Valleys MP ‘won’t fight another election’
WALES’ longest-serving MP has announced she won’t fight another election.
Labour’s Ann Clwyd, 82, has represented Cynon Valley for the last 35 years.
She told her constituency group that she does not intend to fight another election.
A Labour source said: “Ann told her constituency Labour Party that she intends to stand down at the next election.
“Ann has served with distinction as the MP for Cynon Valley. Everyone will wish her well for the future”.
She is the fifth Welsh MP to say they will not fight another election.
The others are Conservatives Guto Bebb (Aberconwy), Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) and David Jones (Clwyd South) and Labour’s Albert Owen (Ynys Mon).
A new candidate for the seat will be selected by the Welsh Labour Executive Committee.
The party has a policy of all women shortlists in seats with retiring MPs until there is gender parity in the Parliamentary Labour party.
There is also an all women’s shortlist in Ynys Mon, and selection is due to take place within the next few weeks.
She is a previous Shadow Secretary of State for Wales and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.
She was Tony Blair’s special envoy in Iraq.
Her sit-in at Tower Colliery in 1994 was a famous protest at plans to close the pit. The miners pooled their redundancy money to take it over and, after reopening the following year, it continued producing coal until 2008.
She became an outspoken campaigner on the NHS, after the death of her husband.
In 2012, she claimed her husband died in “battery hen” conditions at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff and said there was a “cover-up mentality”.
In 2014 an investigation did not uphold the majority of her allegations but the Labour MP accused the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board of a “dismissive, insulting and gratuitous attitude” towards the families of loved one.
Speaking in the House of Commons, she described the final days of her husband, Owen Roberts.
She had previously announced she would stand down and not fight for reelection in the 2015 General Election but later said she would contest the seat.
When re-elected during the 2017 snap election, she had a majority of 41.6%, up from 30.9% two years earlier.