Mo Mowlam, the former Cabinet Minister who was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit last week, was today transferred to a hospice.

Dr Mowlam is now being cared for at the Pilgrim Hospice in Canterbury. The ex-Northern Ireland Secretary remains in a critical but stable condition, a spokesman for the hospice said.

The 55-year-old former university lecturer and politician previously suffered a brain tumour, and her increasingly frail appearance in recent months prompted fears that it had returned.

The former MP for Redcar was recently admitted to King’s College Hospital in London. Last year she moved from her former constituency in North Yorkshire to Kent with husband Jon Norton, who has two children, and her transfer to Canterbury today will mean that she is closer to her family.

One of new Labour's most popular figures, she was made Northern Ireland Secretary when Labour swept to power in 1997 and quickly made a name for herself as a down to earth and unstintingly honest politician.

She won universal admiration for her perseverance in working towards the Good Friday peace agreement the following year. Praise was magnified by the fact that she was recovering from treatment for the brain tumour at the time.

But she was moved sideways to the role of Cabinet enforcer rather than promoted in the next reshuffle, and complained that spindoctors loyal to Tony Blair were putting out smears about her.

She resigned from the Commons at the 2001 election after 14 years, and threw herself instead into her work with cancer charities. She has also penned an agony aunt column for a youth magazine.

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