Margaret Hodge

The Right Honourable Margaret Hodge MBE MP
Minister for Culture and Tourism
In office 22 September 2009 – 11 May 2010
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	Barbara Follett
Succeeded by	John Penrose
Minister for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism
In office 27 June 2007 – 3 October 2008
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	David Lammy
Succeeded by	Barbara Follett
Minister for Children
In office 13 June 2003 – 9 May 2005
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Office Created
Succeeded by	Maria Eagle
Member of Parliament for Barking
Incumbent
Assumed office 9 June 1994
Preceded by	Jo Richardson
Majority	16,555 (36.5%)
Personal details
Born	8 September 1944 (1944-09-08) (age 67) Cairo, Egypt[1]
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour
Alma mater	London School of Economics
Religion	Judaism

Margaret Hodge MBE MP, also known as Lady Hodge by virtue of her husband's knighthood, (born 8 September 1944) is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Barking since 1994. She was the first Minister for Children in 2003 and was Minister of State for Culture and Tourism at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. On 9 June 2010 she was elected Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Early life

Margaret Eve Oppenheimer was born in Egypt in 1944 to Hans and Lisbeth Oppenheimer, a refugee multi-millionaire German Jewish steel trader and his Austrian Jewish wife.^[1][2] The family's company Stemcor is the world's largest privately owned steel-trading corporation, with an annual turnover of £6.28 billion in 2008.^[3][4] After World War II, the family settled in London. Her mother died when Margaret was 10. She was educated at Bromley High School, Oxford High School and the London School of Economics where she obtained a third class BSc Economics degree in 1966. She worked in market research from 1966 to 1973.

She married Andrew Watson in 1968. They had a son and daughter. The couple divorced in 1978 and that same year she married Henry Hodge (later Sir Henry), going on to have two daughters. Henry Hodge was a fellow Labour borough councillor and Chairman of the National Council for Civil Liberties who went on to become a High Court judge; he died in 2009. From 1992 to 1994, she was a senior consultant for Price Waterhouse.

She has four children and one grandchild.^[5]

Islington Council

Hodge was elected as a councillor in the London Borough of Islington in 1973. She was associated with a group of newly elected, activist, largely middle-class councillors who were viewed with varying degrees of antagonism by some established Labour Party councillors.

She rapidly became Chairman of the Housing Committee (opting to use "chairman" rather than "chair"). This was a critical post in an authority with one of the worst sets of housing statistics in London and in a period when London Boroughs were expected to be housing providers and managers. Hodge's tenure as Housing Chairman saw the continuation of a large new housing programme. There was a change of emphasis to the refurbishment of sound, older buildings (e.g. Charteris Road, Alexander Road areas), in response to a paper published by the local Islington Housing Action Group. At one point, Hodge's deputy chairman was Jack Straw, subsequently a Cabinet member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's administrations.

The Islington Labour Parties were badly affected by the defection of members and elected public representatives to the Social Democratic Party but, when the dust had settled, Hodge had emerged as council leader, in 1982, a post which she held until 1992. During her 10 years as leader of Islington Council she was referred to as "Enver Hodge", after the Albanian despot, Enver Hoxha^[6][7] ("Hoxha" is pronounced similarly to "Hodge": "Hodge-a"). She had become the focus of antagonism from "old-guard", former Labour Party members who felt that their party had been "taken over" by middle-class incomers.

The end of her period at Islington, before taking up her Parliamentary career, was marred by criticism of her response (in 1985) to serious child abuse allegations.

Child abuse controversy

In 1985, Demetrious Panton complained about abuse that he had suffered while in the council's care in the 1970s and 1980s. He did not receive an official reply until 1989, in which the council denied responsibility.^[8]

In 1990 Liz Davies, a senior social worker employed by the borough and her manager David Cofie, raised concerns about sexual abuse of children in Islington Council Care. Correspondence between Hodge and the Director of Social Work indicates that she declined a request for extra resources to investigate. In early 1992, Liz Davies (not to be confused with the barrister and former Islington councillor) resigned from her post and requested that Scotland Yard investigate the allegations. The Evening Standard then began reporting on the allegations of abuse in Islingtons children's homes, shortly after which Hodge resigned to pursue a career with Price Waterhouse. In 1995, the White Report into sexual abuse in Islington Care homes reported that the council had failed adequately to investigate the allegations.^{[citation needed]}

In 2003, following Hodge's appointment as Minister for Children, Demetrious Panton went public with his allegation that he was abused in Islington Council care and had repeatedly raised this issue with no effect. He accused Hodge of being ultimately responsible for the abuse that he suffered. Davies also went public with the issues that she had raised concerns about while working for the council.^{[citation needed]}

Following a media campaign conducted by several national newspapers calling for her to resign from her new post, she responded to Panton by letter, in which she referred to him as 'extremely disturbed'. Panton then passed the letter to the press which planned to publish it, only to be judicially restrained from doing so at the instruction of Hodge. The letter was eventually published, mainly on the grounds that the blocking of the letter was seen as disproportionate. Hodge was forced to publicly apologise and offered to contribute to a charity of the man's choosing as recompense.^[9]

Parliamentary career

Hodge has been member for Barking since a by-election on 9 June 1994 caused by the death of Jo Richardson. As a new MP, she co-nominated the candidature of Tony Blair, a former neighbour, to be the new leader of the Labour Party^[1] after the sudden death of John Smith.

She became a junior minister in 1998 and was made Minister for Universities in 2001, where she sponsored the controversial Higher Education Act 2004, and remained there until 2003 when she was made Children's Minister. She was appointed to the Privy Council on 22 June 2003.^[10]

Hodge endorses Fair Spend, a new student discount initiative set up in 2010.^[11]

First Children's Minister and after

Hodge was the first person to be Children's Minister when the post was created in 2003 but suffered difficulties after the Islington controversy; her resignation was called for on several occasions by the press and parliamentary opposition.

She was later transferred to less visible posts. Usually viewed as a strong supporter of Tony Blair, she appeared to have retained his support despite the hostility of the press.

Privacy International awarded Margaret Hodge the 2004 Big Brother Award for "Worst Public Servant" for her backing of controversial initiatives including the Universal Child Database. At a keynote speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research on 26 November 2004, Hodge strongly defended the idea of greater state regulation of individuals' choices, stating that "some may call it the nanny state but I call it a force for good".^{[citation needed]}

In the same year Fathers 4 Justice campaigner Jonathan Stanesby handcuffed Hodge, stating he was arresting her for child abuse.^[12] Fathers 4 Justice targeted Hodge because she was the "bogeywoman of family law, who doesn't even believe in equal parenting".^[13] Stanesby and colleague Jason Hatch were later cleared of a charge false imprisonment after claiming that it was part of a reasonable political protest.^[14]

In 2005 she was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions with responsibility for Work. On 17 June 2005 was criticised for saying that the former workers of MG Rover would be able to obtain jobs at Tesco, a local supermarket. Later, she claimed that this was not what she meant, rather that she had empathy for those losing their jobs, and pointed to a new Tesco supermarket as an example of new jobs being created in the face of the redundancies at the car manufacturing plant.^[15]

Hodge and the BNP

In April 2006 she commented in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph that eight out of ten white working class voters in her constituency might be tempted to vote for the British National Party (BNP) in the local elections on 4 May 2006 because "no one else is listening to them" about their concerns over unemployment, high house prices, and the housing of asylum seekers in the area. She said the Labour Party must promote "very, very strongly the benefits of the new, rich multi-racial society which is part of this part of London for me".^[16]

There was wide media coverage of her remarks, and she was strongly criticised for giving the BNP publicity in the local election campaign. The BNP went on to gain 11 seats in the election out of a total of 51, making them the second largest party.^[17] Local Labour activists blamed Hodge, and it was reported that moves were under way to deselect her.^[18] The GMB wrote to Hodge in May 2006, asking for her to resign as a result of the election.^[19]

Later, the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, accused Hodge of "magnifying the propaganda of the British National Party" after she said that British residents should get priority in council house allocation.^{[citation needed]} In November 2009, the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, announced that he intended to stand for election in Barking against Hodge at the next General Election, in 2010.^[20]

Hodge retained her seat at the May 2010 general election, doubling her majority to over 16,000, following a hugely unsuccessful campaign by the BNP which saw Nick Griffin come third behind the Conservatives, and his party lose all 12 of its seats on Barking and Dagenham Council.

The BNP announced on 2 December 2010 its intention to launch a court action to have the Barking election result overturned under section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, using the precedent set in the Oldham and Saddleworth constituency of Phil Woolas who was ejected from his seat for lying about his opponents during the election campaign.^[21]

The BNP alleges that Hodge's claim that the BNP wants to expel all non-whites and drop them into the sea from aircraft makes "Mr Woolas’s lies look tame, and are a clear and obvious breach of the same law which saw the Oldham and Saddleworth MP struck down." ^[21]

Remarks on Tony Blair's foreign policy

On 17 November 2006 it was reported in the Islington Tribune that she described the Iraq war as a "big mistake in foreign affairs". The newspaper, whose content was reported on BBC news, claimed that Hodge had doubts about Blair's "moral imperialism" and had doubted Blair's attitude to foreign affairs since 1998.^[22]

Housing policy

In an article for The Observer on 20 May 2007^[23] Hodge argued that established families should take priority in the allocation of social housing over new economic migrants. These comments were condemned by the Refugee Council and other bodies working in this field.^[24]

Richmond and Bushy Parks controversy

In January 2010, Margaret Hodge announced that Royal Parks, who manage Richmond Park and Bushy Park in the borough of Richmond on Thames, would be allowed to charge drivers £2 per visit. This announcement caused mass protests across the borough and was deplored by local political figures such as Vince Cable, Susan Kramer and Zac Goldsmith.^[25][26]

Alternative medicine

She is a supporter of homeopathy, having signed an early day motion in support of its continued funding on the National Health Service.^[27]

Gordon Brown's government

On 27 June 2007, Hodge was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.^[28] As Minister for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism, she criticised the UK's foremost classical music festival, the Proms, for being insufficiently inclusive, instead praising television shows such as Coronation Street.^[29]

Following the cabinet reshuffle of 3 October 2008, it was announced that Hodge was "temporarily leaving Government on compassionate grounds of family illness and will return to Government in the spring".^[30] While she was caring for her terminally ill husband, she was replaced as Minister of State by Barbara Follett. On 22 September 2009, Hodge was reappointed Minister of State, as Minister for Culture and Tourism.^[31][32]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Sarah Hall (21 November 2003). "The Guardian profile: Margaret Hodge". London: The Guardian. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1090151,00.html. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
2. ^ "Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F09%2F06%2Fnhodg106.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=121666. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
3. ^ "About Us". Stemcor. http://www.stemcor.com/About-us.aspx. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
4. ^ "Griffin vs Hodge: the Battle for Barking" The Guardian, 13 March 2010
5. ^ "DTI website". Department for Trade and Industry. http://www.dti.gov.uk/about/dti-ministerial-team/page8417.html. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
6. ^ "Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fopinion%2F2003%2F07%2F06%2Fdo0610.xml. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
7. ^ "Margaret Hodge factfile". London: Daily Telegraph. 6 September 2003. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2003/09/10/tenhodg206.xml. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
8. ^ "Timeline: Margaret Hodge row". London: The Guardian. 19 November 2003. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/nov/19/childrensservices.childrensministry. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
9. ^ "Hodge apologises to abuse victim". BBC News. 14 November 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3270149.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
10. ^ Privy Council appointments, Prime Minister's Office, 22 June 2003
11. ^ Endorsements
12. ^ "Justice fathers 'handcuffed MP'". BBC News. 24 September 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7010959.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
13. ^ "Activist 'arrests' British cabinet minister". CBC news. 19 November 2004. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/11/19/handcuffed-minister041119.html. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
14. ^ "Handcuff protesters cleared - News". Manchester Evening News. http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1018440_handcuff_protesters_cleared. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
15. ^ Get a job at Tesco, 6,000 Rover workers are told Times Online, 17 June 2005
16. ^ "Minister says BNP tempting voters". BBC News. 16 April 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4913164.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
17. ^ "BNP doubles number of councillors". BBC News. 5 May 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4974870.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
18. ^ Will Woodward, Hugh Muir and Steven Morris (5 May 2006). "BNP rears its head as Labour loses heartland seats". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1768175,00.html. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
19. ^ "MP 'should go' over BNP comments". BBC News. 24 May 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5014388.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
20. ^ Walker, Peter (15 November 2009). "BNP leader Nick Griffin to take on Margaret Hodge in Barking". The Guardian. http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/06/06/barking_dagenham_kenhodge_video_feature.shtml. Retrieved 17 November 2009. 
21. ^ ^{a b} "BNP to Launch Court Action to Expel "Liar Hodge" from Parliament". BNP. 2 December 2010. http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/bnp-launch-court-action-expel-%E2%80%9Cliar-hodge%E2%80%9D-parliament. Retrieved 5 December 2010. 
22. ^ "Minister 'attacks Iraq mistake'". BBC News. 17 November 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6158398.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
23. ^ Margaret Hodge "A message to my fellow immigrants" The Observer, 20 May 2007; Retrieved on 20 May 2007
24. ^ Press Association "Call for migrant housing rethink", The Guardian; Retrieved on 20 May 2007
25. ^ Helen Clarke (1 February 2010). "Hundreds turn out to oppose park charges". Hounslow Chronicle. http://www.hounslowchronicle.co.uk/west-london-news/local-hounslow-news/2010/02/01/hundreds-turn-out-to-oppose-park-charges-109642-25736132. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
26. ^ "Police close Pembroke Lodge car park as Richmond Park rally draws huge crowd". Richmond and Twickenham Times. 30 January 2010. http://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/richmondnews/4882107.Hundreds_gather_for_Richmond_Park_rally. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
27. ^ Tredinnick, David (2010-06-29). "Early Day Motion #342 British Medical Association Motions on Homeopathy". http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=41282&SESSION=905. 
28. ^ "List of Her Majesty's Government". Prime Minister's Office. 29 June 2007. http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page12240.asp. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
29. ^ "Proms not inclusive, says Hodge". BBC News. 4 March 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7276684.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
30. ^ Ministerial appointments and full list of Government, Prime Minister's Office, 6 October 2008
31. ^ Ministerial appointments, Prime Minister's Office, 22 September 2009
32. ^ Our ministers Department for Culture, Media and Sport; Retrieved 22 September 2009

External links

• Margaret Hodge MP official constituency website
• Barking Labour Party
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
• Current session contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Electoral history and profile at The Guardian
• Voting record at PublicWhip.org
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou.com
• Profile at Westminster Parliamentary Record
• Profile at BBC News Democracy Live
• Articles authored at Journalisted

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Jo Richardson	Member of Parliament for Barking 1994–present	Incumbent
Political offices
New title	Minister for Children 2003–2005	Succeeded by Maria Eagle
Preceded by David Lammy Minister for Culture	Minister for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism 2007–2008	Succeeded by Barbara Follett
Preceded by Barbara Follett	Minister for Culture and Tourism 2009-2010	Succeeded by Ed Vaizey Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries

Persondata
Name	Hodge, Margaret
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	8 September 1944
Place of birth	Cairo, Egypt
Date of death
Place of death