Party:
Labour

Constituency:
Liverpool Wavertree

Date of birth:
4 May 1958

Telephone:
020 7210 3000

Address:
11 Millbank, London, SW1P 4PN

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.

TOP THREE PARTIES AT A GLANCE
Labour		62.7%
Liberal Democrat		24.4%
Conservative		9.6%

IN DETAIL
Name	Party	Votes	%
Jane Kennedy	Labour	20,155	62.7
Christopher Newby	Liberal Democrat	7,836	24.4
Geoffrey Allen	Conservative	3,091	9.6
Michael Lane	SLP	359	1.1
Mark O'Brien	SA	349	1.1
Neil Miney	UK Independence Party	348	1.1
Majority		12,319
Turnout		44.3%

POLITICAL MAKE UP OF NORTH WEST