Jen Craft (Credit: UK Parliament)

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In last year’s general election, Labour’s Jen Craft trumped Reform UK in Thurrock to become the MP for her home constituency. But this was not her first time keeping a right-wing party at bay.

After studying politics and history at university, Craft began interning for former Labour MP, now peer, Margaret Hodge in 2006. “Half of the House have worked for Margaret at some point – like some weird training college!” she says.

It was a fraught year for the then Barking MP Hodge. The British National Party (BNP) had just won 12 seats on Barking and Dagenham council – the party’s biggest success to date. “I and lots of people thought that if they had stood a full slate, they would have won the council,” Craft says.

Morgan has reached the lofty heights hasn’t he!

When the general election came round four years later, with then-BNP leader Nick Griffin standing in Barking, Craft told Margaret: “‘I don’t want to work for you on parliamentary stuff – I want to run your campaign. This feels like the thing to do to put a stop to the far right coming and trying to get a foothold.”

While Craft was battling against the BNP in Barking, Morgan McSweeney, now chief of staff to Keir Starmer, was doing the same in nearby Dagenham.

Does Craft remember working with McSweeney at all?

The MP laughs. “This is fun!” she says, as if this question has come up before.

“He was working with a company that was doing a lot of the work around – again, it was very similar to what we were doing – how do you re-engage? How do you start talking to people when they feel so aside from the whole political process?”

She adds: “So we did see him; he was around. But we were too.”

Ultimately ousting the BNP in Essex provided the pair with vital experience when later fighting the 2024 election.

“A lot of the stuff [Morgan] was doing was very similar to what we did there,” she says. “Because I’d spent four years doing it, to me it felt like: well of course this is what you should do; like second nature; this is how you talk to people. But for some people it felt like a different thing to get your head round.”

Now an MP, Craft has bumped into McSweeney while walking with fellow Essex MP Chris Vince around Green Park. She jokes about potentially getting in trouble with Starmer’s right-hand man: “He’s reached the lofty heights hasn’t he!”

But Craft, 39, is also making a name for herself in Westminster. Last month, she became the first MP in this Parliament to use sign language in a parliamentary debate, to which children from a sensory deaf unit in her constituency and an interpreter were invited.

“We thought about some parliamentary terms with the British Deaf Association, like, ‘will he give way?’ ‘Will she give way?’”

Dividing her fingers apart and pointing her other hand through the gap, she says: “They came up with this, which is basically like, ‘I’m interrupting you’. Quite a few of my colleagues used it.”

With only 43 per cent of local authorities offering British Sign Language (BSL) lessons for parents, Craft is now calling on the government to improve access.

“If you’re able to learn sign language and able to use it at home, you give your child the option to be part of that community,” she says.

“It’s a language, a culture – it’s all of that that’s involved,” she adds. “It’s very expressive. There are regional accents in BSL, and they can vary considerably. My mum didn’t pass her level two [BSL exam] because there was a difference in regional accent between her and the assessor.”

For Craft, improving access to sign language is a personal endeavour. When working in the civil service, she became pregnant with her daughter who has Down syndrome and hearing loss. Craft gave up work to become a full-time carer to her daughter, now seven years old.

As is often the case for parents of children with disabilities, Craft does not dwell on how difficult caring for a child with complex needs can be.

“It was really the hardest thing ever, but not because she has Down syndrome,” she stresses. “When you have a baby, everyone underestimates how utterly exhausting it is, especially for six months – you just don’t sleep.”

“I’ve learnt loads because of her disability that I wouldn’t have done otherwise,” she adds, explaining how she has learned to pull the strings of various services – from speech and language therapy, to home to school transport, to direct payments – ensuring they all work for her daughter.

“You’re the nexus that holds all of your child’s information,” she explains. “She sees lots of different specialists – she used to when she was younger – but you’re the only midpoint that knows all of these different things about her. Then when it comes to her entering education, it’s us that holds the ball that sees her entire self.”

Craft lives in Thurrock with her husband Ali, and her seven and three year-old daughters. But her election has proved a difficult adjustment for the family – particularly her daughter with Down syndrome, whose routine has completely changed.

“She was really struggling,” Craft says. “It’s been huge for both of them to realise that I’m not there all the time. That’s really difficult; it makes you feel really guilty.”

Craft, who has spoken elsewhere about her struggles with her mental health, is supported with her mental wellbeing by her husband, who now works part time to help care for her daughter.

Given her personal experience, how does Craft feel about cuts to disability allowance?

“I get the impetus behind it. I get why they need to do it: the staggering amount of the bill by 2030 if we don’t do anything is unsustainable,” she says, pointing to Labour’s plans to support those with disabilities into work as a “really good idea”.

“The only reason I’m here is because I’ve made my own pathway of care, and it wasn’t because of any support I had. I think that’s a real shame.”

But while her daughter is too young to be impacted by the disability cuts, Craft says changes whereby under-22s with disabilities will no longer be able to claim incapacity benefits need clarifying.

“If you’re claiming disability living allowance throughout childhood, when you become a teenager, your costs of wanting to be a bit more independent and get away from mum and dad are going to rise,” she explains. “I think there needs to be some thought given as to how that’s addressed.”

Will she be voting against the cuts?

“We want to see the final thing,” Craft says. “But it’s a discussion that a number of us are currently having with ministers to say: ‘How does this look? We need to be really clear about who’s going to be impacted and how’.”

Craft now sits on the Health and Social Care Committee and chairs the BSL All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), is vice-chair of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) APPG and is hoping to chair an APPG on learning disability.

“If you’re a SEND parent, there is such a nervousness and a justified nervousness around SEND policy and the way that people interact – it’s a really adversarial system,” she says.

“If I can do anything to make that easier and actually make it work, I’d be really pleased; I think I’d have spent my time here well.”