Marsha Singh - Telegraph Despite Bradford's sizeable Asian population, it had never had an Asian MP. But prior to the 1997 election Singh replaced the sitting left-winger Max Madden as Labour candidate for Bradford West. In the landslide that brought Tony Blair to power, he took the seat with a majority of 3,187 - which by 2010 he had increased to 5,763. He had a walk-on part in the parliamentary expenses scandal in 2009. The arbiter, Sir Thomas Legg, ordered him to repay more than £5,000 in overcharged mortgage interest payments; Singh good-naturedly declared himself "happy to pay, as none of my claims were nefarious." His partnership with Woolas came to an abrupt end at the 2010 election. While Singh was comfortably re-elected, Woolas scraped home after a spectacularly dirty campaign - only to have his election voided because of scurrilous statements he had made about his Liberal Democrat opponent. Singh fought hard for his constituents and their interests as the Coalition's cuts began to bite. But in mid-2011 he became seriously ill and had to undergo major surgery, from which he did not make the recovery he had hoped for. This March he applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, saying that the people of Bradford needed someone who could stand up for them against David Cameron. Labour went for a snap by-election to fill the vacancy, but in a whirlwind campaign Respect's veteran gadfly George Galloway (formerly a Labour left-winger) rallied local Muslims to capture the seat by an astonishing 10,140 votes. Marsha Singh married Sital Kaur in 1971; she died in 2001. In 2006 he married, secondly, Kildip Mann. He is survived by a son and a daughter from his first marriage, a stepson and a stepdaughter. Marsha Singh, born October 11 1954, died July 17 2012