Margaret Eve Hodge, Baroness Hodge of Barking (, formerly Watson; born 8 September 1944), is a British politician and life peer, who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Barking from 1994 to 2024. A member of the Labour Party, she was previously Leader of Islington London Borough Council from 1982 to 1992. She has held a number of ministerial roles and served as chair of the Public Accounts Committee from 2010 to 2015.Curtis, Polly (10 June 2015), "Margaret Hodge named head of public accounts committee", The Guardian. .
Hodge was born to German Jewish parents who fled the Nazis during the Holocaust, and her father was the co-founder of steel firm Stemcor. She was a councillor on Islington Council from 1973 to 1994, was chair of the Housing Committee, and then Council Leader from 1982 to 1992. Hodge later apologised for failing to ensure that allegations of serious child abuse in council-run homes were sufficiently investigated and for libelling a complainant.
Hodge was elected to parliament in a 1994 by-election. She was appointed Junior Minister for Disabled People in 1998 and promoted to Minister for Universities in 2001, subsequently becoming the first Children's Minister in 2003, joining the Privy Council.Privy Council appointments, Prime Minister's Office, 22 June 2003 In 2005, Hodge became Minister of State for Work. Hodge served as Minister of State for Culture and Tourism from 2007 to 2008 and 2009 until Labour was defeated at the 2010 general election. Since then she has been known as a strong supporter of Israel and has made controversial accusations of antisemitism against other Labour party members. She remained as a backbench MP for Barking until 2024. She was awarded a life peerage in 2024 Dissolution Honours taking her seat in the House of Lords in September 2024.
Early life Hodge was born on 8 September 1944 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Jewish refugee parents Hans Oppenheimer, and his wife Lisbeth (née Hollitscher). Hans Oppenheimer left Stuttgart in Germany during the 1930s to join his uncle's metals business based in Cairo and Alexandria, where he met fellow émigrée, Austrian-born Lisbeth Hollitscher. Married in 1936, Hans and Lisbeth had five children.
At the outset of World War II, the couple and their eldest daughter were rendered stateless, effectively stranded in the Kingdom of Egypt for the duration of the War. They decided to leave Egypt in 1948, concerned that antisemitism had increased in the Middle East during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The family moved to Orpington, Kent (present-day Greater London), where they started their family-owned steel-trading corporation, Stemcor. It is now one of the world's largest privately held steel companies, with an annual turnover of over £6 billion in 2011. Hodge is a major shareholder, listing her holdings in the Parliamentary Register of Members' Interests.Citations:
Stemcor was run by her brother, Ralph, until September 2013..
When Hodge was 10 years old, in 1954, her mother died of stomach cancer. Hodge attended Bromley High School, followed by Oxford High School as a boarder. She went on to study at the London School of Economics, graduating in 1966 with a third-class honours degree in government studies. After working briefly on television political programmes, she began, but did not complete, a master's degree in philosophy at Bedford College, London.
Hodge supported the CND Aldermaston Marches and protests over the Vietnam war.
Early career From 1966 to 1971, Hodge worked in market research at Unilever, and in PR at Weber Shandwick. From 1992 to 1994, she was a senior consultant at Price Waterhouse.
Islington Council Hodge was first elected as a Councillor for the London Borough of Islington at a by-election in 1973, representing the Barnsbury ward. She became chair of the Housing Committee in 1975. This was an important post in a local authority which had one of the worst set of housing statistics in London during a period when London boroughs were required to be housing providers and managers. Hodge's tenure as Housing Chairman oversaw 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 Islington Housing Action Group.Islington Housing Action Retrieved 26 June 2016.
The Islington Labour Party was badly affected by the defection of members and elected representatives to the Social Democratic Party. In the 1978 council election she was elected to Thornhill ward, before representing Barnsbury again at the 1982 election, and moving to Sussex ward at the 1986 election.
After Labour won all but one of the council seats in the 1982 council election on a strong left-wing manifesto, Hodge became Council Leader, a post she held until 1992. In 1984 Hodge was a public leader of Islington participating in the rate-capping rebellion to the Conservative government's imposition of spending restrictions on councils, setting no council rate. As with other councils, the district auditor ordered Islington to set a legal rate, which it complied with hours before the deadline."No alternative but to fight on, says Lambeth Leader", Labour Herald, 7 June 1985, p. 4. Hodge and the council were often portrayed as part of the "loony left" by some newspapers. In 1994 Hodge was disqualified as a councillor after not attending council meetings for over six months; Hodge stated she had not been active out of respect for the new council leadership.
Child abuse controversy The end of Hodge's service on Islington Council, prior to her entering Parliament, was marred by the emergence of serious child abuse allegations concerning Council-run children's homes in Islington.Hodge history Retrieved 26 June 2016. She has apologised several times since the emergence of the scandal in the 1980s that directly linked her council tenure with what she admitted in 2014 was "shameful naivety" in ignoring the complaints of paedophile victims.
In 1985, Demetrios Panton wrote to Islington Council to complain about abuse suffered while in Council care during the 1970s and 1980s. Panton received an official response in 1989, in which the Council denied all responsibility. In 1990, Liz Davies, a senior social worker employed by the borough, with her manager, David Cofie, raised concerns about sexual abuse of children under the care of Islington Council. Correspondence between Hodge and the then Director of Social Work indicates that Hodge declined a request for extra investigative resources. Instead, the Cofie–Davies investigation was dismissed by council officials in May 1990 after the police declared they had found insufficient evidence of abuse; despite this, the two social workers continued their enquiries.
In 1992, the Evening Standard resumed reporting allegations of abuse in the Islington Care Homes. Its initial report was slated by Hodge as a "sensationalist piece of gutter journalism", although she has since apologised, claiming that her officials had given her false information.Eileen Fairweather "Jimmy Savile sex abuse: 'Islington is still covering up'" , The Sunday Telegraph, 6 April 2014 In 1995, the "White Report" into sexual abuse in Islington Care Homes confirmed that the council had failed to adequately investigate the allegations, claiming that its doctrinaire interpretation of equal opportunities created a climate of fear at being labelled homophobic.Eileen Fairweather "WITNESS: Stalinist reluctance to study the facts" , The Independent, 30 May 1995
In 2003, following Hodge's appointment as Minister for Children, Panton went public with his allegations that he had been the subject of abuse in Islington Council care and that, although he had repeatedly raised the matter, he had been ignored. He identified Hodge's complacency as ultimately responsible for the abuse that he alleged he had suffered. Liz Davies simultaneously went public regarding the concerns she had previously raised while working for the council. Following a media campaign by several national newspapers calling for Hodge to resign from her new post, she wrote to Panton, apologising for referring to him as "an extremely disturbed person" in an earlier letter to the Chairman of the BBC Gavyn Davies, which had been broadcast on Radio 4's Today programme. This was subsequently brought to the floor of the House of Commons in Prime Minister's Questions by opposition leader Michael Howard. A formal apology to Panton was made in the High Court on 19 November 2003 by Lady Hodge's barrister together with a financial settlement of £30,000.
In April 2014, Education Secretary Michael Gove instigated investigations into 21 children's homes nationally, where new evidence suggested Jimmy Savile might have abused young people, including one in Islington during the period Hodge was leader. This prompted Hodge to issue a further apology stating "our naivety was shameful". The investigation failed to reach any firm conclusions.
Parliamentary career Hodge served as the Labour MP for Barking after winning the by-election on 9 June 1994 following the death of Jo Richardson. Whilst still a new MP, she endorsed the candidature of Tony Blair, a former Islington neighbour, for the Labour Party leadership, following the sudden death of John Smith from a heart attack. In 2017, she had a majority of 21,608. On 2 December 2021 she announced she would not be standing at the next general election, and she ceased to be an MP in June 2024.
Ministerial roles Hodge was appointed Junior Minister for Disabled People in 1998 and was promoted Minister for Universities at the new Department for Education and Skills in 2001, in which capacity she piloted the controversial Higher Education Act 2004, remaining in post until 2003, when she became the inaugural Children's Minister. She was sworn into the Privy Council on 22 June 2003.
In 2003, Hodge was appointed to the newly created high-profile role of Children's minister, which included responsibility for Special Education, Early Years Education and Childcare, the Young People's Unit, teenage pregnancy, the Family Policy Unit, and general responsibility for child welfare.Curtis, Polly (13 June 2003). "Hodge appointed minister for children", The Guardian. . Retrieved 20 January 2019.
In 2005, Hodge was moved to become Minister of State for Work. On 17 June 2005, she was criticised for saying that former employees 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 was pointing to a new Tesco supermarket as an example of new jobs being created in the area in face of the redundancies at the car manufacturing plant."Get a job at Tesco, 6,000 Rover workers are told", Times Online, 17 June 2005..