Margaret Hodge has become the sixth minister in as many years to hold
the corporate social responsibility portfolio in the Labour
administration, taking over from Malcolm Wicks.
Wicks initially held on to the post in a reshuffle in May, but had been under fire for his perceived lack of interest (EP8, issue 2, p8).
Last month the trade and industry department announced it had relieved
him of the CSR brief, leaving him to concentrate on the energy
portfolio, which is midway through a national review.
Hodge, a
colleague at the trade ministry, will now have responsibility for CSR
along with a number of other issues, including the Company Law Reform
Bill (also now known as the Companies Bill) and the Small Business
Service. A former leader of Islington council in London, she has been
an MP since 1994, and has spent most of her eight-year ministerial
career in education and employment.
Hodge, who was born in
Egypt in 1944, spent two years as a senior consultant for Price
Waterhouse from 1992 to 1994, and has a degree from the London School
of Economics.
