Peter Hain
British politician (born 1950)
Peter Gerald Hain, Baron Hain, (born 16 February 1950) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2005 to 2007, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2007 to 2008 and twice as Secretary of State for Wales from 2002 to 2008 and from 2009 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Neath between 1991 and 2015.
Born in Kenya Colony to South African parents, Hain came to the United Kingdom from South Africa as a teenager and was a noted anti-fascist and anti-apartheid campaigner in the 1970s, and was convicted of criminal conspiracy for leading direct action events. Elected to Parliament at a 1991 by-election, he initially served in Tony Blair's government as a junior minister in the Wales Office, Foreign Office and Department of Trade and Industry. Promoted to the Cabinet as Welsh Secretary in 2002, he served concurrently as Leader of the House of Commons from 2003 to 2005 and Northern Ireland Secretary from 2005 to 2007.
Hain stood for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in the 2007 deputy leadership election, coming fifth out of six candidates. He was promoted to Work and Pensions Secretary by new leader Gordon Brown, while remaining Welsh Secretary. His failure to declare donations during the deputy leadership contest led to his resignation from both roles in 2008. He later returned to the Cabinet from 2009 to 2010 as Welsh Secretary.
After Labour was defeated at the 2010 general election, Hain was Shadow Welsh Secretary in the Miliband shadow cabinet from 2010 until 2012, when he announced his retirement from frontline politics.
“Peter Hain” enters the record as british politician (born 1950). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Peter, Hain and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Peter Hain” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Peter, Hain and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q333165. VIAF identifies the subject as 60322859. The Library of Congress control number is n50019752. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2005, 2007 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Hain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.