About Claude Moraes

Claude Moraes MEP was re-elected to the European Parliament for London in 2009, where he also led the London Labour list. He  is Deputy Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, and is Socialist & Democrats Group Spokesperson for Civil Liberties, Justice & Home Affairs. He was Labour Spokesperson on Employment & Social Affairs, and is  a member of the Internal Market & Consumer Protection Committee. One of the first Asian origin MEPs elected to the European Parliament, he was previously Director of JCWI, the national immigration and refugee charity. Before that, he was a national officer at the TUC, a representative to the European TUC, House of Commons adviser to MPs John Reid and Paul Boateng, and a CRE Commissioner. With a law background, he has campaigned and written widely on human rights issues including co-authoring the 'Politics of Migration' (Blackwells).

Background

Claude Ajit Moraes was an immigrant to the UK from India. His family settled in Dundee in the 1970s and he  attended comprehensive schools there and studied Scots and English Law, Administrative Law and International Law at Dundee University, London University (Birkbeck College) and the London School of Economics.

Claude has worked in London since 1987, first for Dr John Reid MP and Paul Boateng MP in the House of Commons, and then as a national policy officer at the TUC's Congress House where he was also a representative to the European TUC working on social policy and employment issues. In 1992, he was appointed Director of JCWI, the UK's only national independent organisation working on immigration, refugee and EU free movement issues. Here he helped raise the profile of these sensitive issues and was involved in key High Court, Court of Appeals, and European cases. He was appointed a CRE Commissioner in 1998, and has maintained a strong involvement in the local and national voluntary and NGO sectors, and in the trade union movement. He was a member of the Liberty Council and a Trustee of Toynbee Hall in East London. In the European Parliament, he  chairs the All Party Groups on Anti-Racism & Diversity and on Ageing & Older People. He lives in Hackney, North East London.