• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / Blunkett calls time on parliamentary career

Blunkett calls time on parliamentary career

By John Pring on 27th June 2014 Category: News Archive, Politics

Listen

newslatestThe disabled Labour MP and former home secretary David Blunkett has announced that he is to leave parliament at the next election.

Blunkett told local party members in a letter that, after 28 years as an MP, it was “by far the most difficult political decision I have ever made, in a lifetime of extremely difficult decisions”.

He spent eight years serving in Tony Blair’s Labour cabinet – and suffered two high-profile resignations – but said that the leadership of the party clearly now wished to see “new faces in Ministerial office and a clear break with the past”.

He added: “For me, being in a position to make decisions and thereby make a difference, has always been paramount, and I hope in future to continue to promote our success and values, and to make a continuing contribution to public service and the social and voluntary sector.”

Blunkett said he would rather leave “while I am still giving 100 per cent”, rather than stay on until 2020 when that might no longer be the case.

He said he had been privileged as a member of the cabinet to lead on “ground-breaking policies”, including the introduction of universal early years and nursery provision and the “transformation of education in our schools” as education secretary, and the “security of the nation post the 11th September attack in the United States in 2001″ and overseeing the “the most substantial fall in crime in recent history” as home secretary.

But he also suggested that he had played a part in some of the most controversial policies introduced by the current coalition government.

He told party members: “Many of the seeds I was able to sow, from welfare reform to lifelong learning and from the new challenge of cyber security to the debate on values and citizenship, are only now bearing fruit.”

Blunkett’s political career began when he was elected as a councillor in Sheffield at the age of 22, before leading the city council in the 1980s, and becoming an MP in 1987.

After Labour’s win in the 1997 general election, he became education and employment secretary, then home secretary in 2001, and work and pensions secretary in 2005.

Since leaving government, he has published his diaries, and – among other pieces of work – has completed a review of the future role of the community and voluntary sector, chaired a review of school transport, and reviewed police accountability for the Home Office.

Between June 2013 and May 2014, he led a review for Labour into local oversight of schools and the raising of standards.

Blunkett was out of the country this week and unavailable for interview, but he said – in an interview for the Government Equalities Office earlier this year – that his advice to other disabled people wishing to enter politics was to “have the confidence to be yourself”.

He added: “Take me as I am or leave me has always been my attitude to life and remains so today.”

25 June 2014

Share this post:

TwitterFacebookWhatsAppReddit

Related

Tomlinson misleads MPs twice about pandemic contact with disability network
23rd December 2020
Government’s disability strategy ‘must be grounded in UN convention’
3rd December 2020
Activist wins historic election to new Labour role and calls on party to end discrimination
19th November 2020

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

Philippa Day: Young mother ‘took her own life after being told to attend PIP assessment’

Philippa Day: DWP phone agent ignored sobbing claimant who later ‘took her own life’

Philippa Day: DNS wins legal fight with DWP over ground-breaking release of secret report into benefit death

New figures set to provide clearer picture of disproportionate pandemic deaths of disabled people

Peer calls for disabled people to ‘take control’ over PA vaccinations

Rights concerns over major Mental Health Act reforms

High court hears of ‘catastrophic’ impact of ‘fitness for work’ system

Disabled high-rise leaseholders are living in post-Grenfell fear of fire and financial ruin

Disabled people highlight scores of lockdown concerns

Regulator investigates DWP over universal credit ‘cover-up’

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web