Kate Hoey

The Baroness Hoey
Official portrait, 2022
Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee
Acting
15 May 2019 – 12 June 2019
Preceded byAndrew Murrison
Succeeded bySimon Hoare
Minister for Sport
In office
20 October 1999 – 7 June 2001
Prime MinisterTony Blair
Preceded byTony Banks
Succeeded byRichard Caborn
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
In office
28 July 1998 – 29 July 1999
Prime MinisterTony Blair
Preceded byThe Lord Williams of Mostyn
Succeeded byThe Lord Bassam of Brighton
Parliamentary offices
Member of the House of Lords
Life peerage
13 October 2020
Member of Parliament
for Vauxhall
In office
15 June 1989 – 6 November 2019
Preceded byStuart Holland
Succeeded byFlorence Eshalomi
Personal details
Born (1946-06-21) 21 June 1946 (age 78)
Mallusk, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
Political partyNon-affiliated (2020–present)[1]
Labour (before 2019)
ResidenceNorthern Ireland
Alma materUniversity of Ulster
London Guildhall University
Websitewww.katehoey.com

Catharine Letitia Hoey, Baroness Hoey[2] (born 21 June 1946), better known as Kate Hoey, is a Northern Irish politician and life peer who served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Home Affairs from 1998 to 1999 and Minister for Sport from 1999 to 2001. During the 1970s Hoey was involved in radical far-left groups but by the end of the decade became involved with the Labour Party. Hoey remained a member of the Labour Party for several decades while she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Vauxhall from 1989 to 2019, but resigned from the party in 2020.

Hoey has attracted a high level of attention throughout her career, but particularly in the 2010s, holding many socially conservative views that brought her into conflict with fellow members of Labour. Early in her life, Hoey was radically in favour of a United Ireland; however, in more recent decades she has pulled away from this view, declaring in 2017 "I’m pro-union, I’ll do anything to make sure that the United Kingdom has Northern Ireland as an integral part of it on the same terms as any other part of the United Kingdom when we leave the EU."[3]

  1. ^ @CatharineHoey (14 December 2019). "I will not have a vote for Labours new Leader as no longer a member of @UKLabour but with @CarolineFlintMP not an MP there would have been no-one I could have supported anyway" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 December 2019 – via Twitter.
  2. ^ "Kate Hoey chooses title of Baroness of Lylehill & Rathlin after townland of her idyllic childhood". Belfast News Letter. 19 September 2020. Retrieved 15 September 2021.
  3. ^ Staunton, Denis (10 December 2017). "Kate Hoey: an Antrim-born MP who said Ireland should pay for Border". The Irish Times. Retrieved 10 January 2023.