Reading Central.

Reading Central's MP has been most active recently on assisted dying legislation, where he broke from his party multiple times in June 2025. Rodda voted for amendments that would tighten safeguards -- specifically to prevent people from qualifying as terminally ill solely by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking -- and backed procedural votes to extend the bill's scrutiny, positions the Labour majority opposed. He also rebelled against the government's alcohol duty changes in December 2025. Beyond Parliament, he has secured high-profile visits from both the Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary to Reading, using them to spotlight cost-of-living pressures and green housing developments respectively.

At 86% voting participation and 97% party alignment, Rodda is a broadly loyal, engaged backbencher -- participation sits slightly above the Commons average. His speeches concentrate heavily on economy and jobs (77 contributions) and local government (56), consistent with his public campaigning on Reading's economic regeneration, a Heathrow rail link, and anti-social behaviour. He votes strongly for workers' rights and progressive taxation, and almost never sides with business-friendly or Lords-scrutiny positions. His biggest deviation from Labour colleagues is on end-of-life issues, where he scores roughly 20 percentage points more supportive of both autonomy and safeguards than the party average.

One notable gap: Rodda scores 0% on pro-NHS-funding votes, against a Labour average of 41% -- a significant divergence with no obvious explanation in the available data, which does not include committee work to indicate a specialist brief. Local news coverage over the past 90 days skews slightly positive, dominated by culture and sport stories, with local government coverage running mildly negative. No committee memberships are recorded.