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William Wilberforce
Born
Wilberforce never held office. He introduced abolition motions and bills almost every year from 1791, lost repeatedly, and worked with the Clapham Sect and campaigners such as Thomas Clarkson on petitions, boycotts and evidence. The breakthrough in 1806 was procedural cunning: a Foreign Slave Trade Act, framed as a wartime measure, cut off much of the trade before the full Slave Trade Act passed in 1807. He lived just long enough to hear that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 would pass.
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Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
As Lord Ashley, a Tory backbencher, the future Earl of Shaftesbury led the parliamentary campaign for factory reform after Michael Sadler lost his seat. His pressure produced the Mines Act of 1842, which banned women and children under ten from working underground, after a commission whose illustrated report shocked the public. He also pushed the Ten Hours Act of 1847, though it was finally carried by another MP while he was out of the Commons. His method was commissions of inquiry, evidence and sheer persistence.
More about Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury3
Samuel Plimsoll
Born
The Liberal MP for Derby campaigned against 'coffin ships', overloaded and over-insured vessels that owners sent to sea expecting them to sink. When Disraeli's government dropped a shipping bill in 1875, Plimsoll shook his fist at the Speaker and called shipowners villains, was suspended, and the public outcry forced the government to act. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1876 made a load line compulsory on British ships. The Plimsoll line is still painted on hulls worldwide.
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Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor
Born
The first woman to take her seat in the Commons, Astor used the private members' route to pass the Intoxicating Liquor (Sale to Persons under Eighteen) Act of 1923, the law that set 18 as the age for buying alcohol in pubs. It was the first private member's bill introduced by a woman to become law. Her wider record, including later sympathy for appeasement and antisemitic remarks, is rightly criticised, but the legislative achievement stands on its own terms.
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A. P. Herbert
Born
A Punch humorist elected as independent MP for Oxford University, Herbert had satirised divorce law in his novel Holy Deadlock before arriving in the Commons in 1935. His Matrimonial Causes Act of 1937 added desertion, cruelty and incurable insanity as grounds for divorce, where adultery had been the only one. He steered it through with careful compromises, including a bar on divorce in the first three years of marriage, to win over church opinion.
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Eleanor Rathbone
Born
An independent MP for the Combined English Universities, Rathbone had argued for payments to mothers since the First World War. When the coalition's Family Allowances Bill of 1945 proposed paying the allowance to fathers, she threatened to vote against her own lifelong cause, organised cross-party pressure and won a free vote that put the money in mothers' hands. Child benefit is still paid to the main carer, usually the mother, because of that intervention.
More about Eleanor Rathbone7
Sydney Silverman
Born
Silverman, the Labour MP for Nelson and Colne, campaigned against capital punishment for twenty years. A Commons vote on his amendment to suspend hanging passed in 1948 but was overturned by the Lords, and his 1956 bill passed the Commons before the Lords blocked it again. After the 1964 election he introduced the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill, given government time but a free vote, and it became law in 1965. Parliament confirmed the abolition in 1969.
More about Sydney Silverman8
Leo Abse
Born
Abse, the flamboyant Labour MP for Pontypool, introduced the bill that became the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, decriminalising sex between men over 21 in private in England and Wales, a decade after the Wolfenden Report recommended it. Lord Arran ran the companion campaign in the Lords, and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins found government time. Abse accepted narrow terms and exclusions for the armed forces and merchant navy to get it through. He also later carried divorce reform and children's legislation.
More about Leo Abse9
David Steel
Born
Steel was a 28-year-old Liberal MP when he came third in the 1966 private members' ballot and chose abortion law reform, drafted with the Abortion Law Reform Association. The Abortion Act of 1967 allowed termination with the agreement of two doctors on set grounds, and the government gave the bill extra time to complete its stages. It still governs abortion in England, Wales and Scotland, now alongside the 2026 change that removed women from the criminal law on their own pregnancies.
More about David Steel10
Alf Morris
Born
Top of the 1969 ballot, Morris, a Labour MP in Manchester, turned his place into the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act of 1970, the first law in the world to give disabled people specific rights to services and access. It required councils to identify disabled residents and provide help at home, and new public buildings to be accessible. It passed in the final hours before Parliament dissolved for the 1970 election. He became the world's first minister for disabled people four years later.
More about Alf Morris11
Ann Clwyd
Born
Female genital mutilation had been banned since 1985, but families could evade the law by taking girls abroad for the procedure. Clwyd, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley, took up the issue through a private member's bill that became the Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2003, making it an offence for UK nationals or residents to carry out or arrange FGM overseas and raising the maximum sentence to fourteen years. She had government support, which was crucial for a bill with a small slot.
More about Ann Clwyd12
David Amess
Born
Amess, the Conservative MP for Southend, was one of the most persistent users of the private members' route, with several bills becoming law. The Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act of 2000 committed government to a strategy to end fuel poverty, and the Protection Against Cruel Tethering Act 1988 outlawed tethering horses and donkeys in distress. He was murdered at a constituency surgery in 2021, and colleagues across the House cited his use of backbench procedure as his lasting parliamentary legacy.
More about David Amess13
Bob Blackman
Born
The Conservative MP for Harrow East used his 2016 ballot slot for the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which placed new duties on English councils to prevent homelessness for anyone at risk within 56 days and to help all eligible homeless applicants, not only those in priority need. The bill was developed with the charity Crisis and a cross-party committee, and won government backing and funding. It is one of the more substantial private members' acts of recent decades, though councils say the funding has not kept pace.
More about Bob Blackman14
Tim Loughton
Born
After the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that limiting civil partnerships to same-sex couples was discriminatory, Loughton's private member's bill became the vehicle for the fix. The Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019 gave the government power to extend civil partnerships to mixed-sex couples, and also added mothers' names to marriage certificates and required a review of the law on pregnancy loss before 24 weeks. Combining several modest reforms in one bill is a classic backbench technique.
More about Tim Loughton15
Dominic Grieve
Born
A former Attorney General back on the Conservative benches, Grieve led the 2017 rebellion that wrote a 'meaningful vote' on the final Brexit deal into the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, defeating the government by four votes. In 2019 he used motions to require the government to publish its contingency plans and to set out next steps after defeats, stretching Commons procedure to give backbenchers control. Supporters saw constitutional scrutiny; critics, including many in his party, saw obstruction. He lost the whip and then his seat.
More about Dominic Grieve16
Hilary Benn
Born
In September 2019, as a Labour backbencher and chair of the Brexit select committee, Benn introduced the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act, known as the Benn Act, after MPs took control of the Commons order paper. It required the prime minister to seek an extension to Brexit if no deal had been approved by 19 October, and passed through all stages in days. The Johnson government complied, under protest. It remains the starkest example of backbenchers legislating against a government's stated policy. He later served as Northern Ireland Secretary.
More about Hilary Benn17
Stella Creasy
Born
With the Northern Ireland Assembly suspended in 2019, Creasy tabled an amendment to the routine Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill requiring abortion to be decriminalised there unless Stormont was restored by October. It passed by 332 votes to 99, and Northern Ireland's near-total ban ended that autumn. It was a technique of attaching a social reform to an unrelated bill the government needed. Implementation remained patchy for years, and Westminster later directed the commissioning of services.
More about Stella Creasy18
Conor McGinn
Born
Alongside Creasy's abortion amendment, McGinn, a Labour MP born in County Armagh, amended the same 2019 Northern Ireland bill to require same-sex marriage to be introduced if Stormont did not return, passing by 383 votes to 73. The first same-sex weddings in Northern Ireland took place in February 2020. It brought the region into line with the rest of the UK after the Assembly's own votes had been blocked by petitions of concern, and showed how a backbencher could use a must-pass bill.
More about Conor McGinn19
Tonia Antoniazzi
Born
Antoniazzi, the Labour MP for Gower, tabled a new clause to the government's Crime and Policing Bill in 2025 removing women from the criminal law on abortion in relation to their own pregnancies in England and Wales, after several prosecutions of women who had ended pregnancies late. MPs backed it by 379 votes to 137 on a free vote, the Lords rejected an attempt to strip it in March 2026, and it became law when the act received royal assent in April 2026. The 1967 Act's framework for doctors is unchanged.
More about Tonia Antoniazzi
