John Francis Spellar, Baron Spellar, PC (born 5 August 1947), is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Warley, formerly Warley West, from 1992 to 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he previously represented Birmingham Northfield from 1982 to 1983. He served as a minister in various departments between 1997 and 2005, and as Comptroller of the Household in the Whips' Office between 2008 and 2010. After Labour entered opposition, he served as a shadow Foreign Office minister from 2010 to 2015.
At the 1997 general election, Spellar was elected as MP for the new Warley constituency (as Warley West had been abolished in a boundary review). In the new Labour government, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, being promoted to become Minister of State for the Armed Forces in 1999. In 2001, he was appointed to the Privy Council, as Minister of State for Transport in the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions[2] with rights to attend Cabinet. After the 2002 reshuffle, he became Minister of State at the Department for Transport, and moved to the Northern Ireland Office in 2003. He was banned from the offices of both the Mayor of Derry and the Mayor of Belfast during that year, because he supported the reinstatement to the British Army of convicted murderers Mark Wright and James Fisher of the Scots Guards.[4] He left the front benches in 2005, but in 2008, he rejoined the government as a whip (Comptroller of the Household) and served until Labour entered opposition in May 2010.[citation needed]
After standing down as an MP, Spellar was nominated for a life peerage in the 2024 Dissolution Honours.[10][11][12] He was created Baron Spellar, of Smethwick in the County of the West Midlands, on 12 August 2024.[13]