Helen Goodman

Early life

Goodman is the daughter of a Danish immigrant mother and architect father. She grew up in Derbyshire and was educated at her village school and the comprehensive Lady Manners School, Bakewell, Derbyshire. She studied PPE at Somerville College, Oxford.

Career before Parliament

On leaving Oxford she worked as a researcher for the Labour MP Phillip Whitehead. She worked in HM Treasury as a fast stream administrator holding many posts including on the Energy Desk, the Exchange Rate Desk, Central Budget Unit, Overseas Finance and finally she was the head of strategy. In 1990-91 she was seconded to the Office of the Czechoslovak Prime Minister to advise on their economic transition after the Velvet Revolution.

From 1997 she was the director of the Commission on the Future for MultiEthnic Britain (sponsored by the Runnymede Trust). She was appointed the Head of Strategy at The Children's Society in 1998, where she was involved in lobbying on policies to cut child poverty. From 2002 until her election she was the chief executive of the National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries which supported 1,000 projects across Great Britain. She is a member of the GMB Union and the Christian Socialist Movement, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth. She has published numerous articles including in the Political Quarterly.

Parliamentary career

Goodman was selected as the Labour candidate for the County Durham seat of Bishop Auckland at the 2005 General Election through an All-Women Shortlist, following the retirement of the veteran Labour MP Derek Foster. Goodman held the seat with a majority of 10,047 and made her maiden speech on 25 May 2005. She was re-elected in 2010, and again in 2015.

She was a member of the Public Accounts Committee from May 2005 to April 2007 before becoming a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Ministry of Justice. In June 2007 she was appointed Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, before being made a whip in October 2008. She left this role in June 2009 to become a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions. In this role she steered the Child Poverty Act onto the statute book, alongside Stephen Timms.

After the 2010 General Election, Goodman nominated Ed Miliband to be the leader of the Labour Party. After his victory she was appointed as opposition spokesman in Labour's Justice team with special responsibility for Prisons and Sentencing policy. In October 2011 she became Shadow Minister for Media. In this role she has campaigned for better child protection online. In October 2013 she was also given responsibility for Labour's Arts policy.

In 2010 she ran a successful campaign in conjunction with The Northern Echo to save the Zurbarán paintings at Auckland Castle when the Commissioners of the Church of England threatened to sell them. In February 2013, appalled at the impact of the "bedroom tax" on her constituents, she tried to live for a week on £18.

On 3 December 2014, she became Shadow Minister for Welfare Reform as part of a small reshuffle by Ed Miliband. Since February 2016, Goodman has also served as a member of the Advisory Board at Polar Research and Policy Initiative.

From 9 June 2016 - 12 June 2016 she attended the 64th annual Bilderberg Conference in Dresden, Germany.

In 2017 she took part in a campaign to save the DWP office in Bishop Auckland from closure. She raised questions in Parliament regarding the proposed office closure and took part in a match and Rally opposing the closure on 18 March 2017

Expenses

In May 2009, the Daily Telegraph revealed that Goodman had claimed £519.31 for use of a cottage in her own constituency on her expenses, and had submitted hotel bills dated two months prior to her becoming an MP. Goodman argued that she was carrying out Parliamentary business when using the cottage and thus her claim was accepted, and the claim for the hotel stay - which was rejected - was a mistake.

She also claimed a £600 fee for advice from her management consultant husband. Goodman pointed out that the independent inquiry by Thomas Legg into MPs expenses had given her "an entirely clean bill of health and concluded that none of my claims required further explanation or clarification.”

Ingleton

In June 2014, Goodman was invited to give a speech at the opening of a village fair at Ingleton, County Durham in the parliamentary constituency which she had represented for nine years.

During her speech, she praised the village for the beauty of its waterfalls and caves and for its connection with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. None of these features applied to the County Durham village, but were in fact references to the village of Ingleton, situated seventy miles away in North Yorkshire. The speech reportedly "baffled" the audience and after five minutes she was called away from the microphone and informed of her mistake.

Twitter controversy

In October 2015, Goodman attracted criticism from fellow MPs over a tweet mentioning Jeremy Hunt's wife. Hunt had mentioned his wife in a speech on Asian economies' work culture, and Goodman's tweet asked "if China is so great, why did Jeremy Hunt's wife come to England". She later deleted the tweet and issued an apology.

Personal life

Goodman is married to Charles Seaford who works for the New Economics Foundation. The couple have two children.