Catharine Letitia Hoey, Baroness Hoey (born 21 June 1946), better known as Kate Hoey, is a Northern Irish politician and life peer who served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Home Affairs from 1998 to 1999 and Minister for Sport from 1999 to 2001. During the 1970s Hoey was involved in radical far-left groups but by the end of the decade became involved with the Labour Party. Hoey remained a member of the Labour Party for several decades while she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Vauxhall from 1989 to 2019, but resigned from the party in 2020.
Hoey has attracted a high level of attention throughout her career, but particularly in the 2010s, holding many socially conservative views that brought her into conflict with fellow members of Labour. Early in her life, Hoey was radically in favour of a United Ireland; however, in more recent decades she has pulled away from this view, declaring in 2017 "I'm pro-union, I'll do anything to make sure that the United Kingdom has Northern Ireland as an integral part of it on the same terms as any other part of the United Kingdom when we leave the EU."
Hoey was born in Mallusk, County Antrim, and studied at Belfast Royal Academy and the Ulster College of Physical Education. She has a degree in Economics earned at London Guildhall University, and was a Vice-President of the National Union of Students.
Hoey has a longstanding interest in sport. She was the 1966 Northern Ireland high jump champion and has worked for football clubs including Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Queens Park Rangers, Chelsea and Brentford as an educational advisor. Before entering Parliament, she was educational adviser to Arsenal FC from 1985 to 1989.
During the mid-1970s Hoey was one of the early members of the Newtownabbey Labour Party, which left its parent organisation, the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), in 1974. Prior to being a member of the British Labour Party, Hoey was a member of the International Marxist Group (IMG), whose policies included support for a united Ireland with the slogan 'Victory for the IRA'. Hoey also ran for a seat on the National Union of Students as a candidate for a left-wing grouping called the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Student Unions (LDSCU). The LDSCU demanded the defence of student unions and "solidarity of students and workers". Another LCDSU demand was "Support for both wings of the IRA – unconditionally but not uncritically".
As a member of the Labour Party, she unsuccessfully contested Dulwich at the 1983 and 1987 general elections, being defeated by the Conservative Gerald Bowden, on the second occasion by only 180 votes. In 1989, she was elected at the Vauxhall by-election precipitated by the resignation of Stuart Holland. Vauxhall Constituency Labour Party had wanted Martha Osamor, vice-chair of the Labour Party Black Sections, as the Party's candidate. Osamor did secure the most nominations, eighty in total, with Hoey only having one. However, the National Executive Committee declined to shortlist Osamor and imposed a shortlist on the constituency party. When the local party refused to choose from the shortlist, Hoey was imposed by the NEC as the Labour candidate.
Interviewed by a Belfast-based newspaper in 1989, Hoey claimed that she "yearned" for Irish unity, adding "I believe that there should be a united Ireland by consent and I think that there are a lot of people in Ireland who want this." Hoey also said she wanted to see an all-Ireland soccer team: "I believe that football supporters on both sides of the border would like to see this happen but it is football officials who are preventing it from coming about."
Hoey was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office from 1998 to 1999, and Minister for Sport in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport from 1999 to 2001.
As the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Zimbabwe, Hoey was a vocal critic of the government of Robert Mugabe. In 2005, she called on Tony Blair to put diplomatic pressure on South Africa to condemn Zimbabwean government demolitions of townships, after an unsanctioned visit to the country. The Zimbabwean government threatened to jail her if she repeated her "sneak" visit.
On 29 April 2008, it was announced that Hoey would form part of the team of Conservative Boris Johnson, should he become Mayor, as an unpaid non-executive director advising on sport and the 2012 Olympics. The announcement was controversial both because Hoey had once said of London's Olympic bid "we don't deserve it and Paris does" and because it could have been perceived as endorsing an election candidate from a rival party.
Hoey nominated John McDonnell for the Labour leadership election of 2010 but, on his withdrawal, she switched her nomination to Diane Abbott. However, she voted for Andy Burnham, giving Ed Miliband her second preference. In the 2015 Labour election, Hoey supported Andy Burnham and Caroline Flint for the leadership and deputy leadership, saying that she could not see Liz Kendall as a Prime Minister.
In 2016, Hoey was one of few Labour MPs who voted to have confidence in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the party. She supported him during the leadership contest.
On 8 July 2019, Hoey announced that she would retire from the House of Commons, and would not seek re-election as a Labour candidate at the next general election. The constituency Labour Party had voted to censure her and passed a vote of no confidence after she was one of 4 Labour MPs who had supported the government.
In December 2019 Hoey announced she was no longer a member of the Labour Party.
In July 2020, Hoey was nominated for a life peerage in the House of Lords in the 2019 Dissolution Honours and was created Baroness Hoey, of Lylehill and Rathlin in the County of Antrim, on 14 September 2020.
On 23 August 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Baroness Hoey as the UK's trade envoy to Ghana.
Hoey is a Eurosceptic and supported Brexit, and has often rebelled against her party. She was a prominent critic of the ban on handguns and, in an interview in Sporting Gun magazine, voiced her support for fox hunting. She has voted against Labour government policy on the war in Iraq, foundation hospitals, Trident, university tuition and top-up fees, ID cards and extended detention without trial. She was a leading Labour rebel supporting a referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty.
In 1994, Hoey successfully proposed an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to have Northern Ireland included in the gay age of consent reform which reduced the male age from 21 to 18. Her amendment passed by 254 votes to 141.