Alan Johnson
Alan Arthur Johnson is a British former politician who served as Secretary of State for Education and Skills from 2006 to 2007, Secretary of State for Health from 2007 to 2009, Home Secretary from 2009 to 2010, and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2011. A member of the Labour Party, he was the Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle from 1997 to 2017.
Johnson served in the Cabinet during both the Tony Blair government and that of Gordon Brown. He served under Blair as Minister of State for Universities from 2003 to 2004, as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2004 to 2005, and as President of the Board of Trade from 2005 to 2006.
In May 2023, Johnson was announced as the next Chancellor of the University of Hull. He succeeded Virginia Bottomley in July.
Early life
Born in London on 17 May 1950, the son of Stephen and Lillian Johnson, he was orphaned at the age of 13 when his mother died, his father having previously abandoned the family, forcing his sister Linda to become the primary care-giver and breadwinner. Soon after this, they moved to a council flat in Pitt House, Battersea, immediately adjacent to the Winstanley and York Estates, a traumatic change from their previous address in Notting Hill. Johnson describes how he and his sister faced hostility from neighbouring tenants, who were resentful because others were unable to obtain council housing at this time. This meant that their flat was often broken into and targeted for vandalism. Linda, herself aged only 16 at that time, has since been recognised as the hero of Johnson's 2013 memoir This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood.Johnson passed the eleven-plus exam and attended Sloane Grammar school in Chelsea, now part of Pimlico Academy, and left school at the age of 15. He then worked at Tesco before becoming a postman at 18. He was interested in music and joined two pop music bands. Johnson joined the Union of Communication Workers, becoming a branch official. He joined the Labour Party in 1971 and has described his views at the time as democratic socialist, having drawn ideological inspiration from studying George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in school, although he also considered himself a Marxist ideologically aligned with the Communist Party of Great Britain. A full-time union official from 1987, he became General Secretary of the union in 1992.
Before entering parliament Johnson was a member of Labour's National Executive Committee. During this time, he was the only major union leader to support the abolition of Clause IV.
Parliamentary career
Just three weeks before the 1997 general election, Johnson was selected to stand for parliament in the safe Labour seat of Hull West and Hessle when the previous incumbent, Stuart Randall, stood down suddenly. Randall subsequently became a member of the House of Lords.In government
He was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Dawn Primarolo in 1997 and achieved his first ministerial post at the Department of Trade and Industry in 1999. He was moved to the Department for Education and Skills in 2003 as Minister for Higher Education although he had left school at 15.Johnson, along with other ministers in Tony Blair's government, and many other MPs, attracted much criticism for voting on 18 March 2003 for the Iraq war: "to use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction" leading to the UK joining the US invasion of Iraq two days later. He responded to such criticism on 21 February 2007 by saying: "The whole cabinet believed the intelligence we were presented and we made our case to the British people based on it in good faith. As we all now know, that intelligence was wholly wrong. We will be judged historically as to whether getting rid of Saddam Hussein, despite all the consequences, was a positive thing or that the consequences outweigh the positives of getting rid of a brutal tyrant."
In September 2004, Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed Johnson to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions following resignation of Andrew Smith. Following the 2005 election, Johnson was initially announced on 6 May 2005 as being Secretary of State for Productivity, Energy and Industry, but after just a week, on 13 May, it was declared that the new title would not be used, after widespread derision of the new name, because the abbreviation for Johnson's title, Productivity, Energy and Industry Secretary would have been "PENIS". The department's old name was kept and Johnson served as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. On 5 May 2006, one day after the 2006 local elections, his brief was changed to that of Secretary of State for Education and Skills, replacing Ruth Kelly.
Education Secretary
During his time as education secretary, Johnson brought in new ideas and proposals, including encouraging parents to spend more time with their children in a bid to help them progress with their literacy and numeracy skills. Johnson has also previously expressed some concerns over diplomas, and has opened up debate in parliament on the subject of what parental situation is best. He stated that in his view, it is the parents themselves who make the difference, not their marital situation. Johnson looked at improving pay and working conditions for teachers during his tenure as Education Secretary.Health Secretary
Johnson became Secretary of State for Health on 28 June 2007, succeeding Patricia Hewitt in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's first Cabinet. He later criticised breast cancer patient Debbie Hirst because she attempted to buy the cancer drug Avastin, which the NHS had denied her. Johnson told Parliament, patients "cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the NHS and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs. That way lies the end of the founding principles of the NHS".When there was a problem with C. difficile at hospitals managed by the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, they dismissed their "blameless" chief executive "both unlawfully... and unfairly" and agreed to pay her £250,000, much less than the sum that they were told that defending a case for unfair dismissal would cost. When the proposed payment became known, Johnson intervened and the Department of Health ordered the trust to withhold more than two-thirds of the severance payment, although its director general of finance, performance and operations said that "it was 'not unfair'" that she should receive the money. When the case came to the Court of Appeal, the payment was restored in a judgement that was highly critical of the Department, including quoting her complaint that Johnson had made "personal comments made about me... without any reference to the Trust, or informing me,... regarding my severance value and its non-payment".
Home Secretary
On 5 June 2009, Johnson was appointed to the position of Home Secretary during a reshuffle, replacing the first female holder of the post, Jacqui Smith.In October 2009, Johnson sacked the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Professor David Nutt. Nutt had accused the government of "distorting" and "devaluing" research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs, criticising it for making political decisions with regard to drug classifications in rejecting the scientific advice to downgrade MDMA from a class A drug, and rejecting the scientific advice not to reclassify cannabis from class C to class B drug. Johnson wrote to the professor: "It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine public understanding of them. I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD".
In January 2010, Professor Nutt established the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, with the aim of publishing honest drug information. By 2 April 2010, seven members of the ACMD had resigned.
In February 2010, it came out in court that MI5 had known that Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, had been tortured or mistreated by the American services, despite earlier statements to the contrary. In response, Johnson insisted that the media coverage of the torture had been "baseless, groundless accusations". He also said Government lawyers had not forced the judiciary to water down criticism of MI5, despite an earlier, draft ruling by Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights, deliberately misled parliament, and had a "culture of suppression" that undermined government assurances about its conduct.
Deputy leadership candidate and potential leader
Johnson publicly stated in May 2006 he expected to stand for the post of Leader of the Labour Party when Tony Blair stepped down. Johnson told the BBC in an interview on 9 November 2006 that he would in fact be supporting Brown and standing as deputy leader. He was successfully nominated onto the ballot paper for Labour Deputy leader with most number of nominations. On 24 June 2007, Johnson was narrowly beaten for the deputy leadership by Harriet Harman. He led in rounds 2 to 4 of the voting, until he was overtaken by Harman in the last round, eventually finishing with 49.56% of the vote.Having been touted in the media as a possible successor to outgoing Labour leader Gordon Brown, Johnson announced to the BBC on 12 May 2010 that he would not be standing in the forthcoming leadership contest, and would instead be backing David Miliband.
In November 2014, amid criticism within the party of its leader Ed Miliband, Johnson again denied speculation that he was a potential leadership candidate.