For Shama Tatler, now Baroness Shah, entering the House of Lords was never part of a carefully plotted political trajectory. Her’s is not the story of a carefully choreographed political ascent, but one shaped by public service, lived experience and a deep sense of responsibility to community.
A former teacher turned local government leader, Tatler has spent more than a decade working at the frontline of British politics, championing housing, education and social justice from council chambers to Westminster.
Appointed to the House of Lords as the first Jain peer and one of the youngest British Indian women in the Lords, Tatler enters Parliament’s upper chamber not as a political insider by design, but as a product of grassroots activism, professional expertise and a family journey shaped by migration and resilience.
“It felt completely surreal,” she recalls of her appointment. “Going into the Lords was never really part of my vision of what might come next.”
From frontline politics to Westminster influence
Tatler’s political career began in local government. First elected to Brent Council in 2014, she went on to serve for eight years as Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Planning, overseeing one of London’s most ambitious housing programmes. Alongside this, she built a reputation within the Labour Party at regional and national levels. After stepping down from the council in 2022, she became Head of the Labour Office at the Local Government Association, supporting around 6,000 Labour councillors across the country and working closely with ministers, MPs and council leaders from Westminster.
“It was during that period that I realised I was really enjoying the officer side of politics,” she says. “I could still help deliver the government’s agenda, but without the stress and volatility of elections.”
When the nomination came, it prompted a moment of reflection. Had she given up on the Commons? “In reality, I don’t think I had,” she says. “This felt like the right decision—for me and for the work I want to do.”
A family journey, decades in the making
For Tatler, the peerage is not a personal endpoint, but a reflection of a much longer family journey. “I don’t see this as the culmination of my own work,” she says. “It’s the culmination of my family’s story over the last 50 or 60 years.”
Her grandparents’ lives were shaped by migration, hardship and resilience. Her paternal grandmother raised five children largely alone in a rural village in Gujarat after her husband disappeared for nearly a decade. Her father arrived in the UK at 16 with no qualifications and went on to build a successful business. “We weren’t a middle-class family,” Tatler says. “That this could even be possible would have been unimaginable to them.”
On her mother’s side, the story was different but no less constrained. Raised in a Kenyan Indian, middle-class household, her mother was a gifted writer who loved English literature but was denied the chance to attend university. “She was an activist born a generation too early,” Tatler says. “She taught me independence, financial, emotional, intellectual, and made sure I grew up hearing stories of strong women from our scriptures.”
Those values, service, duty and social justice, shaped Tatler’s politics. A former secondary school teacher, she entered politics after the 2010 general election, alarmed by the direction of education policy. “I believed then, and still do, that you don’t give up on children and you don’t buy advantage in education or health.”
Her years in regeneration politics reinforced those beliefs. Housing became her central policy focus, which often placed her at odds with campaigners and even parts of her own party. “Housing is one of the biggest drivers of inequality,” she says. “If you don’t tackle that, everything else becomes harder.” Under her leadership, Brent became one of London’s leading housing-delivery boroughs, winning Planning Authority of the Year in 2019.
A minority within a minority
As a British Asian woman, and now the first Jain peer, Tatler is acutely aware of her position as a “minority within a minority” in the House of Lords. “I’ve almost always been the only woman, or the only Asian person, in the room,” she says. “You learn early on that people underestimate you. You can either let that diminish you or use it.”
She is clear that representation carries responsibility, but not in a narrow or performative sense. “If there’s a Diwali or Paryushana event, I’ll show up,” she says. “But I don’t want to be defined only by labels. I want to be known for substance—local government, regeneration, education policy.”
That emphasis on substance also shapes her view of British Asian political representation more broadly. “Turning up to festivals or hosting events at Downing Street isn’t enough,” she argues. “Engagement has to move beyond symbolism and towards policy.”
Tatler points to practical issues, dietary requirements in healthcare, planning rules for multigenerational living, as examples of where representation should translate into tangible outcomes. “The community isn’t homogeneous,” she says. “First-generation and second-generation experiences are different. A teacher’s priorities aren’t the same as an entrepreneur. If engagement becomes a tick-box exercise, we fail people.”
Now finding her feet in the House of Lords, Tatler is reflective but purposeful. “I’m here for the long term,” she says. “That gives me the space to think carefully about how I can contribute, and how I can help make it easier for the next generation to follow.”
