Hopkins was the
Labour candidate for
Luton North at the
1983 general election; he finished in second place, 11,981 votes behind the sitting
Conservative MP
John Carlisle. Hopkins contested the seat again fourteen years later, at the
1997 general election, successfully gaining it from the Conservatives, with a majority of 9,626 votes and 54.6% of the votes cast. He made his
maiden speech in the House of Commons on 28 November 1997. In the
House of Commons, he was a member of the Broadcasting
Select committee from 1999 to 2001, and has served on the
Public Administration Select Committee since 2002. He also served as an adviser to
Richard Caborn on
yachting when Caborn was Minister of Sport. Hopkins is a member of many all-party groups. He served as the chairman of the group on further education and
lifelong learning, and as the vice-chairman of the groups on
jazz appreciation;
historic vehicles;
Norway; constitution and citizenship; transport infrastructure and trans-European networks. He also served as the treasurer of the group on
building societies and financial mutuals. Hopkins was on the left wing of the Labour Party, being a member of the
Socialist Campaign Group and is a
Eurosceptic. He was known for his rebellious stance amongst Labour MPs, and has been described as a "rebellion prone left-wing economist" by
Andrew Roth in
The Guardian. In the fiscal year of 2007–08, Hopkins' total expenses claims amounted to £121,809, of which his second home allowance was £1,242. He also emerged well from the 2009
MPs expenses scandal, being deemed a "saint" by
The Daily Telegraph for his minimal second home claims. In June 2010, he was selected as a Labour member of the
Transport Select Committee. Before the 2016 referendum on British membership of the EU, Hopkins signed the
People's Pledge, a cross-party campaign for such a referendum, and became a member of its Advisory Council. He was one of sixteen signatories of an open letter to the-then Labour leader
Ed Miliband in January 2015, which called on the party to commit to oppose further austerity, take rail franchises back into public ownership and strengthen collective bargaining arrangements. He is a supporter of
homeopathy, having signed an Early Day Motion in support of its continued funding by the
National Health Service. Hopkins was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate
Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the
Labour leadership election of 2015. In 2016, he was one of the chief Labour figures to support the "Leave" campaign in the UK Referendum on EU membership. After turning down the offer of a frontbench position when
Jeremy Corbyn became leader, Hopkins was "called up" to serve in the Shadow Cabinet following a spate of resignations at the end of June 2016. He was able to return to the backbenches following Corbyn's re-election as party leader and the formation of a new Shadow Cabinet in October. Hopkins did not stand for re-election in the
2019 general election. According to
The Daily Telegraph, Hopkins had allegedly
sexually harassed and behaved inappropriately towards a Labour Party activist, Ava Etemadzadeh, now aged 27. The claims were originally brought to the attention of
Rosie Winterton in 2015 when she was
Labour's Chief Whip. Hopkins has "absolutely and categorically" rejected the accusation of sexual impropriety. Just over a week later on 10 November, the Labour MP
Kerry McCarthy said that Hopkins had been paying her unwanted attention, via written notes, since 1994 when both were chairs of adjacent Constituency Labour Parties in Luton. Allegedly the attention resumed when McCarthy became an MP in 2005 and continued until early 2016. The notes were shown to the Labour whips and have been reproduced in
The Guardian. While Hopkins had not been physically abusive towards McCarthy, she told the newspaper's political editor
Heather Stewart that "I was really, really wary of him". Four months later, Etemadzadeh said she was "totally disillusioned" with Labour as she still did not know when her case would be heard. In January 2021, Hopkins resigned from the Labour Party. ==Personal life==