
Margaret Moran (born 24 April 1955) was the Labour MP for Luton South from 2 May 1997 to 12 April 2010, succeeding Graham Bright and preceding Gavin Shuker.
Biography
Margaret Moran was born in Bethnal Green, London on 24 April 1955 to Irish parents, and she went to school at St Mary's College in Strawberry Hill, Twickenham and then at the University of Birmingham before becoming a teacher. In 1984, she was elected to the Lewisham Borough Council, serving as leader of the council from 1993 to 1995. In addition to being a Labour politician, she was also a feminist activist who fought for housing for women, and was also a trade union activist. She was elected to Parliament for Luton South in 1997, and she controversially supported the Iraq War, supported negotiations with Spain over Gibraltar, and advocated for women with regards to domestic violence and child protection. In 2009, it was revealed that she had claimed £73,198 in parliamentary expenses, which included high spending on stationery, postage, and staff costs (she famously sent out thousands of unsolicited letters to her constituents), spent £22,500 of taxpayers' money to treat rotting wood at her seaside home in Southampton just days after making it her official "second home", and used £1,104.34 to pay for furniture for her house. In 2010, The Daily Telegraph reported that an IP address associated with the Palace of Westminster had been used to remove information on her role in the parliamentary expenses scandal from her Wikipedia page. On 6 September 2011, she was formally charged with 15 counts of false accounting and 6 of forgery, and, in December 2012, she was sentenced to a two-year supervision and treatment order.