Information AboutMargaret Hodge |
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Margaret Eve, Lady Hodge, MBE ( Née Margaret Oppenheimer September 8 , 1944 ) is a British politician and Labour Party Member Of Parliament for Barking . She was the first Minister For Children appointed in a newly created post within the Department For Education And Skills in 2003 . She was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Work & Pensions with responsibility for Work after the 2005 Election and is still in the post as of early 2006 . ORIGINS AND COUNCIL CAREER Margaret Hodge was born in she earned the nickname of 'Enver Hodge', after the Albania n despot, Enver Hoxha ('Hoxha' is pronounced similarly to 'Hodge'.) PARLIAMENTARY CAREER Hodge has been member for Barking since a by-election on June 9 , 1994 caused by the death of Jo Richardson , at which time she stood down as leader of Islington. She became a junior minister in 1998 and was made Minister for Universities in 2001 , and remained there until 2003 when she was made Children Minister. Child abuse controversy In 2003 she was involved in a controversy about press coverage of a man who accused her of being ultimately responsible for abuse he suffered as a child in a home overseen by Mrs Hodge as leader of Islington Council . Following a media campaign conducted by several national newspapers calling for her to resign, she was further drawn into the controversy by responding to the man in question by letter and referring to him in it as 'extremely disturbed'. The man concerned then passed the letter to the press which planned to publish it, only to be judicially restrained from doing so at the instruction of Mrs Hodge. The letter was eventually published, mainly on the grounds that the blocking of the letter was seen as disproportionate. Mrs Hodge was forced to publicly apologise and offer to contribute to a charity of the man's choosing as recompense. This effectively ended the affair in the eyes of the press, although the affair remains a blot on her political record. First Children's Minister and after Hodge was the first person to be Children's Minister since 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 has since been transferred to a less visible post. Usually viewed as a strong supporter of Tony Blair , she appears to retain his support despite the hostility of the press, the opposition and (it is rumoured) a number of her parliamentary colleagues. 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''". On June 17 , 2005 she allegedly said that the former workers of MG Rover would be able to obtain jobs at Tesco , a local supermarket. Later, she claimed that she did not say this, 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. In April 2006 she commented in an interview with '' The Sunday Telegraph '' that eight out of ten white Working Class voters in her constituency may be tempted to vote for the British National Party 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". {Link without Title} SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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