Stephen Timms

Timms, MP for East Ham since 1994, was stabbed twice in the stomach by a radicalised constituent at his advice surgery in May 2010. He returned to work within weeks and kept holding open surgeries, a decision widely praised as a defence of MPs' accessibility. His constituency has one of the largest immigration caseloads in the country, and his long chairmanship of the Work and Pensions Committee drew directly on the benefits cases he saw locally.