Chris Summers

http://www.labour.org.uk/people/detail/chris-summers

Chris Summers, 46, was selected as Labour's candidate in Uxbridge & South Ruislip in January 2014. He has been a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Ealing since 2010, representing Northolt Mandeville ward, a previously safe Tory seat.

He grew up in the Tory heartlands of Sussex and Dorset but says: "I have always been a socialist and my political awakening came during the miners' strike when I realised working people were being demonised by Margaret Thatcher, who wanted revenge for the industrial battles of the early 1970s."

Chris has worked as a journalist since 1990, working his way up from local newspapers to the BBC. He specialised in crime reporting and covered the crimes of Fred and Rose West while working in Gloucester in the mid-1990s.

He currently works in current affairs and retains a special interest in crime and policing, as well as fire safety and the shipping industry.

Chris was elected as a councillor in 2010 and has been vice-chairman of Ealing Council's planning committee since May 2013. He also sat on the council's Adoption and Fostering Panel for a year and said their work was "eye-opening and humbling".

He has delivered 100 council houses in Northolt as well as a £1.5m sports pavilion and football pitches.
Now he has his sights set on Uxbridge & South Ruislip, where Sir John Randall has a majority of 11,000. "It may look like a mountain to climb but I am not frightened of hard work and I am confident that we can give the Tories a really good run for their money in May 2015," he says.

His first priority as a Labour MP would be to campaign for rent control legislation to help cut the cost of living for millions of hard-working people in cities like London.