Hilary worked for over 22 years for the trade union movement with ASTMS and MSF. In 1993, he was appointed as Head of Research- at MSF and three years later was promoted to the post of Head of Policy and Communications, representing MSF on the National Policy Forum and serving on the Party into Power Taskforce. Hilary has also been an active supporter of Unions21 – the trade union think-tank – on which he served as Chair for a number of years. As special adviser to the Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, Hilary was closely involved in setting up the Union Learning Fund.

Hilary also has experience on the front line in many other parts of the Labour movement. A former President of Ealing Acton Constituency Labour Party, Hilary was elected to Ealing Borough Council in 1979 at the age of 25 (taking a Tory seat in the process!) After contesting Ealing North as a parliamentary candidate in 1983 and 1987, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Leeds Central in a by-election in 1999. He spent two years on the backbenches, serving on the Environment, Transport and the Regions Select Committee and as Vice-Chair of the Backbench Education Committee of Labour MPs, before being appointed as Clare Short’s deputy at the Department for International Development in 2001.

Following a spell as the Minister for Prisons and Probation at the Home Office, Hilary returned to DFID as Minister of State, before joining the Cabinet as the Secretary of State in Oct 2003. At DFID, Hilary has led the UK’s fight to defeat global poverty and ran a successful campaign to establish the UN humanitarian fund. He was Vice-Chair of the Commission for Africa, whose report played an important part in the Gleneagles G8 summit agreements on debt cancellation and increased aid.

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