Pam Cox was elected Labour MP for Colchester on 4 July 2024 with 18,804 votes (42.0 percent) and a majority of 8,250 (18.4 percent), defeating Conservative Will Quince. She became the first woman to represent Colchester and the first Labour MP for the constituency since 1945, a gap of 79 years. She is a Cambridge educated historian with a PhD, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a BBC documentary presenter, and a published author on criminal justice history.

Born in Southend-on-Sea into a working class family, she read history at Robinson College, Cambridge, and took her Cambridge PhD in 1997 on girls, delinquency and industrial schools, a doctoral specialism in young women and criminal justice that directly informs her policy work on youth justice, vulnerable mothers and victims' rights. She became a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Essex and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and her BBC Two history documentaries, including Shopgirls and Servants, made her a familiar broadcaster. "I am not a career politician," she told the Commons in her maiden speech. "I have spent most of my life researching, teaching and leading in higher education." Before Parliament she advised the Victims Commissioner and developed services for vulnerable mothers, and her research into recurrent care proceedings informs her work on family courts and social care.

In Parliament she sits on the Justice Committee, a placement that maps directly onto her academic specialism in criminal justice, and on the Armed Forces Bill committees and other public bill committees.

Cox's strengths include Cambridge BA and PhD, FRSA, a BBC documentary career providing media fluency, 20 years of residence in the constituency, a PhD specialism in criminal justice and youth that directly informs her policy work, the Justice Committee seat, the Victims Commissioner advisory role, services for vulnerable mothers, and an 18.4 percent majority that is larger than many 2024 gains. Her weaknesses include no ministerial office, no legislative achievement traceable to her yet, and the structural challenge of holding a seat that had been Conservative for 79 years in anything other than a Labour favourable climate. She has the academic depth, the media experience, and the constituency security to build a parliamentary career of real substance on criminal justice, victims' rights, and social history. Whether that opportunity is used depends on whether the government recognises what it has on its backbenches.