Reading East is a constituency^{[n 1]} represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Matt Rodda, of the Labour Party.^{[n 2]} The seat is one of two Labour seats from a total of eight seats in Berkshire.

Further to the completion of the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, the seat will be abolished. Voters will be transferred to the new constituencies of Earley and Woodley (Bulmershe and Whitegates, Church, Loddon and South Lake wards) and Reading Central (all other wards). These constituencies will be first contested at the next general election.^[3][4][5]

The seat contains the University of Reading and most of its students. The Thames Valley Business Park is in another part of the seat, hosting multinational and cutting-edge technology companies in the software and advanced computer science areas. Adjoining the redeveloped heart of town are a handful mid-rise blocks of ex-council flats and serried ranks of former relatively philanthropic biscuit, brick and seeds manufacturing/processing workers' neat terraces towards the south-centre and east of the town, including firmly Labour-held wards. The suburban north bank of the Thames section takes in Caversham, forming four wards, whilst Earley and Woodley, adding a further three wards, make up strongly-leaning Conservative wards. Intermediate wards such as Redlands and Park are more marginal including Green Party and Liberal Democrat representation.

The Reading East parliamentary constituency was first contested in 1983, when it was won by a partial incumbent, Gerry Vaughan, a Conservative who was before that election sitting MP for abolished Reading South. He held the seat through two general elections until he retired before the 1997 election. The constituency was in 1997 won by the Labour Party's Jane Griffiths, thus a backbencher under the Blair Ministry. She retained the seat in the 2001 election but was deselected by her Constituency Labour Party before the 2005 election, when the seat was won by the Tory candidate, Rob Wilson, who held the seat through two elections. Until 2005 the seat had been a national bellwether. ^{[citation needed]}

The seat was regained by the Labour Party's candidate in 2017, Matt Rodda, achieving the party's best showing since the seat's creation. Rodda's 2017 win was one of 30 net gains of the Labour Party. The 2017 result came when there was a hung parliament nationally. Reading East was one of five constituencies, the others being Croydon Central, Enfield Southgate, Leeds North West and Peterborough, which elected Labour MPs in 2017 having not done so since 2001.

At the 2019 general election, the seat was retained by Rodda with an increased majority, achieving a swing to Labour of 1.9%, and bucking the national trend which saw an overall swing to the Conservatives of 4.6%.

The seat has been, relative to others, a semi-marginal seat, and major-swing (volatile) seat since 2010. Its winner's majority has not exceeded 12.9% of the vote since the 15.2% majority won in that year. The seat has changed hands once since 2010.

• List of parliamentary constituencies in Berkshire