Jane Kennedy

Labour MP Liverpool Wavertree

Date of birth

4 May 1958

Political profile

Jane Kennedy has risen steadily through Labour's ranks since her first election in 1992.

After a few years as an opposition and government whip, she became both the first woman, and the first non-lawyer, to become a minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department.

After the 2001 election, she took on the challenging portfolio of security minister at the Northern Ireland Office.

Following the minor reshuffle caused by the resignation of Beverley Hughes in April 2004, Ms Kennedy became minister for work at the Department for Work and Pensions.

She has experience, albeit of a very different kind, of political struggles; she was a player in the drama of Liverpool's local government in the 1980s.

As a social care worker, she was one of the council employees controversially made redundant by the Militant controlled council, and she denounced Derek Hatton at the 1985 Labour conference.

Thereafter, she worked as a union organiser until she displaced Militant-supporting MP Terry Fields in 1992.

She is a moderate Blairite, whose main political interest beyond local issues is in the future of the NHS.

Contact

Commons office: 020 7219 4523
Constituency office: 0151 236 1117