Born into a Welsh-speaking family in December 1968, Sion Simon grew up in North Birmingham. He was educated at Handsworth Grammar School and Magdalen College, Oxford. Political from his earliest memory, he joined the Labour Party aged 16 in 1985.
After university Siôn worked for the then George Robertson MP (now Lord Robertson of Port Ellen) as his research assistant, before going on to become a senior manager at Guinness PLC. He then freelanced for a while before becoming a weekly columnist on the Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and News of the World as well as associate editor of The Spectator.
Siôn was elected to Parliament to represent the Birmingham Erdington seat during the 2001 election, and was re elected in 2005 with the biggest Labour majority in Birmingham.
In Parliament Siôn has sat on the Treasury Committee. He was also a Parliamentary Private Secretary between 2003 and 2005, chaired Labour’s manifesto group on law and order, the all party group on private equity and venture capital and the all party group on business services.
During his time as an MP, Siôn has worked to represent the people of Erdington both in Parliament and locally. He has led campaigns to secure the future of the Jaguar Plant, to ensure Erdington gets it fair share of lottery funding and to improve youth services. He has also dealt with thousands of cases on behalf of individual constituents and stakeholders such as schools, doctors, businesses, voluntary groups and so on.
In October 2008 Siôn was promoted to Minister for Further Education in the then Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and in the June 2009 reshuffle, Siôn was appointed Minister for Creative Industries, at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
