Tomlinson stood for Parliament without success in 1966 at
Bridlington and in 1970 at Walthamstow East. He was elected to the
House of Commons as Labour Member of Parliament for
Meriden in the
February 1974 general election, defeating the sitting
Conservative MP
Keith Speed. In the October 1974 General Election he retained the seat, defeating a new Conservative candidate, the former Chairman of the Highway Planning Committee in the London Borough of Hammersmith, and Chairman of the Hyde Park Tories (the Conservative Party's open air speakers) Christopher Horne. He lost his seat in the
1979 general election to the Conservative candidate,
Iain Mills. During his five years in the Commons, he held a series of government posts: •
Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to
Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1975–76); •
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1976–79); •
Parliamentary Secretary,
Ministry of Overseas Development (1977–79) After his defeat in 1979, he lectured at Solihull College of Technology. After unsuccessfully standing in the new constituency of North Warwickshire at the general election held in June 1983, in 1984, Tomlinson was elected as Labour Co-operative
Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the new
euro-constituency of Birmingham West. He was re-elected in the
1989 European election and in the
1994 election, but did not stand for re-election under the new list system in the
1999 election. Tomlinson . In the European Parliament, he was, notably, Deputy Leader of the
European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP), Chair of the cross-party intergroup on Sports policy and the Parliament's rapporteur on the EU budget for 1990. On 21 July 1998, he was created a
life peer as
Baron Tomlinson, of
Walsall in the
County of West Midlands. Tomlinson was latterly Chair of the Association of Independent Higher Education Providers.
Elections contested UK Parliament elections European Parliament elections ==Death==