A quick guide to West Midlands mayoral candidate Richard Parker

Richard Parker is the Labour candidate for the West Midlands mayoral election. Here’s what you need to know about him.

While his father loaded and unloaded ships, Mr Parker's mother was a school secretary and he left school at 16. He joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1989 and managed their relationship with the Labour Party for five years before leaving to start up a firm working with small and medium-sized companies and social enterprises. Their work included around the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022. He says his later move into politics is the "most important thing I've done in my life".

Mr Parker says one of his main policies is to bring buses into public control and he has an ambition to set up a franchise system across the whole region.

Among his pledges for this election, he says he wants to revamp high streets across the West Midlands and return pride to towns. He wants to create 150,000 jobs, bring down crime and crack down on rogue landlords.

Mr Parker wants the West Midlands to be more competitive and he reckons that needs more money going into improving people's skills so they can get better-paid jobs and more apprenticeships.

Through his career in business, he says he has brought about £1bn into the region and wants to bring more if elected and to every corner of the West Midlands.

He believes the Black Country has been overlooked and thinks people want more markets in the area to bring more visitors in. His plans if elected include a markets taskforce for high streets.

Mr Parker aims to develop a very light railway as quickly as possible, if elected and says it will transform transport in the West Midlands and cut congestion on roads.