Helen Goodman
Helen Catherine Goodman is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland between 2005 and 2019. During a Parliamentary career spanning 14 years, she held a number of ministerial and shadow ministerial roles, including Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for Work and Pensions until 2010 with responsibility for child poverty and childcare and shadow Minister for the Americas and the Far East.
Early life and Education
Goodman's mother was a Danish immigrant and her father was an architect. Born in Nottingham, she grew up in Derbyshire and was educated at her village school and Lady Manners School, Bakewell, Derbyshire, which at the time was a Grammar School. She studied PPE at Somerville College, Oxford.Career before Parliament
Upon graduating from the University of Oxford, she worked as a researcher for the Labour MP Phillip Whitehead. She worked in HM Treasury as a fast stream administrator holding many posts including on the Energy Desk, the Exchange Rate Desk, Central Budget Unit, Overseas Finance. In 1990–91, she was seconded to the Office of the Czechoslovak Prime Minister to advise on their economic transition after the Velvet Revolution.In 1992, she negotiated an agreement within the OECD to end government subsidies on arms exports to highly indebted countries. This was in the wake of the Scott inquiry into the first Iraq war.
Goodman also oversaw the establishment of the Home Energy Efficiency Scheme in 1990, the first major Government programme to tackle energy efficiency and fuel poverty.
From 1997, she was the director of the Commission on the Future for MultiEthnic Britain. She was appointed the Head of Strategy at The Children's Society in 1998, where she was involved in lobbying on policies to cut child poverty. From 2002 until her election to the House of Commons, she was Chief Executive of the National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries which supported 1,000 projects across Great Britain. She is a member of the GMB Union and the Christian Socialist Movement, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth. She has published numerous articles including in the Political Quarterly and Foreign Policy Centre.
Parliamentary career
Goodman was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the County Durham seat of Bishop Auckland at the 2005 general election through an All-Women Shortlist, following the retirement of the veteran Labour MP Derek Foster. Goodman held the seat with a majority of 10,047 votes and made her maiden speech in the Commons on 25 May 2005. She was re-elected in 2010, 2015 and 2017.She was a member of the Public Accounts Committee from May 2005 to April 2007 before becoming a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Ministry of Justice. In June 2007, she was appointed Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, before being made a whip in October 2008. She left this role in June 2009 to become a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions. In this role, she steered the Child Poverty Act onto the statute book, alongside Stephen Timms.
After the 2010 general election, Goodman nominated Ed Miliband for the leadership of the Labour Party. After his election as party leader, she was appointed as opposition spokesman in Labour's Justice team with special responsibility for Prisons and Sentencing policy. In October 2011, she became Shadow Minister for Media. In this role she has campaigned for better child protection online. In October 2013, she was also given responsibility for Labour's Arts policy.
In 2010, she ran a successful campaign in conjunction with The Northern Echo to save the Zurbarán paintings at Auckland Castle when the Commissioners of the Church of England threatened to sell them. In February 2013, appalled at the impact of the "bedroom tax" on her constituents, she tried to live for a week on £18.
In 2011, Helen led Labour's response to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.
On 3 December 2014, she became Shadow Minister for Welfare Reform as part of a small Shadow Cabinet reshuffle by Ed Miliband. Since February 2016, Goodman has also served as a member of the Advisory Board at Polar Research and Policy Initiative.
From 9 June 2016 to 12 June 2016 she attended the 64th annual Bilderberg Conference in Dresden, Germany.
Goodman supported Remain in the June 2016 EU referendum campaign, and during the December 2019 General Election was endorsed by the People's Vote Campaign.
In 2017, she took part in a campaign to save the DWP office in Bishop Auckland from closure. She raised questions in Parliament regarding the proposed office closure and took part in a match and Rally opposing the closure on 18 March 2017
In July 2017, Goodman was appointed as a junior spokesperson for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs under Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, with responsibility for the Americas and the Far East. In May 2018, she successfully led Labour's attempt to secure Magnitsky Clauses in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill during its Committee Stage and was instrumental in a cross-party initiative that secured an amendment to the Bill requiring public registers of beneficial ownership in the Overseas Territories. Other work included developing Labour's policy on the crisis in Hong Kong in 2019, visiting Colombia in May 2019 to meet various stakeholders involved in the implementation of Colombia's faltering peace process and frequently pressing the UK Government to act on a number of human rights issues including the treatment of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, the Rohingya refugee crisis and the rights of West Papuans.
Alongside veteran MP Ken Clarke, Goodman first developed the concept of holding indicative votes in Parliament to resolve the Brexit deadlock. In March 2019, during the indicative votes held by MPs to decide which version of Brexit that they supported, Goodman again worked closely with Ken Clarke to secure support for the option to remain with the EU Customs Union. The Customs Union option came closest to securing an overall majority out of all the other options, falling three votes short.
In October 2019, Goodman was again selected by her local party as Bishop Auckland constituency's Parliamentary Labour candidate. During the December 2019 General Election, Bishop Auckland was one of the 59 constituencies lost by the Labour Party.
2009 expenses scandal
In May 2009, The Daily Telegraph revealed that Goodman had claimed £519.31 for use of a cottage in her own constituency on her expenses, and had submitted hotel bills dated two months prior to being elected to the House of Commons. Goodman argued that she was carrying out Parliamentary business when using the cottage and thus her claim was accepted, and the claim for the hotel stay – which was rejected – was a mistake.She also claimed a £600 fee for advice from her management consultant husband.
Goodman pointed out that the independent inquiry by Thomas Legg into MPs expenses had given her "an entirely clean bill of health and concluded that none of my claims required further explanation or clarification.”
Ingleton speech controversy
In June 2014, Goodman was invited to give a speech at the opening of a village fayre at Ingleton, County Durham, in the parliamentary constituency which she had represented for nine years.During her speech, she praised the village for the beauty of its waterfalls and caves and for its connection with the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. None of these features applied to the County Durham village, but were, in fact, references to the village of Ingleton, situated seventy miles away in North Yorkshire. The speech reportedly "baffled" the audience and after five minutes she was called away from the microphone and informed of her mistake.