Age of MPs in the UK Parliament 1979-2019

Following the 2019 general election, there were 200 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the United Kingdom’s House of Commons who were aged between 50 and 59 years of age, the most numerous age group that year. Since 2001, this age group has been the most numerous in Parliament, although there has also been an increase in younger MPs, aged between 18 and 29, and those aged over 70 years old. With a general election likely taking place in 2024, the composition of parliament will change once again, with current polls predicting a Labour victory for the first time since the 2005 general election.

Demographics of the next parliament

Whoever wins the next general elections, the next parliament is expected to be the most ethnically diverse in history. A large Labour majority could see approximately 84 MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds elected to parliament. As a comparison, there were just four non-white MPs elected in the 1987 election, with this figure gradually rising to 65 by 2019. There is also anticipated to be between 234 and 267 women elected, compared with 220 in 2019. Just 40 years before the last election, in 1979, there were only 19 female MPs in the House of Commons with this figure slowly increasing to 60 by 1992, and then doubling to 120 in the 1997 election. 

‘Father of the House’

The Conservative MP, Sir Peter Bottomley is currently the longest-serving member of the House of Commons, having served for 44 and a half years as of the start of the 2019 parliament. Margaret Beckett has been an MP since the 1983 General Election, making her the longest serving female MP. Beckett was also briefly the acting leader of the Labour Party in 1994, a role that the fourth-longest serving MP; Harriet Harman performed in 2010 and again in 2015. Jeremy Corbyn, the fifth-longest serving MP since the 2019 election, succeeded Harman as Labour leader in 2015 and led the party at the 2017, and 2019 general elections.