He unsuccessfully contested Hastings at both the
February and
October 1974 general elections and again at the
1979 General Election, and on each occasion was defeated by the sitting
Conservative MP
Kenneth Warren. He won Hastings and Rye at the
1997 General Election when he became the second least expected Labour MP in the landslide. He defeated the new sitting Conservative MP
Jacqui Lait by 2,560 votes and remained the MP until 2010. He made his
maiden speech on 21 November 1997. In
parliament he was a member of the
social security select committee in 1998 until he became the
parliamentary private secretary to the
Attorney General Gareth Williams in 1999 and his successor
Peter Goldsmith until the
2005 General Election. From 2005 he served as a member of the
work and pensions and
standards and privileges select committees. In 2003, Foster has called for then-Home Secretary
David Blunkett to deport a convicted murderer who was freed after serving 12 months of his 36-year sentence. Foster later resigned as a PPS in 2003 over the Iraq War, which he regarded as being illegal without a mandate from the United Nations. He subsequently returned to Government. In 2009, Foster was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Equality in the
Government Equalities Office, responsible for the progress of the Government's Equalities Bill through the
House of Commons. Foster lost his seat at the
2010 as part of the national swing to the
Conservatives. ==Personal life==