Rachel Maskell

Rachael Helen Maskellis a British politician serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for York Central since 2015. A member of the Labour and Co-operative parties, she was Shadow Environment Secretary from 2016 to 2017 and Shadow Employment Secretary in 2020. She is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group parliamentary caucus.

Background

Maskell was born in Winchester, Hampshire in South East England and was brought up in Highcliffe on the border between Dorset and Hampshire. She was influenced to take up an interest in politics by her uncle Terence Morris, a close associate of Louis Blom-Cooper, who was a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the London School of Economics. Morris had campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty, in addition to serving as an advisor to the Wilson government and as an academic. The Yorker, a York-based student publication, states: "[he] preferred to live and work amongst his community rather than be without. [H]is approach to politics was her inspiration as a child".

Maskell graduated from the University of East Anglia with a degree in physiotherapy in 1994. She worked as a care-worker and physiotherapist in the National Health Service for 20 years in Norwich and the London Borough of Barnet. Maskell has also been a trade-union official.