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.

His Dewsbury constituency houses the home of the lead 7/7 bomber, Mohammed Siddique Khan involved in the terrorist atrocities in London in July 2005.

Shahid Malik was born in Burnley, Lancashire. He attended Durham University, 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 June 2001, while a Labour activist, a picture of Malik's blooded face appeared all over television and newspapers following a clash with Police during civil riots where Malik claimed he had been attempting to mediate between parties. He was handcuffed and arrested and later released.

In 2002 Malik failed to secure the Labour nomination for Burnley where Peter Pike had indicated he was standing down. The Labour Party National Executive Committee decided that this Constituency Labour Party should have an all-women shortlist^[1]. Malik also failed to secure Labour selection in Brent East during the 2003 by-election where is lost out Yasmin Qureshi. Malik was seen as a 'carpet bagger' in party circles, trawling around the country trying to find a Labour seat without having any real links with the local community.

In 2004 Malik was eventually 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 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. Ironically, he also became the first Minister of any religious persuasion, to have been suspended and investigated for possible breach of the Ministerial Code in relation to his declaration of interests related to his below-market rent for his second home in Dewsbury. Credited with another notorious first position, Malik was also top of the list of highest expenses claims made by MPs.

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 suspended from both Ministerial posts in May 2009 by the Prime Minister following reports by The Telegraph newspaper about his expenses claims and second home arrangements.

In June 2009, Malik was appointed in a more juniour capacity as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government.

In the forthcoming UK 2010 General Election, following considerable boundary changes, Shahid Malik, will be defending a notional majority of 3,999 and polsters are classing it as a marginal seat.

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), a spurious £1000 overclaim on his council tax, 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 and a possible breach of the Ministerial Code.

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, an advisor to the Prime Minister, was asked to investigate Malik's conduct. This was the first time such an investigation was ordered against a Minister and due to the seriousness Malik was suspended from his ministerial duties.

The Telegraph newspaper also reported that in his first year, Malik 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] Malik had regularly made claims for dry cleaning of upto £94 in some months, £1900 for new doors and windows, £189 for a dishwasher and a TV wall bracked for £49 all from public money.

Sir Philip Mawer's report ran into 71-pages. His investigation raised a number of questions regarding Malik's 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 possibly in breach of Green Book. 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 through the same banking system.

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.”

With many questions still remaining over Mr Malik's expense claims, on 16 June 2009, John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, decided to launch a formal inquiry into Mr Malik’s expenses claims.^[3]

Malik had already publicly committed to repaying the overclaim of his council tax and of his other expense claims promised to pay £1,050 to charity. In October 2009, Sir Thomas Legg who was looking into all MP's expenses wrote to all MPs. Malik advised he was told he had nothing further to pay back .^[4]

John Lyon's report into Malik's expenses will be passed to the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee.

Malik's eventual success at securing a Parliamentary seat is attributed to the growing confidence of British Muslims in politics following the Iraq and Afghanistan invasion. He is reported to have overstated his support for these causes to curry favour in Brent East where he sought to be nominated for the Labour seat, and then later capitalised on this amongst Dewsbury's sizeable Muslim population whome while campaigning he asked to vote for their "Muslim brother".

In office, both as an MP and as a Minister, he has remained relatively soft on issues of concern to mainstream Muslims such as foreign policy, Israeli occupation of Palestine, the erosion of civil liberties stemming from anti-terror legislation and the continuing effects of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasion. His tabling of Commons questions on Muslim issues has been limited compared to his work in other fields although he has carried out occcasional acts but taking care to remain at the border to avoid going against Government policy.

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

In August 2006, he signed 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.

His criticizm of Muslim community leaders has far outweighed his political attacks on Islamaphobic characters and his relations are strained with leading Muslim organisations such as the umbrella Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) which represents over 500 UK Muslim organisations. On 10 February 2007 Shahid Malik wrote an article in The Times newspaper entitled ‘Stop whingeing and show leadership - the Labour MP for Dewsbury sends a message to the Muslim Council of Britain’. Malik also lost many friends in the MCB for failing to support the majority position that called for the genocide in Palestine and other world atrocities to be commemorated in the same way as the other memorials which he supports, such as the Holocaust Memorial Day.

In July 2008 Malik, who had agreed to speak at the opening of Islam Expo, pulled out of the event just hours before its start on order from Government ministers. 40,000 people attended the communiy event at Olympia in West London including former London mayor Ken Livingstone and senior Liberal Democract Simon Hugues.

Many in Muslim the community have suggested that Malik is a careerist who places his personal career ambitions as priority over the interests of his faith community. While this trait is common among politicians, the label is particularly damaging to Malik as he gained the support of the Dewsbury Muslim community on a Muslim issues ticket and he also used the assistance of MCB officers to remain in his former position at the CRE.

Malik was heavily criticized by many leading Muslims for his article in the Sunday Times entitled "If you want sharia law, you should go and live in Saudi" which played into the hands of extremists and wrongly took the emphasis away from social issues such as halal meat, divorce and family matters where Muslims rely on Sharia laws in the same way that the Jewish community does in similar matters.

In response, fellow Muslim Parliamentarian Lord Nazir Ahmed said

Halaal and Kosher meat too is part of Sharia. We allow such slaughter methods in Britain in accordance with Sharia Law. Islamic burials, including purification of the deceased through a prescribed method, is allowed in Britain in accordance with Sharia Law….a few years ago I stood shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish community, especially the women, when they felt a change in British Family Law was required to recognise a Jewish religious divorce. It was unfair that Jewish women had to wait months, sometimes years for the religious divorce to be finalised, when Christian women had the whole thing dealt with in one procedure through the civil courts. It was unequal treatment of British citizens on the grounds of faith. The Law was changed, it was the right change, and it was a legitimate demand. And I didn’t hear a single MP of the Jewish faith asking any Jewish woman to ‘go back to Israel’ for making such a demand.

(Muslim Weekly, 22nd September 2006).

• 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