Robert Ernest Bean (5 September 1935 – 7 December 1987) was a British Labour Party politician and polytechnic lecturer.

Having served as a councillor and fought Gillingham in 1970 and Thanet East in February 1974, Bean was elected Member of Parliament for the marginal Rochester and Chatham seat in the October of that year, ousting the Conservative incumbent Peggy Fenner. At the 1979 general election, when the Conservatives returned to government under Margaret Thatcher, Fenner regained the seat.

Bean was beaten by Fenner again at the new Medway seat in 1983, and he died in 1987 at the age of 52. He was survived by his wife, daughter and son. He died before the births of two granddaughters and two grandsons.

• Times Guide to the House of Commons 1979
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Robert Bean