Meg Hillier

Meg Hillier MP
Member of Parliament for Hackney South and Shoreditch
Incumbent
Assumed office  5 May 2005
Preceded by	Brian Sedgemore
Majority	10,204 (31.7%)
Member of the London Assembly for North East
In office 4 May 2000 – 10 June 2004
Preceded by	New constituency
Succeeded by	Jennette Arnold
Born	14 February 1969 (1969-02-14) (age 40) Hampstead, London
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour Co-operative
Alma mater	St Hilda's College, Oxford

Margaret Olivia Hillier known as Meg Hillier (born 14 February 1969) is a British politician and Labour and Co-operative Party Member of Parliament for Hackney South and Shoreditch and a junior government minister.

Early life

Hillier was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford where she studied PPE and during her time there was elected Librarian of the Oxford Union Society. She was not prominently involved in the Oxford University Labour Club. She worked as a journalist and was elected as a councillor in the London Borough of Islington in 1994, serving as the Mayor of Islington in 1998, before standing down from the council in 2002. She was elected as a founding member of the London Assembly for North East London at the first London Assembly election of 2000, she served on the assembly until 2004, and became a board member of Transport for London, a position she relinquished on her election to parliament.

Parliamentary career

In 2004 Hillier was selected as the Labour candidate to contest the Hackney South and Shoreditch through a controversial All-Women Shortlist.^[1] She was elected to the House of Commons at the 2005 general election following the retirement of the veteran Labour MP Brian Sedgemore. During the election campaign Sedgemore resigned from the Labour Party and joined the Liberal Democrats [4] in opposition to the attack on Iraq. Nonetheless, Hillier held the seat comfortably with a majority of 10,204. She made her maiden speech on 24 May 2005, in which she noted that there were more men in the House of Commons today than there have ever been women MPs ^[2].

She served as member of the Northern Ireland select committee for a year until she was became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly in 2006. In June 2007 she was appointed a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office. During maternity leave beginning in March 2009 her ministerial role was taken over by Shahid Malik.

In March 2008, Hillier voted with the Government in favour of nationwide Post Office closures, including 7 in the London Borough of Hackney of which her constituency forms a part^[3].

In December 2009, while promoting the unpopular British national identity card scheme^[4][5] in Manchester, she had to admit that she had managed to forget her own^[6][7], blaming the loss on the demands of looking after her baby.

Personal life

She married Joe Simpson in 1997 and has three children. On 20 March 2009 she began a further period of maternity leave^[8]; and on 16 April gave birth to a baby girl^[9]. She resides in Islington, London.

References

External links

• Official website
• Internet Archive cache of 2004 biography from the London Assembly
• Guardian Unlimited Politics — Ask Aristotle: Meg Hillier MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com — Meg Hillier MP
• MP under fire for backing post office closures
• BBC Politics