Labour politician claims the late Prime Minister “wreaked heinous social, economic and spiritual damage” on the country

Margaret Thatcher and the lasting legacy of her policies have been slammed by a Labour MP who claimed she “was a woman but not on my terms”.

Glenda Jackson, MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, said the late PM “wreaked heinous social, economic and spiritual damage” upon her constituency and constituents and the country as a whole.

Ms Jackson, speaking to MPs from all parties during yesterday’s seven hour debate and tribute session, described London as a city that eighteenth century cartoonist William Hogarth would have recognised.

The former Oscar-winning actress said: “By far the most dramatic and heinous demonstration [of Thatcher’s government] was across the whole country in metropolitan areas when every single shop doorway became the living room, the bathroom and the bedroom of the homeless.” Speaking about the closure of mental hospitals she said: “We were told it was going to be called Care in the Community. What in effect it was was no care at all in the community.”

Expressing the impact on her residents she added that hospitals in her constituency were “running on empty” with patients staying on trolleys in corridors and that schools were struggling to cope.

She said: “Parents teachers governors and even pupils had to spend time fundraising in order to provide the basic of materials including pencils and paper.

“Plaster was kept in place by pupil’s art work and miles of Sellotape while school libraries were dominated by empty shelves.”

Amid calls for her to “sit down” from Conservative politicians she continued: “Everything I had been taught to regard as a vice - and I still regard them as vices - under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue”

Ms Jackson was backed by some members of her own party, who responded to heckles and jeers from Conservative MPs by exclaiming “they can’t take it.”

Comparing her to the women she and others from her generation were raised by she concluded that she may have been female in gender but was not a woman on her terms.

Ms Jackson will step down from her seat at the next General Election

Baroness Thatcher, who died on Monday led the country for 11 years from 1979 to 1990, her funeral will be on Wednesday.