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The Right Honourable Harriet Harman (born 1950) is a British barrister and Labour politician. She has been the Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham since 1982. She was educated at the University of York.
She became Labour's front-bench spokesman for Social Services in 1984, and then Health in 1987. After the 1992 general election she was elected to the Shadow Cabinet and became shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, then Shadow Secretary of State for Health. It was in this position that she caused furore when she sent her eldest son to a grant maintained school, then her younger son to a grammmar school, despite then Labour party policy opposing these. She weathered the storm with the support of the Labour leader, Tony Blair who moved her to the position of Shadow Secretary of State for Social Security. After Labour's victory in the 1997 general election, she became Secretary of State for Social Security and was given the task of reforming the Welfare State, but made little headway and fell out with her junior minister, Frank Field. Both were sacked in a reshuffle in 1998.
She made a return to the front bench in 2001 with her appointment to the office of Solicitor General.
It was reported in January 2004 that her son, in his first year at the University of Warwick, had not been evicted from halls for being caught smoking marijuana, contrary to the university's policy, and at odds with the fate of a fellow first-year, who had died on the way home after suffering the usual punishment, getting lost, and wandering on to some train tracks.
She made an embarrassing gaffe on the BBC political talk-show programme Question Time on 18 March 2004 when she described Gordon Brown as being the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, especially as he has designs on taking over Tony Blair's job, and that she is rumoured to be one of Brown's supporters.
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