Ruth Cadbury

Ruth Margaret Cadbury (born 14 May 1959) is a British Labour politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brentford and Isleworth since 2015. She was Shadow Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation from 2023 but was replaced by James Timpson after the 2024 general election. A former planning consultant, Cadbury previously served on the opposition front bench as Shadow Minister for Housing from 2016 to 2017, Shadow Minister for Planning in 2021 and Shadow Minister for International Trade from 2021 to 2023.

Early life and education
Ruth Cadbury was born on 14 May 1959 in Birmingham. She is the eldest child of Charles Lloyd Cadbury and Jillian Stafford Ransome, and belongs to a well-known Quaker family; she is descended from the industrialist George Cadbury of the Cadbury chocolate firm. She was privately educated at The Mount School, York, Bournville College, and the University of Salford, where she graduated with a BSc in social sciences in 1981.

Career
From 1983 to 1989, Cadbury worked for the Covent Garden Community Association. She was then a Planning Advisor at Planning Aid for London for the next seven years, before beginning work as a Policy Planner at the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames for five years. She was a freelance planning consultant from 2006 to 2014.

Cadbury was first elected as a Labour councillor for the Gunnersbury ward of Hounslow London Borough Council in 1986, before being elected for the Brentford Clifden ward in 1998 and the Brentford ward in 2002. She was Deputy Leader of the council from 2010 to 2012 and stood down as a councillor in May 2015.

Parliamentary career
At the 2015 general election, Cadbury was elected to Parliament as MP for Brentford and Isleworth with 43.8% of the vote and a majority of 465. In her maiden speech to the House of Commons on 2 June 2015, she referenced her Quaker background and its relevance to social justice.

In December 2015, she voted against military intervention in Syria.

In October 2016, she was appointed by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as a Shadow Housing Minister. She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election.

At the snap 2017 general election, Cadbury was re-elected as MP for Brentford and Isleworth with an increased vote share of 57.4% and an increased majority of 12,182.

Cadbury was ousted as Shadow Housing Minister on 29 June 2017 for contravening a whipped vote on an amendment to the Queen's speech calling for the UK to remain in the European Single Market; whilst the Labour position was to abstain, she voted to support the motion.

She voted in the unsuccessful no ('Noes') lobby in a key House of Commons division of 25 June 2018 for the National Policy Statement on Airports, which laid out government support for a third runway, and she was among 28 of the 46 London Labour MPs opposing the runway.

At the 2019 general election, Cadbury was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 50.2% and a decreased majority of 10,514.

Cadbury re-joined the Labour front bench in the May 2021 as the Shadow Minister for Planning, receiving half of Mike Amesbury's former brief as the Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning. In Keir Starmer's front bench reshuffle of November 2021, Cadbury was appointed Shadow Trade Minister. In his reshuffle in September 2023, she was appointed Shadow Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation.

In June 2024, Cadbury was reselected as the Labour candidate for Brentford and Isleworth at the 2024 general election.

Personal life
Cadbury is a Quaker. In 2022, she became a Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, which meets to discuss issues of relevance to humanists.

She is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society. Cadbury is married to Nick Gash, a non-executive director of the Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust and former chair of West Middlesex Hospital (Cadbury's constituency local hospital).