Geoffrey Robinson

Labour MP Coventry North West

Date of birth

25 May 1938

Political profile

Geoffrey Robinson is one of Labour's longest serving MPs, having sat in the Commons since a 1976 by-election.

He spent many of these years in comparative political obscurity, though he was known as an industrialist.

The former chief executive of Jaguar, he is a multi-millionaire and one of the richest people in the Commons; his wealth enabled him to make substantial donations to Labour, to buy the New Statesman magazine and to let the Blair family use his home in Tuscany as a holiday retreat.

He was very close to the New Labour leadership, and became paymaster general when the party came to power in 1997.

He was forced to quit after it was revealed that he had loaned Peter Mandelson, then Trade and Industry Secretary, hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy a house: neither of them had declared the arrangement, and both were forced to resign in 1998.

Since then he has returned to a quiet, generally loyal life on the backbenches.

In October 2001 he was suspended from the House for three weeks after the Standards and Privileges committee concluded he had misled them over the receipt of a cheque from the disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell.

Contact

Constituency office 024 7625 7870