LABOUR’s shadow business and consumers minister Seema Malhotra has recently said that the government’s plan to increase National Insurance ‘will make a bad situation for British businesses even worse’.

She also raised concerns over the level of inflation as well as “spiralling” energy costs in the country. During the pandemic, the lawmaker called for more to be done to support young people to be more engaged with their local environment. “The pandemic had highlighted the key role nature and the environment have played in our wellbeing – but young people were not included in any conversations surrounding it,” she said.

Following Keir Starmer’s election as Labour leader in April 2020, Malhotra returned to the front bench as the shadow minister for employment in the shadow work and pensions team. She assumed her current role in the minor May 2021 reshuffle, succeeding Lucy Powell in the role.

Indian-origin Malhotra was the former management consultant who worked for Accenture and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. She founded the Fabian Women’s Network, and was a previous national chair of the Young Fabians.

Politics was always on the agenda for Malhotra from a very young age. Aged just 10, the Feltham and Heston MP stood as a Labour candidate in her primary school elections and reportedly argued for better pensions for the elderly. The experience must have had a lasting effect on a young Malhotra, as she went on to join the Labour party when she was 17.

Malhotra has come a long way since fighting for equality in her classroom. She assumed office in the 2011 by-election as the Labour representative for Feltham and Heston with 12,639 votes. Almost a decade later, her popularity has not waned and the 49-year-old has been re-elected three times – in 2015, 2017 and 2019. She is now two shy of