Nottingham East.

One of Labour's more rebellious backbenchers, Whittome voted in April to refer Prime Minister Starmer to the Privileges Committee over allegations he misled Parliament about Peter Mandelson's appointment as US Ambassador -- a direct challenge to her own party leadership. That same day she broke with Labour again to oppose new rules stripping housing and financial support from failed asylum seekers. Earlier this year she voted against the Courts and Tribunals Bill at Second Reading, siding with Conservative opponents, and in January defied her party over regulations expanding the Public Order Act to criminalise infrastructure disruption by protesters.

Her voting participation stands at 56%, below the Commons average, but where she does vote she diverges from Labour with unusual regularity -- 92.4% party alignment masks sharp deviations on welfare and civil liberties. Compared to her Labour colleagues, she is 88 percentage points more likely to vote in favour of disability benefits, 74 points more likely to oppose benefit cuts, and 66 points more aligned with asylum-seeker rights. She has spoken across 62 debates recently, with economy and jobs, social care, immigration, and crime dominating her contributions. She sits on the Women and Equalities Committee.

Her specialist focus on disability is partly personal: she has spoken publicly about her own experience of disability, including in a 2024 piece for Nottingham's LeftLion magazine, and has raised curriculum reform, digital ID, and Sudan in Parliament. Local news coverage over the past 90 days runs to 42 articles, clustered around culture, policing, and crime, with sentiment close to neutral. Voting data and speech records are available; full debate transcripts underlying some votes are limited.