page_title: John Prescott
section_title: Life after government
hierarchical_section_title: John Prescott / Life after government
caption_attribution_description: English: Dennis Skinner and John Prescott at the 2016 Labour Party Conference.
context_page_description: John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott is a British Labour Party politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. He was Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull East from 1970 to 2010.
  Born in Prestatyn, Wales, in his youth Prescott failed the eleven-plus entrance exam for grammar school and worked as a ship's steward and trade union activist. He went on to graduate from Ruskin College and the University of Hull. In the 1994 Labour Party leadership election, he stood for both Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, winning election to the latter office. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister after Labour's victory in the 1997 election, with an expanded brief as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions until 2001 then subsequently First Secretary of State until 2007. In June 2007, he resigned as Deputy Prime Minister, coinciding with Tony Blair's resignation as Prime Minister. Following an election within the Labour party, he was replaced as deputy leader by Harriet Harman.
  Prescott retired as an MP at the 2010 general election.
context_section_description: Following his resignation, it was announced that he would take over from Tony Lloyd as the lead UK Representative in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In a jocular response to the appointment, Shadow Europe Minister Mark Francois wished the translators good luck. The post is unpaid but has an expenses allowance and allows him to sit on the Assembly of the Western European Union. He has used his role on the council to make his campaign against slave labour a key issue.
  On 27 August 2007, Prescott stated that he would stand down as an MP at the next general election. His autobiography, Prezza, My Story: Pulling no Punches was published on 29 May 2008 and ghostwritten by Hunter Davies. During the 2010 general election campaign, Prescott toured the UK in a customised white transit van dubbed his "Battlebus" canvassing support for the Labour Party. Prescott was publicly very supportive of Gordon Brown, and has called him a "global giant".
  
  It was announced on 28 May 2010 that Prescott was to be awarded a life peerage, The peerage was gazetted on 15 June in the 2010 Dissolution Honours. Prescott has stated in interviews that he is not religious. He chose to make a non-religious solemn affirmation rather than swearing an oath during his introduction in the House of Lords. He was introduced into the House on 8 July as Baron Prescott, of Kingston upon Hull in the County of East Yorkshire, and the Letters Patent were gazetted on 12 July, dated 7 July. Prescott is a director of Super League rugby league club Hull Kingston Rovers, who are based in his former constituency of Kingston upon Hull East.
  On 30 July 2010, Prescott appeared before the panel at the Chilcot Inquiry concerning the Iraq War. Prescott stated that he was doubtful about the legality, intelligence and information about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. The inquiry was launched by Gordon Brown in the summer of 2009 shortly after operations in the war ended. In 2016, after publication of the resultant Chilcot Report, which was critical of the war but remained neutral on its legality, Prescott declared that the invasion by UK and US forces had been "illegal" and that members of Tony Blair's Cabinet "were given too little paper documentation to make decisions".
  In February 2012 Prescott announced he would stand for Labour's nomination in the election to be the first Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside Police. In June he was selected as the Labour candidate for the election in November 2012. In the November election Prescott won the most first preference votes but ended up losing to Conservative Matthew Grove in the second count.
  In March 2013, Prescott suggested that the Queen, Elizabeth II, should abdicate due to her health. Prescott was criticised for his position by several MPs.
  On 6 July 2013, Prescott revealed in a newspaper column that he had resigned from the Privy Council in protest against the delays to the introduction of press regulation. The resignation only became effective on 6 November the same year. The Coalition Government had insisted that the Privy Council must consider a cross-party Royal Charter to underpin a new system of regulation, but that this meant that a final decision would not be taken before 2015.
  On 21 February 2015, it was announced Prescott would return to politics as an adviser to Labour leader Ed Miliband.
  In October 2015, Prescott was presented with the Shechtman International Leadership Award at the Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit 2015 in Antalya, Turkey, for his contributions to sustainable development in politics.
caption: Dennis Skinner and Prescott at the 2016 Labour Party Conference
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