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 Richard Corbett was first elected in a by-election on 12 December 1996 as the Labour Member of the European Parliament for Merseyside West Constituency. He was re-elected in 1999 and 2004 for Yorkshire and Humber under the new regional system.
Richard was born in Southport, Merseyside, in 1955 and educated in schools in Southport and Geneva. He went on to Trinity College, Oxford where he gained a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He studied further as an external student at the University of Hull where he gained his Doctorate in Political Science.
Richard is married to Anne and has one son and two daughters. He lives in Saltaire, Shipley, and has his constituency office in Leeds.
Richard says...
 We must use the EU to find common solutions to common problems that cannot be solved by national action alone. But this requires EU institutions that are  effective, efficient and accountable.
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Richard is Deputy Leader of the Labour MEPs, and like all Labour MEPs, Richard is a member of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. He is the spokesperson both for the Labour Party and the whole Socialist Group on the Constitutional Committee of the European Parliament, dealing with the reform of the European Union including the new Reform Treaty, and with Parliamentary procedure.
Richard was also on the Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs Committee, which deals with EU legislation and policies in the fields of asylum and immigration policy, the protection of citizen's rights, combating trans-national crime, and fighting discrimination,
but switched at the beginning of 2007 to the budgets committee, which examines proposed spending priorities of the EU and prepares Parliament ' s vote on adopting the annual budget.
He is a member of the GMB trade union and is President of the GMB MEPs. Richard is also a member of Amicus.
Richard is Vice President of the European Movement and on the steering group of Yorkshire in Europe. He chairs the Labour Movement for Europe (LME) in the European Parliament.
Indeed, he has been interested in European affairs since he was at university where he co-ordinated the "Yes " campaign in the 1975 referendum on British membership. He was then active in the youth section of the European Movement at national and international levels, and was President of its Europe-wide youth organisation, the JEF, from 1979 to 1981. He then worked closely with Altiero Spinelli on his proposed Treaty on European Union.
Richard is also active on matters concerning EU funding in Yorkshire under the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund. He is a member of the European Strategy Board of "Yorkshire Forward" (the Regional Development Authority).
He has been a Labour Party member since 1973. Before being an MEP, Richard worked, from 1977 to 1981, in the voluntary sector for youth organisations. From 1981 to 1989 he was a civil servant. In 1989 he was appointed as Policy Advisor to the Socialist Group of the European Parliament, with particular responsibility for the 1991 Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) that drafted the Treaty of Maastricht.
Richard was also responsible for developing policy regarding enlargement of the EU to include Sweden, Finland and Austria, and revision of European Parliament procedures. From 1994 to 1996 he was the Deputy Secretary of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament and became the Advisor to Elisabeth Guigou, the European Parliament's representative on the IGC that drafted the Treaty of Amsterdam. He was therefore the only Labour Party member to set foot in those negotiations prior to the May 1997 General Election.
Richard was elected in 2001 to the national policy forum of the Labour Party. Tony Blair asked Richard to be the Labour Party 's special liaison member for Belgium and Luxembourg. He is a member of the Regional Board of the Labour Party in Yorkshire and Humber.
Since 2004 Richard has occupied a number of positions in the Parliament, including being Parliament's Rapporteur on the Constitutional Treaty, on reform of the Parliament's procedures and on comitology. He is a member of the "Friends of Football" integroup and was appointed by the EU Council and UEFA to sit on the Independent Review of European Football, which reported earlier this year.
After the EU Constitution was abandoned Richard was selected to be the Rapporteur to the reforming Lisbon Treaty, which was adopted by the European Parliament in February 2008.
As a Member of the European Parliament, Richard has fulfilled a number of other tasks:
- Vice President of the Constitutional Affairs Committee from 1987 to 1999.
- Socialist group and Labour spokesperson on the Constitutional Affairs Committee from 1999 until now (re-elected 3 times).
- Rapporteur on reforming Parliament Rules and procedures in 1997-8 and 2002-3.
- Member of Executive Bureau of EPLP (the Labour MEPs).
- Rapporteur on the rules on creating political groups in Parliament (1999-2000).
- On the Joint Parliamentary Committees with the Bulgarian Parliament and the Latvian Parliament during those countries' accession negotiations.
- On the delegations dealing with the ASEAN Countries (1989 - 2003), the Central Asian countries (2003 - 2004), and Japan (2004 to present).
- A member of informal all party groups (inter-groups) on Animal Welfare and Conservation, Anti-Racism, Disability, European Constitution, Globe, Kangaroo (Free Movement), Land Use and Food Policy, Peace for Saharani People, Rugby League, Trade Union, and Beer Club.
- President of the British Beer Club in the European Parliament.
Richard has written widely on European affairs, including co-writing the standard textbook on the European Parliament, now in its seventh edition.
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