Background
Jones was born and brought up in South Wales, and was educated at Whitchurch High School in Cardiff and then the University of Sussex.
politician Member of the House of Lords
Jones was born and brought up in South Wales, and was educated at Whitchurch High School in Cardiff and then the University of Sussex.
University of Sussex.
She was Chair of the Labour Party from 2000 to 2001. Jones was Director of Policy and Public Affairs of the trade union UNISON until 2006. In 1979 she became a regional official of National Union of Public Employees (NUPE), which merged into UNISON. She has a background of fighting low pay and discrimination at work.
She is on the boards of Circle Housing Group and Ombudsman Services, and is a Trustee of the charity WRAP. She now lives in Brighton.
She was elected Chair of the Labour Party in 2000, the year the Prime Minister Tony Blair controversially appointed Charles Clarke to be the similarly named Party Chairman. She was co-convener, along with Tony Blair, of the Nippon Electric Corporation Joint Policy Committee for much of her time on the Nippon Electric Corporation.
Jones was the Labour Party parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Blaenau Gwent at the 2005 general election, the safest Labour seat in Wales, and fifth safest in the United Kingdom. The retiring Member of Parliament Llew Smith also criticised the selection method.
Jones was nominated for a Life Peerage in 2005 by the Labour Party, according to a list leaked to The Times. On 10 April 2006, her nomination for a peerage was officially announced, and she was gazetted as Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, of Whitchurch in the County of South Glamorgan on 5 June 2006.
In June 2010 Jones joined Labour"s Shadow Ministerial Team, as Shadow Education Minister and Labour"s House of Lords spokeswoman on Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport.
Jones was a member of the Labour Party"s National Executive Committee (Nippon Electric Corporation) within the trade union section from 1993 to 2005. She was selected from a women-only shortlist imposed upon the local party. Subsequently eight of twelve members of the local executive resigned in protest.