Prior to entering Parliament, the new leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons worked as a special adviser to Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1997-2002, and also served as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in HM Treasury between 2004 and 2005.
NHS
While the NHS did not feature as a major element of Ed Miliband’s campaign, he criticised the Government’s proposed reforms to the NHS as an ‘unnecessary top-down re-organisation’. He also praised PFI schemes for modernising hospitals and he argued that "the vast majority of the NHS is currently run in the public sector and in my view should and will remain so".
He has also called for the NHS to work more closely with and through local authorities, and for there to be more democratic local decision making about NHS priorities.
Shadow Cabinet elections
A separate election period has now begun for the Shadow Cabinet. This will last for a further nine days, where MPs will vote for who should be in the Shadow Cabinet. The 19 people elected – six of whom must be women – will then be allocated roles by the new leader.
