[1] A member of the Labour and Co-operative parties, he served in government as an Assistant Whip from 1999 to 2001 and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State from 2001 to 2006.

Touhig contested the Richmond and Barnes constituency at the 1992 general election, but reached third-place behind the Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates.

He served as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, from May 1997 to July 1999.

He had to resign as PPS in 1999, when he confessed to receiving a leaked Social Security Select Committee report on Child benefit.

He was a junior minister at the Ministry of Defence, with special responsibility for veterans, but left government in the May 2006 reshuffle.