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Jess Asato
MP
Official portrait, 2024
Member of Parliament
for Lowestoft
Incumbent
Assumed office
4 July 2024
Preceded byConstituency re-established
Majority2,016 (4.8%)
Islington Borough Councillor
for St George's Ward
In office
6 May 2010 – 4 February 2013
Preceded byWalter Burgess
Succeeded byKat Fletcher
Personal details
Born
Jessica Asato
Political partyLabour
Alma materTrinity Hall, Cambridge

Jessica Redmond-Withey Asato[1] (born 1981 or 1982)[2] is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lowestoft since 2024.[3] She was a member of Islington Borough Council from 2010 to 2013.

Early life

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Asato is a quarter Japanese and has family in Hawaii.[2] She grew up in the Gorleston-on-Sea area of Great Yarmouth and the nearby Norfolk village of Rollesby where she lived with and cared for her grandmother, who had serious health problems, and went to Flegg High School in Great Yarmouth. When she was 16 in 1997, she moved from Norfolk to live with her mother in London and went to Francis Holland School, an all-girls private school. She was a keen debater at Sixth Form level, reaching the semi-finals of the Oxford Union schools' debate competition.[4] Asato studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a degree in law.[5]

Political career

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In 2009, Asato was ranked no 78 among the Top 100 most influential Left-wingers by The Daily Telegraph.[6] In 2009, she wrote to the then Health Secretary Andy Burnham, raising concerns about his plans to make the NHS the "preferred provider" of NHS services. Asato was subsequently accused of hypocrisy for later supporting Clive Efford's anti-privatisation National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill.[7] In 2010, she made The Independent's list of 10 names to watch, perhaps because she was "Social media lead" on David Miliband's leadership election campaign[8] and was featured in the Total Politics video Make Your Mind Up (And Vote!) with Bucks Fizz and "famous political figures".[9]

She was a councillor on Islington London Borough Council from 2010 to 2013,[10] but resigned to spend more time in Norwich. She has been criticised in Islington by political opponents for spending too much time in Norfolk, and for allegedly being a "professional politician".[11] She worked in Westminster two days a week as political adviser to former cabinet minister and culture secretary Tessa Jowell, and was featured as one of the Evening Standard's Lucky 13 in 2013.[12] She is reported as saying that spending her formative years growing up in a low income household in Norfolk – from 11 until she left home at 16, and being the first person in her family to have made it to university - gives her a good foundation for life as an MP.[13]

In Islington, she was chair of the Corporate Parenting Board. At the Labour Party Conference in 2014, she highlighted figures which she claimed showed there were 1,000 fewer childcare places in the East of England, that one in five parents had been forced to call in sick over the summer to look after their children and that child minder costs were up 44% in the last four years in the East of England.[14]

In 2015, she was one of 15 Labour candidates each given financial support of £10,000 by Lord Oakeshott, the former Liberal Democrat, in January 2015.[15] In the general election, Asato came second to Chloe Smith in Norwich North, having increased the Labour vote by 2% (Smith increased the Tory vote by more than 3%).

On 24 February 2023, she was selected by local party members as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Waveney at the 2024 general election.[16] Due to the 2023 review of constituency boundaries across the UK, the Waveney constituency was abolished and the previous constituency that it replaced, Lowestoft, was re-established: the new Lowestoft constituency was made up of 44.9% of the geographical area of the old Waveney seat, and 91.4% of its population.[17] Asato went on to contest the Lowestoft constituency in the 2024 general election, achieving a victory over the previous Conservative MP for Waveney, Peter Aldous, with a margin of just over 2000 votes.[3]

Employment

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She was employed as a health policy researcher at the Social Market Foundation and was director of the Labour Yes! Campaign in favour of alternative vote plus. She was previously acting director of Progress, a director of Left Foot Forward and is vice-chairman of the Fabian Society.[18] It has been suggested that under her directorship, Progress became less of a cheerleader group for Blairite politics than it was when it started.[19]

She is Vice-Chair of the Electoral Reform Society and chair of governors of Jack Taylor Special School for children with disabilities and learning difficulties, and served as joint acting chair of Brook.[20] She is on the advisory board of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.[21]

Personal life

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Asato was quickly divorced from her first husband, Howard Dawber, who stood as the Labour candidate for Bexleyheath and Crayford at the 2010 general election, whilst her second husband, journalist Gareth Butler, died of a heart attack in 2008.[22] She married her third husband, Rob Chaplin, in 2014 and had a baby in 2015.[23][2]

Publications

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  • By Choice, Not Chance: Fabian Facts for Socialists (with Howard Dawber and Paul Richards), Fabian Society 2001 ISBN 0716340461
  • Direct to Patient Communication: Patient Empowerment or NHS Burden? (editor), Social Market Foundation 2004 ISBN 1-904899-03-X
  • Charging Ahead?: Spreading the Costs of Modern Public Services, Social Market Foundation, Oct 2007 ISBN 1904899412

References

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  1. ^ "Members Sworn". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol. 752. Parliament of the United Kingdom: House of Commons. 10 July 2024.
  2. ^ a b c Dejevsky, Mary (27 April 2015). "Jessica Asato - the candidate for Norwich North who could give Labour the majority it needs". The Independent. Archived from the original on 8 June 2022. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
  3. ^ a b Boggis, Mark (July 2024). "Jess Asato unveiled as new Lowestoft MP after close battle".
  4. ^ "Jessica Asato". Debating Matters. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  5. ^ "Battle of Ideas - Jessica Asato" archive.battleofideas.org.uk. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  6. ^ Brivati, Brian; Dale, Iain (27 September 2009). "Top 100 most influential Left-wingers: 100-51". Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  7. ^ ""Hypocrisy" or "privatisation to a ludicrous extreme" – Norwich politicians in war over words over NHS". EDP24. 21 November 2014. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  8. ^ "Labour's young ones on the move: 10 names to watch". Independent. 26 September 2010. Archived from the original on 8 June 2022. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  9. ^ Dale, Iain (20 April 2010). "Video: Make Your Mind Up (And Vote!)". Iain Dale's Diary. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  10. ^ Jessica Asato. "Jessica Asato". The Guardian.
  11. ^ "Where's Jessica Asato? Rivals say she's gone missing from St George's ward, but council colleagues defend her attendance record". Islington Tribune. 30 November 2012. Retrieved 1 December 2014.
  12. ^ "Lucky 13... this year's future stars revealed". London Evening Standard. 2 January 2013. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  13. ^ "Are 'career politicians' a bad thing? Should our MPs be a local?". Eastern Daily Press. 24 June 2014. Retrieved 12 December 2014.
  14. ^ "LABOUR CONFERENCE: Candidate tells conference of Norwich childcare "crisis"". Eastern Daily Press. 23 September 2014. Retrieved 1 December 2014.
  15. ^ "Former Lib Dem Lord Oakeshott donates £300,000 to Labour candidates". New Statesman. 21 January 2015. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  16. ^ Neame, Katie (27 February 2023). "Two more local Labour Parties select their next parliamentary candidates". Labour List. Retrieved 2 June 2024.
  17. ^ "Lowestoft (31 May 2024 - ) - overlaps". UK Parliament election results. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
  18. ^ "Labour parliamentary candidate Jessica Asato quits London council job to focus on Norwich". Norwich Evening News. 4 February 2013. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  19. ^ Smith, Alex (30 June 2009). "The Jessica Asato interview". Labour List. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  20. ^ "Jessica Asato". Progress. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  21. ^ "New chair for anti-racist thinktank". The Jewish Chronicle. 19 March 2009. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  22. ^ "History". Butler XI Cricket Club. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  23. ^ "Meet the group Parliament is secretly discriminating against". The Daily Telegraph. 23 December 2014. Archived from the original on 23 December 2014. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jessica Asato.
Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency Member of Parliament for Lowestoft
2024–present 		Incumbent
Party political offices
Preceded by Chair of the Fabian Society
2012–2014 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Chair of the Young Fabians
2002–2003 		Succeeded by
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