Charles Rodway Clarke (born 21 September 1950) is a British Labour Party politician. He has been Member of Parliament for Norwich South since 1997 and was Home Secretary from December 2004 until May 2006.

The son of Civil Service Permanent Secretary Sir Richard Clarke, Charles Clarke was born in London. He attended the fee-paying Highgate School where he was Head Boy. He then read Mathematics and Economics at King's College, Cambridge, where he also served as the President of the Cambridge Students' Union. A member of the Broad Left faction, he went on to become President of the National Union of Students from 1975 to 1977. Clarke was widely opposed by the moderate element of the Broad Left, and was contrasted (unfavourably) with his more consensus-oriented predecessor John Randall. Proponents of his election spoke, however, of his considerable political savvy.

He was elected as a local councillor in the London Borough of Hackney, being Chair of its Housing Committee and Vice-Chair of economic development from 1980 to 1986. He worked as a researcher, and later Chief of Staff, for Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock from 1981 to 1992. His long association with Kinnock and with the general election defeat in 1992 was expected to handicap him in his career. But Clarke bounced back. He spent the mid-1990s away from national politics, working in the private sector - from 1992 to 1997, he was chief executive of Quality Public Affairs, a public affairs management consultancy - and subsequently emerged as a high flyer under the Labour leadership of Tony Blair.

Elected to the British House of Commons in the Labour landslide of 1997, Clarke served less than a year on the back benches before joining the government as a junior education minister in July 1998. He moved to the Home Office in 1999 and joined the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and Party Chair after the 2001 general election.

He returned to Education as Secretary of State on 24 October, 2002 after the resignation of Estelle Morris. As Education Secretary, he defended Oxbridge, encouraged the establishment of specialist secondary schools, and (allegedly) suggested that the state should not fund "unproductive" humanities research. His view of universities could be seen as either impressively bold or overly instrumental. In 2003, he boiled down the point of all higher education to one simple sentence when he announced: "Universities exist to enable the British economy and society to deal with the challenges posed by the increasingly rapid process of global change". He also oversaw the introduction of Bills to enable universities in the UK to charge top-up fees, despite a Labour manifesto commitment not to introduce such fees.

Following the first resignation of David Blunkett on 15 December 2004, Clarke was made Home Secretary, one of the senior positions in the Cabinet.

He was swiftly at the centre of attention for his advocacy of proposals for countering terrorism. Critics suggest that his reforms to the judicial system undermine centuries of British legal precedent dating back to the 1215 Magna Carta, particularly the right to a fair trial and trial by jury. He was also criticised for continuing to push through the Identity Cards Bill, seen by some as serious infringement of privacy, but Clarke insisted that Identity Cards were necessary to combat terrorism.

During the 2005 UK Presidency of the European Union, Clarke pressed other member states to pass a directive to require communications data to be stored for law enforcement purposes. The directive was criticised as infringing civil liberties and privacy, and critics also noted that the directive had been approved very quickly.

On 25 April, 2006 it emerged that 1,023 foreign prisoners had been freed without being considered for deportation. Among the offenders, five had been convicted of committing sex offences on children, seven had served time for other sex offences, 57 for violent offences and two for manslaughter. There were also 41 burglars, 20 drug importers, 54 convicted of assault and 27 of indecent assault. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett commented that “Heads should roll” over the scandal, despite the fact that many of the releases occurred during his period as Home Secretary (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4943636.stm).

The Home Office later revealed that of those, 288 were released from prison between August 2005 and March 2006 - suggesting the problem continued after it had been raised with the government. The National Audit Office told ministers last July that preparations to remove foreign criminals from the UK should begin "much earlier", and not be left until the end of their prison sentences. Clarke said: "It is a massive issue and it's true to say, with the vast growth of foreign national prisoners, we took our eye off the ball. "The first priority at this moment is to get the situation under control - that is what I'm focusing on. "We don't know exactly where everybody is ... I know where about 100 of those 1,000 now are, and we are going through the most urgent cases" (seehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4944164.stm).

The foreign prisoners scandal led many to call for Clarke's resignation, not only from the opposition; Clarke reportedly offered to resign, but Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, refused to accept. However, in the wake of a poor Labour performance in the local council elections of 4 May, 2006, Clarke was axed in the biggest cabinet upheaval in the history of the Blair governments, to be replaced by Defence Secretary John Reid. Having reputedly turned down the offer of other positions by Blair, Clarke is now a backbencher.

At the end of June 2006, he did a series of interviews in which he criticised John Reid for claiming that the Home Office was "unfit for purpose", and that the Prime Minister ought to have defended him to enable him to continue seeing through the reforms he had initiated when first appointed to the post. However, he did state that although Tony Blair had lost his sense of purpose, he wanted to see Blair continue as PM.

In September 2006 Clarke took up a consultancy post with a leading London law firm, leading to speculation he anticipated not returning to frontline politics. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-2353392,00.html

On 8 September 2006, Clarke gave an intervew to the Evening Standard in which he criticised the 'presumption' that Gordon Brown would succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister, helping trigger further disputes about the Labour leadership. Clarke said of Brown's reaction to the leadership crisis, "A lot of people are very upset and cross about that. It was absolutely stupid - a stupid, stupid thing to do." He named Alan Milburn as a politician who had the stature to be Prime Minister instead of Brown. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1372851.ecehttp://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23366255-details/Charles%20Clarke%20heads%20'stop%20Gordon'%20campaign/article.do

Clarke furthered his attack on Brown in an interview with the Daily Telegraph on the following day, accusing Brown of being "a control freak", "deluded" and "uncollegiate". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/09/nclarke09.xml

Clarke with Alan Milburn set up The 2020 Vision website to discuss the direction of the Labour party after Tony Blair steps down from being prime minister. Some observers see this as a way for Gordon Brown's political opponents to create an axis against him. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6403553.stm

Clarke married Carol Pearson in 1984. They have two sons, Matt and Chris, and live in Norwich.

Clarke speaks Cuban Spanish (a legacy of his student links with Cuba), French, and German.

In 2004 he became a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society to acknowledge its contribution to education and in memory of his father, who had been a statistician.

* Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Charles Clarke MP * TheyWorkForYou.com - Charles Clarke MP * BBC News - Charles Clarke profile 17 October, 2002 * Charles Clarke takes a leading role in promoting animal protection. * The Very Model of a Modern Labour Minister - a musical tribute to Charles Clarke and his ID cards bill.