Jane Kennedy

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Jane Elizabeth Kennedy (born 4 May 1958, as Jane Elizabeth Hodgson) is a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. On June 8, 2009 she returned to the backbenches, leaving her position as Minister of State for Farming and the Environment at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs^[1].

Early life

She was born in Whitehaven, Cumbria, on the same day as fellow current female MP Caroline Spelman. She went to Haughton Comprehensive School (now called Haughton Community School) on Rockwell Avenue in Haughton Le Skerne, then Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington. She studied Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. She worked in social care for Liverpool City Council from 1979 to 1988 when she became a trade union organiser for the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE). In Liverpool she had been prominent in the campaign to drive members of the Militant tendency out of the Labour Party.

Member of Parliament

Kennedy has been a Member of Parliament since the 1992 general election, when she was elected by the Liverpool Broadgreen constituency. She served as a member of the social security select committee from 1992 to 1994, and in 1995 she was appointed as a Labour whip.

Her constituency was abolished for the 1997 general election, but she was returned to Parliament for the new Liverpool Wavertree constituency.

After Labour's victory in the 1997 election, she served as an assistant government whip until 1998 and as a government whip until 1999, sitting on the House of Commons administration select committee from 1997 to 1999.

In government

She was then appointed as a Junior Minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department from 1999 until 2001, when she became a Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office with responsibility for security and the justice system. After the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly in October 2002, she also became responsible for education and employment in the province. In 2003, she was made a Privy Councillor.

She transferred to the Department of Work and Pensions in 2004 and then to the Department of Health after the 2005 general election, remaining a Minister of State. She left the government on 5 May 2006 during a wide-ranging reshuffle. She was initially thought by journalists to have been sacked; however, she subsequently said she took the opportunity to resign from the government, in light of concerns about the impact of the government's policies on the National Health Service. [1]

In Gordon Brown's first government since becoming Prime Minister, Kennedy was appointed as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, becoming the third ranked minister in the Treasury, taking on the ministerial responsibilities of the old Paymaster General, Dawn Primarolo. On 5 October 2008, Kennedy was promoted to be a Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with the portfolio of Farming and the Environment

Kennedy is a member of Labour Friends of Israel, and was the organisation's chair from 1997-8 and 2006-7. She is also a member of the Ramblers' Association and enjoys horse-riding.

Personal life

She married Malcolm Kennedy in 1977 in Knowsley; they divorced in 1998. They have two sons, Robert (born 1978) and Alan (born 1983). She currently lives with her partner Peter Dowling.

References

1. ^ Kennedy leaves Government BBC News

External links

• Her website
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Jane Kennedy MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Jane Kennedy MP
• BBC Politics

News items

• Employing her partner in January 2009

Video clips

• A welcome to her website