Caroline Flint

Caroline Flint
MP
Caroline Flint MP
Member of Parliament; for Don Valley
	Incumbent
	Assumed office ; 1 May 1997
Preceded by	Martin Redmond
Personal details
Born	20 September 1961 (age 63); Twickenham, England
Political party	Labour
Alma mater	University of East Anglia

Caroline Louise Flint (born 20 September 1961 in Twickenham, England) is a British Labour politician. She is the Member of Parliament for Don Valley in Northern England, the Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber.

Early life

Flint was educated at Twickenham County School for Girls (the school transferred to Waldegrave School for Girls in 1977) on Clifden Road in Whitton and Richmond Tertiary College (now Richmond Adult Community College on the site of the former Twickenham girls school) before earning her BA (Hons) in American Literature and History combined with Film Studies from the University of East Anglia. She joined the Labour Party when 17 and from 1982-4, was the Labour Student National Women's Officer.

She began her career with Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), as a management trainee from 1984-5 and a Policy Officer from 1985-7. She was head of the Women's Unit at the NUS from 1988-9, before joining Lambeth Council as an Equal Opportunities Officer from 1989-91, and then Welfare and Staff Development Officer from 1991-3. From 1994 she was the Senior Researcher and Political Officer for the GMB Union before becoming an MP in 1997.

Political career

Flint is a member of the Fabian Society and has been an MP since 1997. In 1999, she became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Peter Hain in his capacity as Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office before in 2002 becoming Parliamentary Private Secretary to Dr John Reid, in his capacity as Leader of the House of Commons and Minister without Portfolio.

She joined the Government in June 2003 as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office, before moving in May 2005 to the Department of Health, with responsibility for Public Health first as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and from May 2006 as Minister of State in the same role.

As Public Health minister she was responsible for managing government programmes concerning radiation exposure, the potential bird flu epidemic, sex education, and the prevention of communicable diseases such as TB and HIV, and oversaw campaigns to tackle obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. She was also due to take charge of the enforcement of the Labour government's ban on smoking in all public places, but was moved just a couple of days before it came into force.

According to Conservative MP for Henley, Boris Johnson, she was also responsible for a government "crackdown" on wine drinking by older persons in their homes, including a demand for health warnings on bottles, which was announced in June 2007. In his column in the Daily Telegraph on June 6th 2007, he asserted that-

"She is a junior minister anxious to make a name for herself, and she has seen that there could be no more powerful way of asserting her own existence than stamping her mark, like the signature of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, on every bottle we buy. It is all about Caroline Flint, and it has very little to do with the drinkers of Britain and their problems."

In February 2007, it was announced that she would be Hazel Blears' campaign manager in Blears' campaign for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party following John Prescott's resignation. The campaign was unsuccesful, with Blears finishing last in the Deputy Leadership election.

In the cabinet reshuffle of June 29 2007 she moved to the Department of Work and Pensions.

Personal life

She is married to Phil Cole, a councillor on Doncaster Borough Council and her second husband, they have a son and daughter from her first marriage and step-son from his.

Trivia

Caroline Flint and her husband Phil once foiled an armed robbery, with the perpetrator receiving a 10-year prison sentence.
Along with several other Labour women MPs, she is a member of a tap dancing troupe known as the Division Belles. Other members include Hazel Blears, Beverley Hughes, Laura Moffatt, Meg Munn, Joan Ryan and Dari Taylor.

External links

Audio clips

Video clips

Discussing the smoking ban

News items

Former husband - Daily Mail February 2007

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