Jane Kennedy

Jane Elizabeth Kennedy ( Hodgson; born 4 May 1958) is a British politician and the inaugural Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool Wavertree, formerly Liverpool Broadgreen, from 1992 to 2010. Formerly a member of the Government, on 8 June 2009, she returned to the backbenches leaving her position as Minister of State for Farming and the Environment at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Originally a member of the Labour Party, she left the party in March 2019 after the resignation of her successor, Luciana Berger MP, and the announcement that former Liverpool City councillor Derek Hatton - a former member of the Militant tendency - had been re-admitted to party membership. Early life She was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland, and attended Haughton Comprehensive School (now part of the 'Education Village') on Rockwell Avenue in Haughton Le Skerne, then Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington. She studied chemistry at the University of Liverpool from 1976 until 1978, however did not graduate from her studies, deciding to marry and settle with her family in Liverpool. She worked in social care for Liverpool City Council from 1979 to 1988, and in 1988 she became a trade union Area Organiser for the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) until 1992. In Liverpool she had been active in ending the Militant group's infiltration of the Liverpool Labour Party.