Stephen Byers

The Right Honourable Stephen John Byers (born April 13 1953) is a British Labour Party politician and former cabinet minister. He is now a backbench MP, and represents North Tyneside.

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Born in Wolverhampton, he gained a law degree at University of Liverpool and became a law lecturer. He was first elected to Parliament in 1992. As a staunch Blairite, he rose swiftly, becoming an education minister in 1997, and joining the cabinet, first as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and then as Trade Secretary, in 1998.

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After the 2001 general election he was made Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government & the Regions, a move that was widely regarded as a demotion. His time in this job turned out to be highly controversial. Critics argued that Transport should be a job in its own right from the outset.

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The first source of controversy was the decision, taken at short notice and at a weekend, to ask the courts to put the privatised railway infrastructure company Railtrack into administration (October 6 2001), leading to the creation of Network Rail. This angered investors who had lost money, and under pressure from the City, the government eventually had to agree compensation terms. The legality of the decision to put Railtrack into administration has been challenged and is the subject of an ongoing court case. Keith Rowley, QC, the barrister for the 49,000 private Railtrack shareholders alleged that Mr Byers "devised a scheme by which he intended to injure the shareholders of Railtrack Group by impairing the value of their interests in that company without paying compensation and without the approval of Parliament".

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At almost the same time, it was revealed that Byers' political adviser Jo Moore had sent an email on September 11 2001 suggesting that the terrorist attacks made it "a very good day to get out anything we want to bury." Moore (and Byers) survived the resulting outrage, but in February 2002 the row broke out again. A leaked email from the Department of Transport's head of news Martin Sixsmith, a former BBC news reporter, seemed to warn Moore not to "bury" any more bad news on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral, implying that she was attempting to do so. On February 15 it was announced that both Moore and Sixsmith had resigned, but Sixsmith later said he had not agreed to go, and that Byers had insisted on Sixsmith's departure as the price for losing Moore. In May it was confirmed by the Department that Byers had announced Sixsmith's resignation prematurely, though the Government said that this was due to a misunderstanding, and he had done nothing wrong.

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Byers' troubles continued over the following months. The Labour-dominated House of Commons Transport Select Committee criticised the party's transport strategy, and a long-running row over Byers' decision as Trade Secretary to allow pornographic-magazine publisher Richard Desmond to buy the Daily Express newspaper returned to the limelight. The pressure on Byers was too much, and he resigned on May 28 2002. In the reshuffle that followed his resignation the post was split up with local government and the regions becoming a part of the remit of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Transport portfolio retained by a full time Secretary of State for Transport.

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1953: 1953 is a common year starting on Thursday....

Labour Party: The name Labour Party or Labor Party is used by several political parties around the world. They are usually Social Democrats and traditionally allied to trade unions. Many labour parties are members of Socialist International....

Cabinet minister: REDIRECT Cabinet (government)...

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