Rachel Reeves

In September 2017, the conservative commentator Iain Dale placed Reeves at Number 94 on his list of the '100 most influential people on the Left', down ten places on the previous year.

She supported Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership election. In September 2016, Reeves described her constituency as being "like a tinderbox" that could explode if immigration was not curbed.

Reeves' Parliamentary credit card was stopped at the start of 2015, owing to a debt of £4,033.63, which she subsequently repaid. In 2018, she claimed £188,686 in expenses, £30,422 more than the average parliamentary claim of £158,264.

Reeves was Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2013 but, following Jeremy Corbyn's election as leader in 2015, did not return to the Shadow Cabinet after her maternity leave. Reeves also served as Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee from 2017 to 2020.

In 2013, she caused controversy, especially among the left-wing members of the Labour Party, by stating that they would be 'tougher' than the Conservative Party on slashing benefits.

In 2013, on becoming Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, she announced that Labour would be tougher than the Conservatives in reducing the benefits bill, with the long-term unemployed having to take a guaranteed job offer or lose benefits. The proposal was that anyone unemployed for two years, or one year if under 25 years old, would be required to take a job.

Reeves is married to Nicholas Joicey, a civil servant and Gordon Brown's former private secretary and speech writer. The couple have homes in Bramley in Leeds and London. Reeves announced her first pregnancy on 20 September 2012, giving birth to a daughter. She subsequently gave birth to a son in 2015.

Reeves was named in 2011 by The Guardian newspaper as being one of several MPs who employ unpaid interns, a practice that some maintain may breach the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. The same year, The Independent named Reeves as a member of a group of new Labour MPs known as the "Nando's Five", the others being Luciana Berger, Jonathan Reynolds, Emma Reynolds and Chuka Umunna.

Reeves was elected with a majority of 7,016 on 6 May 2010 – a 5,794 reduction in the majority enjoyed by Battle – and became only the second woman to represent a Leeds constituency. In early 2017, she completed and published a biography of Alice Bacon, who was the first such woman (having represented Leeds North East and then Leeds South East between 1945 and 1970).

In her maiden speech, delivered on 8 June 2010, Reeves praised the work of her predecessor John Battle, and pledged to fight for jobs, growth and prosperity for Leeds West. She also pledged to follow in Battle's footsteps and fight for justice for the victims of the Armley asbestos disaster and their families. In a series of questions in Parliament, she enquired whether the government would honour promises by the previous government to compensate victims of asbestos diagnosed with pleural plaques, and bring legislation into force making it easier to pursue claims against insurers.

Following the 2010 election, she supported Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership, because she felt he was the candidate most willing to listen to what the voters were saying about where the party went wrong. After becoming an MP, Reeves was appointed to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee then as Shadow Pensions Minister in October 2010. In her role as Shadow Pensions Minister, she campaigned against the Government's proposed acceleration of equalising state pensions ages for men and women. She was promoted to the post of Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in October 2011. She caused controversy in early 2015 by stating "We [Labour] don’t want to be seen, and we're not, the party to represent those who are out of work".

Reeves has written a study on the financial crisis of 2007–2010 for the Fabian Review, Institute of Public Policy Research, Socialist Environment and Resources Association, and the European Journal of Political Economy. Following her election as MP, Reeves wrote about the direction of UK government fiscal policy in Renewal. In an article entitled "The Politics of Deficit Reduction", Reeves offers her critique of the then-current financial situation and efforts to bring down the budget deficit.

Reeves moved to Leeds in 2006 to work for HBOS. She was once interviewed for a job at Goldman Sachs, but turned it down, despite claiming that the job could have made her "a lot richer". She later sought nomination for the Leeds West seat at the 2010 general election, seeking to replace John Battle, who had chosen to retire. She was selected to contest the seat from an all-women shortlist of Labour Party prospective parliamentary candidates.

Reeves stood as the Labour Party parliamentary candidate in the Conservative safe seat of Bromley and Chislehurst at the 2005 general election, finishing second. She also contested the 2006 by-election in the same constituency, following the death of sitting Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Eric Forth, and finished in fourth place. Labour support fell from 10,241 votes to 1,925, in what was described as a "humiliation" for Labour. The result was the worst performance for a governing party since 1991

She worked as an economist at the Bank of England and British Embassy in Washington, D.C. between 2000 and 2006.

Reeves is a proponent of quantitative easing to alleviate the late-2000s recession, having studied the effects of the policy on Japan in the early 2000s.

Rachel Jane Reeves (born 13 February 1979) is a British Labour Party politician serving as Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office since 2020. She has been the Member of Parliament for Leeds West since 2010.

Echoing similar titles of publications by Roy Jenkins in 1959 and Tony Wright in 1997, Reeves wrote the new edition of Why Vote Labour? in the run-up to the 2010 general election, as part of a series giving the case for each of the main political parties.

Reeves' biography of the Labour politician Alice Bacon, Baroness Bacon (1909–1993), titled Alice in Westminster: The Political Life of Alice Bacon, was published in 2017.