Meg Hillier MP - Who is she?

Meg Hillier was first elected as the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch in 2005, being reelected in 2019 with a massive majority of 33,985.

The constituency of Hackney South and Shoreditch is located just to the north east of central London. Spreading north east from the City of London with its financial district, towards the Olympic Park at Stratford in the east, this seat contains the centre of Hackney, Hoxton, Victoria and Wick. This is an ethnically diverse and relatively deprived area in which over half of residences are socially rented. In the 2016 EU referendum, some 77.9% of the electorate backed Remain, one of the highest levels anywhere in the UK. This area of London is an exceptionally safe seat which has been held by the Labour Party ever since the Second World War.

Hillier served in the last Labour government as Under Secretary of State at the Home Office between 2007 and 2008, and 2009 and 2010.

Hillier has been Chair of the influential Commons Public Account Committee since 2015.

In this role, Hillier leads the committee in its examinations of the value for money of government projects, programmes and services.

Rwanda plan cost will surpass £290 million over full five year deal, Home Office admits

Born in 1969, Meg Hillier was educated at Oxford University. She then took a diploma in newspaper journalism, and worked as a journalist before being elected to Parliament.

Hillier was previously a local councillor in Islington for eight years. She was the youngest ever Mayor of Islington in 1998/99. Hillier was elected to the London Assembly to represent Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest in 2000. She chaired the London Assembly’s Culture, Sport and Tourism committee.

Despite her time in Islington, where Jeremy Corbyn is the local MP, she supported Owen Smith in his 2016 bid to replace the former Labour Leader. She did though support the other Islington MP, Emily Thornberry, in the 2020 Labour leadership contest.

Hillier voted against the triggering of Article 50, which led to Britain leaving the EU, after the 2016 EU referendum. In 2016, Hillier said that she was “devastated” that the UK voted to leave the EU and argued that the decision was fuelled by “xenophobic undertones”.

Meg Hillier is Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Alevis; and on Global Health.