Honorific-Prefix: | Councillor |
Maureen Burke | |
Honorific-Suffix: | MP |
Office: | Member of Parliament for Glasgow North East |
Term Start: | 4 July 2024 |
Predecessor: | Anne McLaughlin |
Office1: | Glasgow City Council Councillor for North East |
Term Start1: | 3 May 2012 |
Party: | Labour |
Alma Mater: | John Wheatley College |
Majority: | 4,637 (13.6%) |
Maureen Burke (born September 1958) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow North East since 2024.[1]
She is also a sitting Glasgow City Councillor.[2]
Since the 2012 Glasgow City Council election she has represented the North East ward on Glasgow City Council as a Councillor,[2] and is currently the chair of the Glasgow City Council Operational Performance and Delivery Scrutiny Committee.[3]
She was a remunerated director of Glasgow East Women's Aid[4] before its liquidation in March 2024.[5]
At the 2024 United Kingdom general election she was elected as the Labour Member of Parliament for Glasgow North East with a majority of 4637 votes over the incumbent Anne McLaughlin.[6]
Burke worked as a factory operative at A. & J. Gelfer Ltd, a tie manufacturing factory in Bridgeton, Glasgow from the age of 15,[7] before moving into administrative support for the company, which went into liquidation in December 2000.[8] She then studied at John Wheatley College, aged 40 before working as a parliamentary assistant for former Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow Baillieston and MP for Glasgow East, Margaret Curran until the 2015 general election.
Burke lives in the Easterhouse area of Glasgow with her husband. She has one daughter and two granddaughters.
One of her first votes in parliament on July 23rd 2024, was a vote against ending the Two-Child Limit to benefit payments.[9]
In 2018, as a sitting Councillor, Burke gave evidence at Glasgow Sheriff Court in the trial of an ex-Labour councillor, Yvonne Kucuk, for whom Burke worked as a personal assistant.[10] The case examined the embezzlement of £8690 from local charity the 'People's Development Trust' – in 2016 Burke was in possession of a bag with £2000 in cash, a mobile phone and some paperwork given by Kucuk and was asked to return it to the trust; she had handed the bag over to the then, trust manager Michael Kennedy, who proceeded to count the money in front of Burke.[11]