Shahid Malik (born 24 November 1967) is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Dewsbury since 2005. He is currently a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Shahid Malik was born in Burnley, Lancashire. He studied Business Studies at the South Bank Polytechnic in South London and later worked with the East Lancashire Training and Enterprise Council in a business development capacity.

His other main area of work has been in regeneration and the voluntary sector. He was National Chair of the Voluntary sector body Urban Forum (1999-2002); chief group executive of the Pakistan Muslim Centre (PMC), Sheffield and Chief Executive of Haringey Regeneration Agency, managing a £150 million development programme. He also served as Vice-Chair of UK UNESCO.

Following the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998 he was appointed as Great British Commissioner to the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (1999-2002). From 1998-2002 he also served as a Commissioner for the Commission for Racial Equality.

He has also been a Fellow of the Institute of Management (FIMgt) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

In 2000 Shahid Malik was elected as the first ever non-white person on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. He was re-elected each year until 2005 when he stood down after being elected as an MP.

In 2002 Malik hoped to be selected in Burnley where Peter Pike had indicated he was standing down. However, the National Executive Committee decided that this Constituency Labour Party should have an all-women shortlist^[1]. Malik responded to the decision by writing an article in The Guardian affirming his support for the policy of all-women shortlists. He also stood for selection in Brent East after Labour lost the 2003 by-election but was left off the shortlist.

In 2004 Malik was selected in Dewbsury and was elected as the Member of Parliament in May 2005. At the 2005 House Magazine Awards, his Maiden Speech was awarded the best among the 2005 intake.

After the General Election Malik was appointed to the influential Home Affairs Select Committee. He also served on the Environmental Audit Select Committee until the cabinet reshuffle of May 2006 when he was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Minister of State for Schools Jim Knight.

In June 2007 Malik became Britain's first Muslim Minister after Gordon Brown appointed him as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for International Development.

In October 2008, Malik was appointed as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice and in March 2009 was subsequently appointed into a dual role as a Home Office Minister.

Malik was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government in June 2009.

Shahid Malik served as an international election monitor for the Palestinian Presidential elections in 2005 and Parliamentary elections in January 2006.

In August 2006, he became the most senior British Parliamentarian to sign an open letter to the Prime Minister criticising the UK's policy towards Israel after the 2006 Lebanon War. Later in 2006, he visited the bombed areas of Lebanon. On his return to the UK he raised the issue in Parliament.

On 15 May 2009, Malik was suspended and forced to step down as Justice Minister. Malik had appeared on several TV news interviews earlier in the day, including Sky and GMTV, to seek to protest his innocence but with expense claims for a £730 massage chair, a £75 court summons for non-payment of Council Tax, a £2500 home cinema system (of which the Commons only agreed to pay) and questionable issues related to his home rental arrangements, the Prime Minister and Malik's boss, Jack Straw, were concerned about the impact of this exposure.

Malik had nominated his home in Dewsbury as his main home, and then claimed the maximum allowance each year for a second home in London to be able to claim a total of £66,827 over 3 years from taxpayers. The landlord in Dewsbury said Malik was only paying a discounted £100 per week rent, whereas The Telegraph newspaper found he had been claiming in excess of £440 per week for his London home. The discounted rent had also not been declared in the Register of Members interests. The Prime Minister ruled he could not remain in his position while compliance with the Ministerial Code was investigated. Sir Philip Mawer, was asked to investigate his financial arrangements. This was the first time such an investigaion was ordered against a Minister.

The Telegraph newspaper also reported that in his first year, Malike made 13 separate claims for furniture and electrical appliances, including an IPoD, totalling more than £7,000. The fees office blocked several items and he eventually received only £6,147. He was also reported to have regularly claimed the maximum allowable £400 a month for food. ^[2]

Sir Philip Mawer reported that while Malik had not breached the Ministerial Code, his investigation raised a number of questions regarding Malik's parliamentary financial affairs. First, Mr Malik had nominated his second home as his property in London to claim the maximum allowance there, however, on the reduced £100 per week rent on his Dewsbury home, it emerged he had been separately claiming £200 from taxpayers for use of the ground floor of his home as an office. Second, he was unable to provide any documentation relation to rental agreement of his larger Dewsbury home for which he claimed to have been paying £620 per month from his own pocket. Thirdly, he was unable to explain why after he moved to his larger home after getting married, why his rent payments by direct debit remained at £320. Malik told Sir Philip he had been paying the balance in cash every month to the landlord. However, he was unable to satisfy Sir Philip from his bank statements of any regular cash withdrawals for that purpose or show any receipts from the landlord.

Malik also claimed that his arrangement to pay cash was because his Muslim landlord preferred not to use the Western banking statement. He was however unable to explain why half of the rent was still paid by direct debit.

Sir Phillip Mawer said in his report "So I am left with the question, not whether the rent Mr Malik says he was charged was preferential, but whether Mr Malik actually paid the rent he and [name of the manager of the property company] say he was charged.”

On 16 June, John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, launched a formal inquiry into Mr Malik’s expenses claims.^[3]

On 12 October, Malik was told he had nothing to pay back from his expense claims by the panel established to investigate all claims relating to the second homes allowance and headed by former civil servant Sir Thomas Legg.^[4]

• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Shahid Malik MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Shahid Malik MP
• Transcript of maiden speech to the House of Commons
• Shahid Malik's website