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British politician (born 1960)

John Healey (born 13 February 1960) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wentworth and Dearne, formerly Wentworth, since 1997. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Shadow Secretary of State for Defence since 2020. Healey was Minister of State for Housing and Planning in the Brown Government. Following the 2010 general election, he was elected to the Shadow Cabinet and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Health. He stood down from the role in October 2011 and was succeeded by Andy Burnham. He also served as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing from 2016 to 2020 under Jeremy Corbyn, and worked alongside Andrew Gwynne, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

John Healey was born in Wakefield, the son of Aidan Healey OBE. He was educated at the Lady Lumley's School in Pickering before attending the independent St Peter's School, York for sixth form. He studied Social and Political Science at Christ's College, Cambridge where he received a BA in 1982. Healey worked as a journalist and the deputy editor of The House, the internal magazine of the Palace of Westminster, for a year in 1983. In 1984 he became a full time disability rights campaigner for several national charities. Healey joined Issues Communications in 1990 as a campaign manager before becoming the head of communications at the Manufacturing, Science and Finance trade union in 1992. He was appointed as the campaign director with the Trades Union Congress in 1994 in which capacity he remained until his election to the House of Commons. He was also a tutor at the Open University Business School. Healey's first attempt to enter Parliament was to be elected for Ryedale at the 1992 general election, where he finished in third with 13.8% of the vote behind the incumbent Conservative MP John Greenway and the Liberal Democrat Elizabeth Shields.

At the 1997 general election, Healey was the Labour Party candidate for Wentworth, which had become available following the retirement of the Labour MP Peter Hardy. Healey was elected to Parliament with 72.3% of the vote and a majority of 23,959.

Healey served as a member of the education and employment select committee from 1997 until he became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in 1999. At the 2001 general election, Healey was re elected as MP for Wentworth with a decreased vote share of 67.5% and a decreased majority of 16,449. Following the election, he was appointed as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Adult Skills at the Department for Education and Skills. Healey was promoted in 2002 to the position of Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Healey's responsibilities included government statistics, (including the Office for National Statistics), along with implementation of the government's 10 year strategy for science and innovation, which directs spending of around £5 billion a year. At the 2005 general election Healey was again re elected with a decreased vote share of 59.6% and a decreased majority of 15,056. On 29 June 2007, Healey was moved to the Department for Communities and Local Government as a result of a government reshuffle. Shortly after his appointment he assumed responsibility for assisting the recovery from recent widespread flooding across the United Kingdom. In a Cabinet reshuffle on 5 June 2009, he was appointed Minister of State for Housing and Planning, replacing Margaret Beckett who had resigned. While Minister of State for Housing and Planning, he was criticised for suggesting that more people are renting rather than buying their own homes was a good thing.

At the 2010 general election Healey was elected to Parliament as the MP for the newly created constituency of Wentworth and Dearne with 50.6% of the vote and a majority of 13,920. Healey came second in the election for the shadow cabinet in 2010, and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Health. He resigned from this position in 2011 in order to spend more time with his family. At the 2015 general election Healey was re elected as MP for Wentworth and Dearne with an increased vote share of 56.3% and a decreased majority of 13,838. In 2015 three Rotherham Labour MPs, Kevin Barron, Sarah Champion and Healey, started a defamation legal action against UKIP MEP Jane Collins after Collins falsely alleged in a UKIP conference speech that the three MPs knew about child exploitation in Rotherham but did not intervene. In February 2017 the MPs were awarded £54,000 each in damages. Following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader, Healey was appointed Shadow Minister for Housing. He supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election. Following the leadership election, Healey was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Housing in October 2016. At the snap 2017 general election Healey was again re elected, with an increased vote share of 65% and an increased majority of 14,803. He was again re elected at the 2019 general election, with a decreased vote share of 40.3% and a decreased majority of 2,165. Following the election of Keir Starmer, Healey was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Defence.

Healey voted in favour of British participation in the 2003 Iraq War. In 2024, he said that the decision to go to war "wasn't sound at the time" and said the lesson was that military intervention could not have a successful outcome without sufficient diplomatic, economic, and security follow through. In 2018, Healey criticized the increase in homelessness in Britain, which he attributed to the Conservatives having "slashed investment in new affordable homes, refused to help private renters and made huge cuts to housing benefit and homelessness services."

Healey married Jackie Bate on 25 October 1993 in Lambeth and they have one son. Healey is a member of Amnesty International. He is not related to former Labour cabinet minister Denis Healey.