Woodward, Shaun Anthony (1958– )

UK centrist politician, secretary of state for Northern Ireland from 2007. A former Conservative member of Parliament (MP), he ‘defected’ to the Labour Party in 1999 and was brought into the cabinet in June 2007 by the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, as Northern Ireland secretary.

Born in Bristol, he studied English Literature at Cambridge University and worked as a researcher and producer for BBC current affairs programmes 1982–90. He was director of communications for the Conservative Party 1991–92 and was elected to Parliament at the 1997 general election as a Conservative Party MP for the Witney constituency, in Oxfordshire. He was a front-bench spokesperson for the Conservatives, then in opposition and led by William Hague, until 1999 when he was sacked for supporting the repeal of Section 28, a regulation which prevented education in schools about homosexuality He left the Conservatives to join the Labour Party and at the 2001 general election was elected to the safe Labour seat of St Helens South. Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed him undersecretary of state at the Northern Ireland Office in 2005 and he was moved to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in May 2006.

Because of his personal wealth, derived from marriage into the wealthy supermarket Sainsbury family, he chose not to receive a ministerial salary.