Smith was the Member of Parliament for Oxford East, which he won in 1987 from the Conservative Party. After Labour's victory in the 1997 general election he was made a minister in the Department for Education and Employment. He was Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 1999 to 2002, when he became Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; he resigned from this post on 6 September 2004, to spend more time with his family. He won re-election in his Oxford East seat in the 2005 General Election, but saw his majority slashed by 90%. He is best remembered by some for his opposing of the privatisation of air traffic control in 1996 stating "Our air is not for sale" only for Labour to switch policies and thereby propose a public-private partnership for the National Air Traffic Services. Others point to his stewardship of the Department for Work and Pensions and his focus on reducing child poverty when Minister there. Smith is also the Chairman and one of the founding members of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, launched in October 2008. Smith has occasionally rebelled against his party in Parliament, on issues such as a third runway at Heathrow, the Government's renewal of Trident, and has been known to back opposition Liberal Democrats motions on votes concerning the rights of Gurkhas to remain in Britain and the introduction of Single Transferable Vote for elections. In 2005 the Liberal Democrats came within 963 votes of winning the seat, with the drop in support for Labour widely attributed to the Iraq war, but in 2010 Andrew Smith secured a comfortable victory with a 4.1% swing to Labour, bucking the national trend. Similarly, in 2015 Smith was re-elected with 50% of the vote, an increase of 7.5% over 2010. In 2015 with minutes to spare before the deadline for nominees ended Smith nominated Jeremy Corbyn for leader of the Labour party despite not actually supporting Corbyn. Smith nominated Corbyn because he wanted a "broad debate" about the direction of the Labour party. Smith was the 35th Labour MP to nominate Corbyn which meant the necessary threshold for Corbyn to be on the ballot paper was reached. He supported Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election. On 19 April 2017, Smith announced that he would not be standing in the 2017 general election.
