Andy Slaughter fights hard for the local community because he was born, educated, brought up and has worked in this area all of his life.

Andy was born in 1960 to a family long established in West London, He was educated in local schools and studied English at Exeter University before continuing his education at the College of Law.

Andy became a Barrister in 1993, and specialised in criminal, housing and personal injury law. He has represented a number of local authorities and housing associations, and specialised in fighting on behalf of tenants against landlords.

Elected to Hammersmith and Fulham Council in 1986, he became deputy leader in 1991 and leader in 1996. Andy pioneered improvements in local services, including:

• Championing the environment and doubling the Council's recycling efforts and quadrupling the number of cycle lanes in the borough
• Introducing the long-term focus on cleaning up local streets, Smarter Borough, and getting tough on litter louts, fly tipping and graffiti
• Leading the efforts to get the Council and the police to work very closely together on combating crime; pioneering a new form of community and neighbourhood policing in the area's parks, housing estates and on local streets
• Working with colleagues to bring more investment and jobs to the area, and ensuring businesses are supported not discouraged from setting up locally
• Andy's chief policy interests are international affairs, housing and education. He is a member of the Unite and GMB trade unions and the Co-Operative Party.

In his maiden speech on 23rd June 2005 he spoke of the racial diversity of his constituency with 50 major first languages, and its extremes of wealth and poverty. Andy is a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, Mark Malloch-Brown, and Digby Jones, who is a Minister of State at the both the Foreign Office and the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform.