Ex-maths teacher sums up 100 days in Parliament

In 2008 sixth former Mark Sewards hosted a class debate focusing on issues in the area he and his fellow pupils lived in.

Fast forward to 2024 and the 34-year-old is still occupied by many of the same issues, only now as an MP.

After 100 days in his new job, the BBC caught up with the former maths teacher to find out how things are going.

In a spacious but rather spartan office a brisk six-minute walk from the House Of Commons, Labour MP Mark Sewards has just returned from a briefing with the Commons Speaker in the Palace of Westminster.

Elected to represent the Leeds South West and Morley constituency with an 8,000 vote majority in July, Sewards explains Sir Lindsay Hoyle was offering advice on how to make contributions from the crowded green benches.

“He’s told us you’ve got to make sure you’re bobbing," he tells me.

“Bobbing is where you stand up and down, when someone else sits down you make sure you stand up," he says.

"Even if it’s for three-and-a-half hours, you bob, and you repeat that process until you get called.”

Curious quirks, like bobbing, may have come as a surprise to some parliamentary newcomers, but Sewards has been paying close attention to Westminster politics since his teenage years.

And it is a good job he has.

During his brief time in office since ousting Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns, he has received more than 6,000 pieces of case work in just over three months - the equivalent of more than 60 messages a day.

“I’ve tried my best to sit at my desk and answer all the requests that come through on my laptop, but it’s not possible for one person to do that," he says.

"Thankfully I’ve got some outstanding members of staff to help me with the workload."

Up until February, Sewards was head of maths at Cockburn School in Leeds, but resigned after being selected to contest the election.

His new parliamentary office would not look out of place in a school, with lists and charts pinned to the walls.

Despite a long-running ambition to work in Westminster, Sewards had only visited once before and admits to being surprised by how dilapidated Parliament feels.

“It’s pretty decrepit in places and in dire need of maintenance," he says.

"I was taken aback by that.”

He goes on to describe an electric wire that MPs and staff have been warned about.

“There is a plug in a wall that nobody can unplug because nobody knows what it’s powering, and nobody dares unplug it," he says.

"The area around it has been plastered over so many times that nobody wants to touch it.

"Imagine that, multiply it by one thousand, and think about what needs to be done on the [Parliamentary] estate.”

Cost estimates for a full refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster are more than £20bn, with successive governments ducking the opportunity to carry out the work.

When asked if the new Labour government will make refurbishment a priority, Sewards already has the well-practiced answer of a politician.

“Let Labour get the public services sorted out and then, at that point, let’s look at Parliament and see what we can do about it,” he says.

For the time being, constituency work is his priority.

“The reason I became a maths teacher is that I knew that I could help a few hundred students a year achieve their full potential in maths," he says.

"The reason why I kept standing to be an MP is because I knew you could have influence and help 70,000 people in my constituency."

Prior to his 2024 election win, Sewards had contested the Harrogate and Knaresborough seat in 2015 and 2019, finishing third on both occasions but unbowed by the experience.

And he will need to maintain that resilience if he wants to maintain a political hold on his hometown, where his predecessor, Jenkyns, pulled off her own coup in 2015 to oust Ed Balls.

It was one of the most notable results of the Conservatives' surprise General Election victory and the first time since 1935 that Morley had had a Tory MP.

As a young Labour member, Sewards was part of Balls' constituency team when the party lost the seat.

While it triggered the end of Balls' time in Parliament it stoked a fire under Sewards' fledgling political career.

He went on to become a Labour councillor in Leeds, representing the city's Farnley and Wortley ward from 2022, before being selected as the party's Parliamentary candidate for the newly created Leeds South West and Morley constituency last year.

And, after all the votes were counted and the sums were done, it was the maths teacher who came out top of the class.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.