Maria Eagle



Maria Eagle (born 17 February 1961) is Member of Parliament for Garston and Halewood and former Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

She has held the rank of Minister of State at the Government Equalities Office and at the Ministry of Justice. She had been a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education and Skills, and the Northern Ireland Office. After the 2010 general election she became the Shadow Solicitor General. On 8 October 2010, Eagle was announced as the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport in Edward Miliband's shadow cabinet, and on 7 October 2013, appointed as Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

On 14 September 2015, Eagle was confirmed as the Shadow Defence Secretary in Jeremy Corbyn's first Shadow Cabinet. She was moved to the position of Shadow Culture Secretary in January 2016 and resigned from the Shadow Cabinet on 27 June 2016.

Political life
After joining the Labour Party, Eagle was elected the secretary of the Crosby Constituency Labour Party (CLP) for two years in 1983, and was also elected as the campaigns organiser with that CLP for three years in 1993. She contested the Crosby seat at the 1992 general election where she lost to the sitting Conservative MP Malcolm Thornton by 14,806 votes.

For the following election in 1997 Eagle was selected through an all-women shortlist to stand for Labour in Garston, Merseyside. She was elected to the House of Commons with a majority of 18,417 and remains an MP, now for Garston & Halewood, following boundary changes in 2010.

Parliamentary career
In parliament Eagle was a member of the Public Accounts Committee following her initial election, and in 1999 she was appointed the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State at the Department of Health, John Hutton. She was promoted to the Tony Blair government following the 2001 general election as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, and after the 2005 general election, she was the Minister for Children at the Department for Education and Skills, until the May 2006 reshuffle moved her to Northern Ireland, where she was Minister for more than one department at a time, including a period at the Department for Employment and Learning, on 29 June 2007 she moved to the Ministry of Justice. As part of the reshuffle of Gordon Brown's government in October 2008, she assumed additional responsibility for the Government Equalities Office. In the June 2009 reshuffle she was promoted to Minister of State within the justice department.

After Labour lost the 2010 general election she served in interim Labour leader Harriet Harman's front bench as Shadow Solicitor General and Shadow Justice Minister. In October 2010 Eagle was elected to the Shadow Cabinet of new Labour Party leader Edward Miliband as Shadow Secretary of State for Transport in the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet election.

Eagle was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in September 2015 by the newly elected Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Eagle said she was surprised by her appointment as she disagrees with Corbyn's advocacy of unilateral nuclear disarmament and supports of the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system. In January 2016, she was moved to the position of Shadow Culture Secretary. She resigned from the shadow cabinet on 27 June 2016.