2022 Wakefield by-election
23 June 2022
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Wakefield constituency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 69,601 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 39.1% (25.0 pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A by-election for the United Kingdom parliamentary constituency of Wakefield was held on 23 June 2022, triggered by the resignation of incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) Imran Ahmad Khan following a criminal conviction for child sexual assault. It was won by Simon Lightwood of the Labour Party, and was the first by-election gain made by Labour since 2012.
Khan was elected as a Conservative Party candidate at the 2019 general election. He lost the whip in June 2021 after being charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008, and sat as an independent thereafter. He was convicted in April 2022, and resigned his seat. Khan was subsequently jailed for 18 months.
It was held on the same day as the 2022 Tiverton and Honiton by-election, which the Conservatives lost to the Liberal Democrats. This marked the first time since the 1991 Kincardine and Deeside and Langbaurgh by-elections that the UK government had lost two seats at two by-elections held on the same day.