Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven.

A steady, loyally on-message MP who has used local campaigning to make more noise than his voting record suggests. Ward has not once broken with Labour in the Commons -- a 100% party-line record across 379 votes -- but his most visible recent work has been outside the chamber: leading a 2,000-signature petition and attending protests over a long-delayed Morrisons supermarket in his constituency, securing funding for the deprived Whitehawk area, and running a local SEND summit in Saltdean after co-sponsoring a bill on mandatory special-educational-needs training in schools. Coverage in The Argus has been consistently positive on these fronts, with economy and jobs generating the most local press attention.

His participation rate of 73% sits below the Commons average, and his voting pattern is orthodox Labour: strongly pro-workers'-rights, strongly pro-progressive-taxation, and firmly against Lords scrutiny and parliamentary-scrutiny amendments -- the latter two at 0% alignment, meaning he has consistently voted to limit rather than expand checks on the executive. Two deviations from his parliamentary colleagues stand out: he votes more strongly than most Labour MPs on armed-forces welfare (100% versus a party average of 49%), and he has been more supportive of criminal-justice reform. His 239 contributions span economy, defence, local government, and social care, suggesting a broad rather than specialist focus.

His highest-profile recent speeches and local press coverage point to a constituency-first approach -- school visits, community consultations, ministerial lobbying on health services -- rather than a distinctive policy platform at Westminster. He sits on no select committees. News sentiment data covers 102 articles over 90 days; many carry a neutral score of zero, which typically reflects routine local reporting rather than controversy.