Joan Ryan (politician)

The Right Honourable Joan Ryan
Official portrait, 2017
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nationality, Citizenship and Immigration
In office 5 May 2006 – 29 June 2007
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Andy Burnham
Succeeded by	Meg Hillier
Lord Commissioner of the Treasury
In office 13 June 2003 – 5 May 2006
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Jim Fitzpatrick
Succeeded by	Kevin Brennan
Member of Parliament for Enfield North
In office 7 May 2015 – 6 November 2019
Preceded by	Nick de Bois
Succeeded by	Feryal Clark
In office 1 May 1997 – 12 April 2010
Preceded by	Tim Eggar
Succeeded by	Nick de Bois
Personal details
Born	Joan Marie Ryan (1955-09-08) 8 September 1955 (age 68) Warrington, Lancashire, England
Political party	Independent (since 2019)
Other political affiliations	Change UK (2019) Labour (until 2019)
Spouse	Martin Hegarty
Alma mater	City of Liverpool College of Higher Education Polytechnic of the South Bank
Other offices March–June 2019: Change UK Business Manager March–June 2019: Change UK Spokesperson for International Development

Joan Marie Ryan (born 8 September 1955) is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Enfield North from 1997 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2019. She was first elected as a Labour Party MP but later defected to join Change UK.

Ryan studied sociology and worked as a teacher, before becoming a Labour councillor on Barnet London Borough Council in 1990, serving as deputy leader of the council from 1994 to 1998. She was a government whip under Tony Blair from 2002 to 2006, a junior Home Office minister responsible for ID cards from 2006 to 2007, and the Prime Minister's Special Representative to Cyprus from 2007 to 2008, when she was sacked. She lost her seat in the 2010 general election after an expenses scandal and was deputy campaign director of NOtoAV in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum.

Ryan was re-elected in Enfield North in the 2015 general election and became chair of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). She was highly critical of party leader Jeremy Corbyn and lost a motion of no confidence put forward by her constituency party in 2018. She left Labour to join The Independent Group, later Change UK, in February 2019. In September, she announced she would stand down at the next general election and was subsequently succeeded by Labour's Feryal Clark.