Peter Lamb was elected Labour MP for Crawley on 4 July 2024 with 17,453 votes (38.2 percent) and a majority of 5,235 (11.5 percent), in the town where he was born in 1986. He had stood here in 2019 and lost to Conservative Henry Smith by 8,360 votes; Smith has since defected to Reform UK, a measure of how far Crawley's politics has shifted.

Educated at the University of Southampton (BA and MSc), he worked as a senior consultant at The Campaign Company, advising local authorities, government, the NHS and charities, and ran London Labour's 2012 mayoral and GLA campaign in South West London. His real distinction is fourteen years of executive local government. First elected to Crawley Borough Council in 2010 aged 24, he became Leader of the Opposition in 2012 and led Labour to victory in 2014, becoming council leader at 27, the youngest Labour council leader in the country. He governed Crawley through a one seat majority in 2015, held control as a minority in 2020 after bereavements and defections, regained a majority in 2022, sat on West Sussex County Council, was a trustee of the multi billion pound West Sussex pension fund, delivered the town's first Climate Emergency Action Plan, and engaged on Gatwick and the Coast to Capital LEP, executive experience at a level few MPs can match.

The Chagos Islands issue is his most significant parliamentary intervention. Crawley has the UK's largest Chagossian diaspora community. When the government announced the transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, Lamb called the decision "very disappointing" and said Chagossians had been "let down again." In January 2025 he accused Foreign Secretary David Lammy of misleading Parliament over the extent of community engagement during the negotiations, a charge reported in The Independent and The Economist. He has voted in 489 divisions with five whipped rebellions, including on the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill. A Labour MP publicly accusing his own Foreign Secretary of misleading Parliament on behalf of a community in his constituency is not a footnote. He sits on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.

Lamb's strengths include being born in Crawley, 14 years as a councillor, youngest Labour council leader at 27, surviving one seat majority and minority council control, the Climate Emergency Action Plan, Gatwick and LEP engagement, pension fund trusteeship, University of Southampton education, PACAC placement, and the Chagos Islands advocacy giving him a specific parliamentary identity on a major foreign policy issue. His weaknesses include no ministerial office, an 11.5 percent majority in a seat where Reform UK took 18.5 percent and whose former Conservative MP defected to Reform, and no legislative achievement bearing his name beyond the Chagos pressure. At 38, he is one of the youngest MPs with executive local government experience. The Chagos work gives him something most first term MPs do not have: a specific, documented confrontation with a senior minister on behalf of a specific community. Whether that translates into a policy change or remains a principled protest will define his first term.