Dhanda became a
Labour Party organiser in
West London,
Hampshire and
Wiltshire in 1996, then went on to be an assistant national organiser with
Connect in 1998 where he remained until he was elected to
Westminster. He was elected as a councillor in the
London Borough of Hillingdon in 1998 and served on the council until 2002. As a member of Labour's list for the
1999 European Parliament election, he became the country's youngest European Parliamentary candidate, aged 27. He was selected to contest the
House of Commons constituency of
Gloucester at the
2001 general election - the seat Labour required for a parliamentary majority of 1 - following the decision of
Tess Kingham to stand down. He made his
maiden speech in the Commons on 27 June 2001, in which he made reference to the local newspaper's article stating (upon his selection by the Labour Party) that "the people of Gloucester had not reached a sufficiently advanced state of consciousness to accept a 'foreigner' as the local MP". In parliament, Dhanda became a member of the
Science and
Technology Select committee from his election until 2003. He helped set up an all-party group on
Telecommunications, of which he was Secretary. In December 2004, he was appointed
Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Schools
Stephen Twigg. In November 2003, Dhanda was asked by the Prime Minister
Tony Blair to second the Loyal Address to the Monarch from the Houses of Commons. Dhanda retained his seat in
2005 with an increased majority of 4,280 votes. Following the election, Dhanda was appointed to the post of
Assistant Government Whip. In May 2006, he was appointed
Parliamentary under-secretary of state for Children, Young People and Families in the
Department for Education and Skills. In this post, he implemented the Green Paper 'Care Matters', introducing radical new measures of support for 30,000 children in the care system. On 28 June 2007, he became
Parliamentary under-secretary of state for
Communities and Local Government He was replaced by
Sadiq Khan on 6 Oct 2008. In 2009, he fought a
campaign to be Speaker of the House of Commons, obtaining 4.4% of the votes in the first ballot. At the speaker's conference in October 2009, Dhanda criticised the way that all 23 of
Gordon Brown's cabinet were White, whereas
Tony Blair's last cabinet had two "ethnic minority" cabinet ministers. Brown pointed out that he had a Black Attorney General (
Baroness Scotland) and an Asian Minister of State for Transport (
Sadiq Khan) who sat around the Cabinet table (though only when their ministerial responsibilities are on the agenda). ==Post-parliamentary career==