Caroline Spelman

Caroline Spelman (2017)

Dame Caroline Alice Spelman , b. Cormack (born May 4, 1958 in Bishop's Stortford , Hertfordshire ) is a British politician with the Conservative Party . From May 2010 to September 2012 she was Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs .

biography

After visiting the Herts and Essex Grammar School , she completed at Queen Mary and Westfield College of London University , a degree in European Studies . After six years as an employee at the Association of the European Sugar Beet Industry (CIBE) in Paris , she was a housewife and mother after marrying Mark Spelman, a partner in the management consultancy Accenture . She was also the author of a book on biofuels . She and her husband founded Spelman, Cormack and Associates , a food and biotechnology company in 1989 , and served as its director.

During the pregnancy with her second child, she was a candidate in the general election in 1992 unsuccessfully for a seat in the lower house ( House of Commons ) in the constituency Bassetlaw .

In the general election on May 1, 1997 , she was finally elected as one of 34 new members of the Conservative Party to the House of Commons and has since represented the constituency of Meriden .

In June 1998 she was first parliamentary director ( Whip ) of the conservative faction in the lower house and was then from June 1999 to September 2001 spokeswoman for her party for health and women's affairs.

In 2003 she was appointed to the shadow cabinet of the Conservative Party for the first time and was initially "shadow minister for the environment and for women" and then from 2004 to 2007 for community affairs and local administration.

Afterwards she was chairwoman of the Conservative Party between 2007 and 2009 and thus only the second woman in this position after Theresa May .

In 2009 she was reappointed to the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, where she was again Shadow Minister for Community and Local Administration.

After the Conservative Party's victory in the 2010 general election , she was appointed Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Areas in his cabinet on May 11, 2010 by Prime Minister David Cameron and was therefore also responsible for agriculture . She had to leave the cabinet in the course of a major ministerial riot in 2012.

Immediately after her appointment, she was charged with close ties to the agricultural business lobby for serving as director of Spelman, Cormack and Associates .

In July 2010, she came under fire for describing wearing a burqa as empowering and dignified and as an expression of a feminist point of view.

As part of the resignation honors of former Prime Minister David Cameron, Spelman was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire .

In the course of the United Kingdom's exit from the EU , Spelman campaigned to prevent a so-called no-deal Brexit . At the beginning of September 2019 she announced that she did not want to run for a seat in parliament again in the upcoming general election.

Web links

Commons : Caroline Spelman  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Homepage of Caroline Spelman
• Conservative Party homepage
• Homepage as a Member of Parliament ( They Work For You )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ TOP AGRAR ONLINE: Agriculture expert becomes British Agriculture Minister (May 17, 2010)
2. ↑ THE GUARDIAN: Caroline Spelman faces questions over close links to agriculture lobbying (May 15, 2010)
3. ↑ THE TELEGRAPH: Caroline Spelman: wearing burka can be "empowering" (July 19, 2010)
4. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 61678, HMSO, London, August 16, 2016, p. RH3 ( PDF , accessed September 7, 2016, English).
5. ↑ Andrew Sparrow, Kevin Rawlinson, Martin Farrer, Larry Elliott: As it happened - MPs vote for Brady's Brexit amendment to renegotiate backstop . In: The Guardian . January 30, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 12, 2019]).
6. ↑ Jonathan Walker: Midland MP Caroline Spelman to stand down. September 5, 2019, accessed October 12, 2019 .