Tessa Jowell

Tessa Jane Helen Douglas Jowell, Baroness Jowell, (; 18 September 1947 – 12 May 2018) was a British Labour Party politician and life peer who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dulwich and West Norwood, previously Dulwich, from 1992 to 2015.

Jowell held a number of major government ministerial positions, as well as opposition appointments, during this period. She served as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 2001 to 2007 and Minister for the Cabinet Office from 2009 to 2010. A member of both the Blair and Brown Cabinets, she was also Minister for the Olympics (2005–10) and Shadow Minister for the Olympics and Shadow Minister for London until September 2012, resigning after the London Olympic Games.

A Privy Councillor from 1998, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2012. She stood down from the House of Commons at the 2015 general election.

She was nominated for a life peerage in the 2015 Dissolution Honours and was raised to the peerage as Baroness Jowell, of Brixton in the London Borough of Lambeth, on 27 October 2015. In September 2015, she was unsuccessful in seeking to be selected as the Labour Party's official candidate in the 2016 London mayoral election, coming second to Sadiq Khan in the contest of six candidates.

Early life

Tessa Jane Helen Douglas Palmer was born at Middlesex Hospital in Marylebone, London, to Kenneth Nelson Veysey Palmer, a physician, and his wife, Rosemary (née Douglas), a radiographer.

She was educated at the independent St Margaret's School for Girls in Aberdeen, the University of Aberdeen (where she studied arts, psychology and sociology) and the University of Edinburgh (where she studied for an MA in Social Administration). She became a social worker, initially working in the Craigmillar area of Edinburgh and as a childcare officer in Lambeth, before training at Goldsmiths College as a psychiatric social worker. She subsequently worked at the Maudsley Hospital, and later became assistant director of the mental health charity Mind.

During this time, Jowell took her first steps into electoral politics, being elected to represent Swiss Cottage on Camden London Borough Council in the early 1970s, and becoming Chair of the Camden Borough Council's Social Services Committee at the age of 25. In 1978, she was the Labour Party candidate in a by-election in Ilford North but lost Labour's majority to the Conservatives. She stood again in Ilford North at the 1979 general election, also unsuccessfully.

Member of Parliament

Elected as MP for Dulwich at the 1992 general election, Jowell was successively appointed as an Opposition Spokesperson on Health, an Opposition Whip and Spokesperson on Women, before returning to the Shadow Health team in 1996. following boundary changes, she was the MP for Dulwich and West Norwood from 1997.

In government

Jowell was appointed as Minister of State in the Department of Health following the 1997 Labour electoral landslide. As the first Minister for Public Health she championed cross-sectoral action to improve health and reduce inequalities, initially set out in her green paper "Our Healthier Nation". She moved, again as Minister of State, to the Department for Education and Employment in 1999.

She was appointed Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport following the 2001 election, replacing the sacked Chris Smith. One of her main concerns as Culture Secretary was television broadcasting. She blocked the BBC
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