Rochdale’s Labour MP Paul Waugh, a former political editor of HuffPost UK, editor of PoliticsHome and deputy political editor of The Independent and the London Evening Standard, is among the new faces on a reshuffled culture, media and sport committee.
Waugh has also presented the Week in Westminster for Radio 4.
The House of Commons has formally appointed 11 MPs to sit on the committee – with the membership now made up of seven Labour MPs, two Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats. Party seat allocations within committees are proportionate to the number of MPs elected to the House of Commons at the general election, with the exact number negotiated between party whips through the Committee of Selection. Each party has its own processes for making its nominations.
Conservative MP Caroline Dinenage was re-elected unopposed as chair of the committee in September, and Dinenage and Labour’s Rupa Huq are the only returning members of the committee.
Other new faces include Labour’s Natashsa Irons, a former media planning manager at Channel 4 and MP for Croydon.
Waugh unseated celebrity ‘socialist’ George Galloway in Rochdale at the July general election. Galloway was at the time the Workers’ Party of Britain’s sole MP and has, for now at least, returned to his social media career since losing his Greater Manchester seat. Expect to see his face on TV again at the first sighting of a winnable by-election.
