Geraint Davies

Geraint Richard Davies (born 3 May 1960) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Swansea West since 2010.

He was elected as a member of the Labour Party, but was suspended from the party in 2023 pending the outcome of allegations of sexual harassment against him and now sits as an independent.

Davies was born in Chester in 1960.

His family comes from west Wales; his civil servant father is from Aberystwyth and his mother's family are from Swansea.

He was brought up in Cardiff where he attended Llanishen High School, before studying Mathematics then Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Jesus College, Oxford where he was Junior Common Room President.

Davies joined Unilever as a Group Product Manager in 1982, and became Group Product Manager before joining Colgate-Palmolive Ltd. as Marketing Manager and then starting his own companies including Pure Crete Ltd. and Equity Creative Ltd.

He became active in the Labour Party from 1982, being Assistant Secretary for Croydon North East Labour Party and Chair of Croydon Central Constituency Labour Party, and was a member of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs, and later the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union.

He has been a member of the Co-operative Party since 1984 and joined the GMB in 1985.

Davies was elected to Croydon London Borough Council in 1986 representing New Addington ward, retaining the seat in 1990 and 1994.

At the 1987 general election, Davies contested the safe Conservative seat Croydon South, coming third.

Davies became Director of Pure Crete Ltd, described as a 'Green tour operator', in 1989.

He married Dr. Vanessa Fry in September 1991 and they now live in Swansea.

In 1992, Davies then stood in Croydon Central constituency coming second.

He became Chairman of the Housing Committee when Labour won control of Croydon London Borough Council in 1994.

Davies was elected to succeed Mary Walker as Leader of the Council in 1996, resigning from the role and his council seat in 1997.

He was also chair of the Housing Committee of the London Boroughs Association, the predecessor of London Councils, from 1996 to 1997.

Previously, Davies was the Labour MP for Croydon Central from 1997 to 2005.

He had also served as the Leader of Croydon London Borough Council.

At the 1997 general election, he stood again in Croydon Central, this time overturning the Conservative majority of 9,650 and becoming Croydon Central's MP with Labour majority of 3,897.

Re-elected in 2001, Davies was appointed NSPCC Parliamentary Ambassador in 2003, following his proposed Regulation of Childcare Providers Bill in April 2003 which saw the law changed so that childminders were no longer permitted to smack children and parents had the right to see records of complaints about prospective childminders in respect of child safety.

These provisions were subsequently adopted by the Government.

He then proposed the Physical Punishment of Children (Prohibition) Bill in July 2003 which made striking children across the head, with implements or shaking them illegal.

Davies sought to address children's issues with a Healthy Children Manifesto (June 2004) to ban junk food advertising to children and regulate food labeling (adopted by Government 11/06) and a School Meals and Nutrition Bill in January 2005 that sought to include nutrition in OFSTED and to ban unhealthy vending (provisions adopted 3/05 & 10/05).

He also sponsored the Regulation of Hormone Disrupting Chemicals Bill (May 2004) to impose precautionary bans on chemicals with evidence of being dangerous.

This bill was incorporated in the EU REACH directive 09/06 and supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature UK.

He was also involved in a high-profile campaign for the release of British detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay.

At the 2005 election he lost his seat to the Conservative candidate Andrew Pelling by 75 votes.

Davies was subsequently selected for the Labour seat of Swansea West following the retirement of the constituency's MP of 45 years, Alan Williams.

Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg were finally released on 25 January 2005.

In the 2010 general election, he won with a majority of 504 and 34.7% of the vote, increasing his majority in the 2015 general election to 7036 over the Conservatives with 42.6% of the vote.

Davies has introduced twenty-six Private Members' Bills since becoming MP for Swansea West in 2010.

On his re-election for Swansea West in 2010, Davies became the first newly elected MP to present a private members' bill – the Credit Regulation (Child Pornography) Bill in July 2010 that received cross-party support including an Early Day Motion signed by 203 MPs. The Bill would penalise credit and debit card companies for facilitating the downloading of child abuse images and requires that pre-paid credit cards below £100 are only issued when the identity of those buying them is recorded in order to trace their source if used for illegal downloading or underaged purchases of weapons or alcohol.

His Multinational Motor Manufacturing Companies (Duty of Care to Former Employees) Bill 2012–13 was designed to ensure that former Ford Motor Company employees, including those from Swansea, who were transferred to an arms-length company called Visteon that Ford created, were compensated for the under-funding of their pension fund.

Davies' Counsellors and Psychotherapists (Regulation) Bill 2013–14 was designed to ensure that patients were treated by qualified practitioners using evidence based treatment.

It explicitly sought to ban conversion therapy, sexual grooming, and sexual activity with patients by practitioners.

This helped to secure the £29 million pay out in 2014 by Ford to former employees after a five-year campaign supported by an all-party group of MPs for which Davies was Labour lead.

Davies' Sugar in Food and Drinks (Targets, Labelling and Advertising) Bill 2014–15 aimed to help curb the obesity and diabetes epidemics by requiring food labeling to express added sugar content in teaspoonfuls, restricting high sugar products as presenting themselves as low fat in advertising and requiring the Secretary of State for Health to set annual targets for sugar content by food category recommended by the Food Standards Agency.

In the 2017 general election his majority grew to 10,598 with a 59.8% share of the vote of 22,278, the highest Labour vote in Swansea West's history.

In 2019, his vote fell to 18,493 which was 51.6% of the vote.

In his first term in Parliament, Davies was appointed Chair of the Environment Transport & Regions Departmental Committee and served on the Public Accounts Committee.