McAvoy was elected to Parliament in 1987 as the
Scottish Labour and Co-operative Member for
Glasgow Rutherglen. Along with
Robert Brown of the
Scottish Liberal Democrats, he successfully campaigned for his hometown (an independent
royal burgh from the 1100s to the 1970s) to be removed from
the district of Glasgow and allocated to
South Lanarkshire ahead of local authority re-organisation in
1994, via a local referendum. On 20 February 2010, McAvoy announced that he would stand down at the
next general election. The seat was retained by Labour with the election of
Tom Greatrex. On 22 June 2010, McAvoy was created a
life peer as
Baron McAvoy, of Rutherglen in Lanarkshire, and was
introduced in the
House of Lords that day. McAvoy remains to this day the longest serving Government Whip in the history of parliament with 13 years and 10 days service in the Government Whips Office. According to
The Guardian: "...[his] personal crusades have been for peace in Northern Ireland and against abortion" (
Andrew Roth,
The Guardian). After his introduction to the Lords, he served as a senior whip. In 2012, he took on the role of Opposition Spokesman for Scotland and Northern Ireland. In May 2015, after the election of
Angela Smith as
Leader of the Opposition in the Lords, he took over as Opposition Deputy Chief Whip in
House of Lords, serving with
Denis Tunnicliffe. On 24 January 2018, he was elected Labour Chief Whip in the House of Lords and therefore Opposition Chief Whip, taking over from
Steve Bassam. McAvoy was appointed
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the
2022 New Year Honours for political and public service. ==Personal life==