Gaffes mar rise of 'Blair babe'

With her icy schoolma'amish manner, Beverley Hughes looked set to secure her ambition for a Cabinet post until embroiled in a string of controversies.

The Minister for Asylum and Immigration's fitness for promotion has been championed by her boss, Home Secretary David Blunkett - a firm fan of her nononsense manner.

Undoubtedly tough, Ms Hughes, 54 tomorrow, has risen to be Mr Blunkett's key lieutenant in the harshest of Whitehall departments, famous as a killing ground for ministerial careers.

She began her rise as leader of Trafford council, where she had a reputation as a serious-minded feminist. Within a year of being elected as a "Blair babe" MP in the 1997 landslide, she had been talent-scouted as a junior minister.

But her first gaffe came when she slammed a spoof Channel 4 documentary on paedophiles as "unspeakably sick" - without seeing it.

Then it came out she was warned last year by a fellow Labour MP that the exploitation of immigrant labour in the Morecambe cocklepicking industry was a tragedy waiting to happen. She failed to act in time to prevent 20 deaths on the treacherous sands.

However, it is the allegation that she was quietly allowing corners to be cut in immigration cases which now leaves her promotion hopes hanging by a thread.