Siôn Simon

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The Right Honourable  Siôn Simon  MP
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Creative Industries
Incumbent
Assumed office  9 June 2009
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	Barbara Follett (as Minister for Culture, Tourism and Creative Industries)
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Further Education
In office 5 October 2008 – 9 June 2009
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	David Lammy
Succeeded by	Kevin Brennan(as Minister of State)
Member of Parliament for Birmingham Erdington
Incumbent
Assumed office  11 June 2001
Preceded by	Robin Corbett
Majority	9,575 (30.2%)
Born	23 December 1968 (1968-12-23) (age 41) Doncaster
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford
Website	sionsimonmp.org

Siôn Llewelyn Simon (born 23 December 1968) is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Erdington since 2001. Simon is currently the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Creative Industries.

Contents 1 Background 2 Professional career 3 Controversies 4 Personal life 5 References 6 External links 7 Offices held

[edit] Background

Born in Caernarfonshire^{[citation needed]} to Welsh-speaking parents, Simon grew up in Birmingham, attending Handsworth Grammar School, where he joined the Labour Party at aged 16.^[1] Simon enrolled at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1987, elected head of the college Junior Common Room in his second year.

[edit] Professional career

After university, he was research assistant for George Robertson MP for three years.

After a stint working for Diageo in their Guinness management team, he became a journalist, working for the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express and the News of the World. He continues to be an associate editor at the Spectator.

In the 1992 election campaign he ran the European desk for the Labour Party and then, during the 1997 election campaign, the foreign press department at Labour Party Headquarters. In the 2005 General Election he stood for and held the seat of Birmingham Erdington with a majority of 9,575. Sion has also appeared as a judge in St Edmund Campion School Version of X Factor in 2007 and also appeared in Series 2 on April 25 2008.^{[citation needed]}

Shortly after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he became Vice-Chair of the Labour Party, with special responsibility to draft the Law and Order manifesto for the upcoming General Election.

Following the October 2008 reshuffle by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Sion Simon was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Further Education in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.^[2]

In June 2009 he was moved to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, to become Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Creative Industries after Innovation, Universities and Skills was merged to make the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

[edit] Controversies

This article's Criticism or Controversy section(s) may mean the article does not present a neutral point of view of the subject. It may be better to integrate the material in those sections into the article as a whole.

On 5 September 2006 he and Chris Bryant co-ordinated a letter which was signed by 17 Labour backbenchers calling for Tony Blair to resign.^[3] The MPs failed to force Mr Blair out of office, but the Prime Minister did publicly pledge to stand down within 12 months.

On 12 October 2006 controversy erupted over a YouTube spoof by Simon of David Cameron's video blog, in which, pretending to be Cameron, he offered people one of his children and the opportunity to sleep with his wife. This led to expressions of disgust from both parties with the stunt being called "tasteless".^[4][5] Traffic for Cameron's video blog increased tenfold after the controversy. In an interview on Sky News that same day, he described David Cameron's attempts to reach out to the youth culture as "shallow" and "pathetic".^{[6][dead link]} The video was removed on 13 October by his friend Tom Watson MP, who he described as a "proppa blogga".^[7]

At the time of the Labour Party Conference in September 2007, Simon wrote a triumphalist article for the New Statesman in which he wrongly predicted that "Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority" and continued:-

"That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready."[1]

In the aftermath of the British Parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009, Mr Simon announced that he would pay back approximately £21,000 out of monies that he had claimed to pay rent on a flat owned by his sister. link

[edit] Personal life

Simon suffers from the rare genetic disorder choroideremia, a condition that leads to progressive deterioration in eyesight and in its later stage, blindness.^[8] He co-founded, and works as a trustee for, the Choroideremia Research Foundation Inc.^[9]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Sion Simon's website
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Sion Simon MP
• BBC Interview with Sion Simon MP, Minister for Further Education
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Sion Simon MP

[edit] Offices held

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Robin Corbett	Member of Parliament for Birmingham Erdington 2001–present	Incumbent
Preceded by David Lammy	Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Further Education 2008 - 2009	Succeeded by Kevin Brennan (as Minister of State)