Jane Kennedy quits

WAVERTREE Labour MP Jane Kennedy is to stand down at the next General Election.

She says she needs a fresh challenge after 18 years as an MP and that the “unrelenting” pressures of 10 years as a Government minister had taken its toll on her family life.

“I have contemplated this decision for some time,” she said.

The mother of two, 51, said in a letter to local party members that she believed her constituency would continue to be Labour held and “I am sure too, that our party will go on to take control of the council after too many years of Lib/Dem incompetence and lies”.

She also said that the Lib Dem campaign against her in Wavertree had been “bitterly personal and offensive”.

Mrs Kennedy has since said that another consideration in her decision to quit was the fact that she will no longer be able to employ her partner Peter Dowling after recent Parliamentary changes made in the wake of the expenses scandal.

Jane Kennedy came to prominence in Liverpool in the 1980s when she took on the militant tendency. She has held six ministerial posts, including one of the top positions at the Treasury, but has quit a couple of them in protest.

She resigned as a health minister over Sir David Henshaw’s appointment as chairman of the North West Strategic Health Authority and also quit as an environment minister in the summer over the leadership style of Gordon Brown who she compared to a Mafia boss.