Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (née Singh, 3 August 1966)^[1] is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport since 2023.^[2] A member of the Labour Party, she was previously Shadow Secretary of State for Housing from 2020 to 2021 and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons from 2021 to 2023. She was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol West at the 2015 general election, when she defeated the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams.^[3]

She was appointed shadow Arts and Culture Minister in January 2016, but resigned on 27 June 2016 owing to her lack of confidence in the Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn.^[4] She rejoined his frontbench team as a whip in October that year,^[5] before being made Shadow Brexit Minister in January 2020.^[6]

Debbonaire was born in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, on 3 August 1966 to a father of Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil family origin and an English mother.^[1][7] She was educated at two private schools, Bradford Girls' Grammar School and Chetham's School of Music.^[8][9] She then took the first stage of a mathematics degree at the University of Oxford, leaving before graduating, while at the same time training as a cellist at the Royal College of Music.^[10][11] She went to St John's City College of Technology, Manchester. Subsequently, she gained an MSc in Management, Development and Social Responsibility at the University of Bristol.^[1][12][13]

In her twenties, she changed her name by deed poll from Singh to Debbonaire, borrowed from a relative from her first marriage.^[13]

Before becoming an MP, she performed professionally as a classical cellist, including for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.^[1][12][14] She has worked as National Children's Officer for the Women's Aid Federation of England, for which she moved to St Werburghs in Bristol in 1991,^[12][15] and later as an Accreditation Officer, Fundraising Manager, then National Research Manager for Respect, an anti-domestic violence organisation.^[1][14][16]

She has co-authored two books, and a number of papers, about domestic violence.^[17] In 2004, Debbonaire and her husband, Kevin Walton, co-authored (along with Emilie Debbonaire) a report for Ireland's Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform entitled Evaluation of work with domestic abusers in Ireland.^[18][19][20]

At the 2015 general election, Debbonaire was selected as a Labour candidate via an all-women shortlist for the constituency of Bristol West.^[21] She was elected with a majority of 5,673 votes, defeating incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams, who finished in third place after the Green Party.^[3]

Shortly after being elected, Debbonaire was diagnosed with breast cancer,^[22][23] and did not attend a parliamentary vote from June 2015 until March 2016.^[24] She subsequently called on Parliament to allow MPs to vote remotely after she was unable to participate in votes during her recovery.^[25]

During her treatment period she was appointed as Shadow Arts and Culture Minister by Jeremy Corbyn. According to Debbonaire, she found out about the role when a journalist contacted her in hospital in response to a Labour press release announcing that she was taking it on, and was then briefly removed from the position before she got a chance to meet with Corbyn.^[26][27][28] According to Debbonaire's colleague Chi Onwurah, whose frontbench portfolio was briefly split with hers, Corbyn's communication with both women, directly or indirectly, was practically non-existent.^[29]

Debbonaire resigned from her role on 27 June 2016 following a series of other resignations, saying that she did not believe Corbyn was the right person to lead the Labour Party into the next election.^[30] She also opposed Corbyn's call for Article 50 to be triggered on the day immediately following the referendum on the European Union.^[28] Debbonaire's resignation attracted criticism in her Constituency Labour Party (CLP), with some concerned members accusing her of being a liar, a "traitor", and a "scab".^[31] Debbonaire endorsed Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership election.^[32][33] After Corbyn defeated Smith, on 12 October 2016, Debbonaire accepted an appointment as a shadow whip in Corbyn's frontbench team.^[34]

Debbonaire was reelected in the 2017 general election with an increased majority of 37,336 votes;^[35] this was the fourth-largest majority by vote size nationally.^[36] Bristol West had been the number one target for the Green Party,^[37][35][38] which slipped to third place behind the Conservatives with a 12.9% vote share.^[35] Debbonaire had resisted calls from the Green Party for her to stand aside as part of a progressive alliance.^[38] The size of Debbonaire's majority was considered a shock, as the seat had been billed as a four-way marginal.^[39][40]

On 15 September 2017, Debbonaire held what is thought to be the UK's first constituency surgery specifically for people on the autism spectrum.^[41][42] In the same month, she urged local constituency members discontented about her resignation to stop planning her deselection, which she claimed was "a catastrophic waste of time".^[32]

On 9 May 2021, Debbonaire was moved from the post of Shadow Secretary of State for Housing to Shadow Leader of the House of Commons in a shadow cabinet reshuffle.^[43]

In January 2022, Debbonaire was reselected to stand again as a candidate in the next General Election in a new Bristol Central constituency, the successor constituency to Bristol West created from the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies.^[44] On 4 September 2023 she was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Social, Media & Sport by Keir Starmer despite admitting she had never been to a football or rugby match before.^[45]

Debbonaire is married to Kevin Walton, an opera singer, former actor and a director of Ark Stichting, an Amsterdam charity that works with children with special educational needs.^[18][77]

Since her breast cancer treatment, during which time she read about the links between cancer and alcohol, Debbonaire drinks very little alcohol,^[78] is vegan and spent a month in 2017 attempting to live without single-use plastics.^[79]

Debbonaire cites music, knitting and observing space as her hobbies.^[80] During her treatment for breast cancer, she credited listening to classical music with helping her recovery.^[18]

Books

• Mullender, Audrey; Thangam Debbonaire (2000). Child Protection and Domestic Violence. Birmingham: Venture Press. ISBN 9781861780423.

Chapters in books

• Debbonaire, Thangam (1994), "Children in refuges", in Mullender, Audrey; Morley, Rebecca (eds.), Children living with domestic violence: putting men's abuse of women on the child care agenda, London Concord, Massachusetts: Whiting & Birch, ISBN 9781871177725.

Journal articles

• Mullender, Audrey; Thangam Debbonaire; Liz Kelly; Gill Hague; Ellen Malos (May 1998). "Working with children in women's refuges". Child & Family Social Work. 3 (2): 87–98. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2206.1998.00074.x.

Papers

• Debbonaire, Thangam; Debbonaire, Emilie; Walton, Kevin (2004). Evaluation of work with domestic abusers in Ireland. Dublin: Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. OCLC 65202770.
• Debbonaire, Thangam (2008). Respect position statement (with research review) on gender and domestic violence. London: Respect.
• Debbonaire, Thangam (2015). Responding to diverse ethnic communities in domestic violence perpetrator programmes (PDF). London: Respect.