A former arts minister is the latest Labour MP to announce he is to stand down.
Mark Fisher, the only Labour MP educated at Eton, has been MP for Stoke since 1983.
He served in the first year of Tony Blair's administration as minister of arts.
Fisher was sacked in a reshuffle in 1998 after he voted against the Competition Act in defiance of the whips.
The BBC reports that he is suffering from hydrocephalus, also known as water on the brain, and is standing down on health grounds.
Fisher was an opposition whip 1985-6, a member of the Treasury select committee 1983-5 and shadow arts minister from 1986-1997.
His father was Tory MP Sir Nigel Fisher, who served in the Commons from 1950 to 1983.
Fisher is the 145th MP to announce they will stand down at the general election: 92 Labour, 35 Conservative Party, seven Liberal Democrats, six independents and one each from the SNP, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, UUP and DUP.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd