Angela Eagle - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

Eagle was first elected in the 1992 election when she defeated the Minister for Overseas Development at the Foreign Office Lynda Chalker by 3,809 votes, and has remained an MP since. She made her maiden speech on 11 May 1992.

In parliament she became a member of the Employment Select Committee in 1994, and was promoted by Tony Blair in 1996 to the position of an Opposition Whip, and became a member of the Blair government following the 1997 general election as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, moving to the Department of Social Security in 1998. Following the 2001 general election, she was a junior minister at the Home Office but was sacked by Blair in 2002. She has been a member of the Treasury Select Committee since 2003. She returned to the government under Gordon Brown on 29 June 2007 Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the most junior minister at HM Treasury. She was promoted to Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions in the June 2009 reshuffle.

Following Ed Miliband's accession to Labour Leader, Eagle was elected to his shadow cabinet, finishing tied 4th in the vote and was subsequently appointed to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury briefing, shadowing Danny Alexander.

In April 2011, Eagle was famously put down in the House of Commons by prime minister David Cameron when he used Michael Winner's catchphrase "Calm down, dear", in a way that was widely regarded as patronising. Eagle's colleague, deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman, stated "Women in Britain in the 21st century do not expect to be told to 'calm down, dear' by their Prime Minister", with Labour officials calling for an apology, suggesting the remark was patronising and sexist. However it soon emerged that Cameron had previously used the same line in the Commons to a male MP, David Miliband.

In June 2012, Eagle criticised Take That singer Gary Barlow in the House of Commons following newspaper allegations of tax avoidance made against him. Eagle criticised his recent award of the OBE and claimed in the House of Commons that Barlow had "given a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Take That'", as well as questioning why Prime Minister David Cameron hadn't criticised Barlow publicly in the same way he had criticised comedian Jimmy Carr for tax avoidance.