{"id":475182,"date":"2026-03-14T12:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T12:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/475182\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T12:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T12:09:07","slug":"phil-woolas-former-labour-minister-dies-aged-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/475182\/","title":{"rendered":"Phil Woolas: Former Labour minister dies aged 66"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former Labour minister Phil Woolas, who served in the governments of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has died at the age of 66.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Woolas, who had brain cancer, held several ministerial roles including for local government, environment and immigration and served as MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth between 1997 and 2010.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Paying tribute, former prime minister Sir Tony Blair said he was an &#8220;outstanding&#8221; member of the New Labour government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His family and close friends said in a statement: &#8220;For more than a year he battled the brain cancer, glioblastoma. He leaves his wife Tracey, his sons Josh and Jed and a new grandson, and many friends and former colleagues who will all miss him greatly.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Labour minister Phil Woolas, who served in the governments of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-475182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}