Britain’s first female foreign secretary has announced her intention to retire from the House of Commons at the next general election, as she said threats against MPs “wouldn’t put her off”.

Dame Margaret Beckett said that despite the threats faced by politicians – attested by two MPs having been killed in the past six years – children should still aspire to go into politics.

“It wouldn’t put me off because what I felt when I was considering being an MP is equally true today,” she said.

“If you think things should be changed, and you want to have a say in changing them, and you don’t have wealth and power, there’s a very limited number of routes you can use – and this is the biggest of them.”

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, hailed the 79-year-old Labour grandee, who was the first woman to lead the party, as a “trailblazer” after she said that she plans to stand down from her Derby South constituency.

First elected in Lincoln in 1974, she served as acting leader of Labour in 1994 after the sudden death of John Smith.

She ran for the party leadership that year, but lost to Sir Tony Blair, who would later make her foreign secretary in 2006.