham, on 19 May 2010 that he was standing in the election for the post of Leader of the Labour Party, previously held by Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, who resigned on 11 May 2010. The election on 6 May ended in a hung parliament with the Tories having the most votes and seats, but nobody having an overall majority. Balls was the third candidate to secure the minimum of 33 nominations from members of the Parliamentary Labour Party in order to enter the leadership race. The other contenders are former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband, former Health Secretary Andy Burnham and backbencher Diane Abbott.

[edit] Personal life

He married Yvette Cooper MP, who would later become Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in Eastbourne on 10 January 1998. Cooper is Member of Parliament for Morley & Outwood's neighbouring constituency of Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. They have three children.^[26]

His father Michael Balls is a former academic and European civil servant, an expert in alternatives to the use of animals in experiments and chairman of the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (FRAME).

In 2010 Balls was fined £60 and given three points on his licence for talking on his mobile whilst driving.^[27]

Ed Balls is a fan of Norwich City.^[28]

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Ed Balls official constituency website
• Voting record at PublicWhip.org
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou.com
• Profile at Westminster Parliamentary Record
• Profile at BBC News Democracy Live
• Articles authored at Journalisted

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Bill O'Brien	Member of Parliament for Normanton 2005–2010	Constituency abolished
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Morley and Outwood 2010–present	Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by Ivan Lewis	Economic Secretary to the Treasury 2006–2007	Succeeded by Kitty Ussher
Preceded by Alan Johnson as Secretary of State for Education and Skills	Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families 2007–2010	Succeeded by Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education
Preceded by Michael Gove as Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families	Shadow Secretary of State for Education 2010-present	Succeeded by Incumbent

v • d • e Brown Cabinet Cabinet Members Lord Adonis • Bob Ainsworth • Douglas Alexander • Baroness Ashton • Ed Balls • Hilary Benn • Hazel Blears • Ben Bradshaw • Gordon Brown • Des Browne • Liam Byrne • Andy Burnham • Yvette Cooper • Alistair Darling • John Denham • Peter Hain • Harriet Harman • Geoff Hoon • John Hutton • Alan Johnson • Tessa Jowell • Ruth Kelly • Lord Mandelson • David Miliband • Ed Miliband • Jim Murphy • Paul Murphy • James Purnell • Baroness Royall • Jacqui Smith • Jack Straw • Shaun Woodward Also Attended Meetings Margaret Beckett • Nick Brown • Lord Drayson • Caroline Flint • Lord Grocott • John Healey • Jim Knight • Lord Malloch-Brown • Pat McFadden • Tony McNulty • Baroness Scotland Attended While on Agenda Beverley Hughes • Sadiq Khan • Dawn Primarolo • Rosie Winterton

v • d • e Labour Party leadership election, 2010 Outgoing Leader: Harriet Harman (acting) Nominated Diane Abbott · Ed Balls · Andy Burnham · David Miliband · Ed Miliband Not nominated John McDonnell

Persondata
NAME	Balls, Edward Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	British politician and Cabinet minister
DATE OF BIRTH	25 February 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH	Norwich, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH