Helen Grant: first black female Tory MP

Helen Grant: first black female Tory MP (for Maidstone & The Weald, Kent since 2010)

Born: 28 September 1961
Place of birth: London raised in Carlisle

Family Background: born to an English mother & Nigerian father, but grew up in a single parent family after her parents separated & her father emigrated to the United States. She lived on Carlisle’s Raffles council estate with her mother, maternal grandmother & maternal great-grandmother.

Education: as the only black resident of the Carlisleestate she was the victim of racist bullying. At school she was captain of the school tennis & hockey teams, & represented Cumbria in hockey, tennis, athletics, & cross-country. She was also an under-16 judo champion for the north of England & southern Scotland. She studied law at the University of Hull, after which she planned to take specialist legal qualifications. When it appeared unlikely that her local education authority would fund a place at her preferred college, her local MP Willie Whitelaw championed her cause, & she took a place at the College of Law in Guildford where she qualified as a solicitor in 1988. She returned to Carlisle to do her articles of clerkship at Cartmell, Mawson & Main solicitors

Key details: Helen Grant met her husband, Simon, in 1990, & the couple are married with two sons. She divides her time between homes in Marden, Kent, & Kingswood, Surrey.

She joined a legal practice in Wimbledon specialising in family law. She established her own practice, Grants Solicitors, in 1996, which also specialises in family law. Grant was a non-executive director of the Croydon NHS Primary Care Trust from January 2005 to March 2007 before stepping down to concentrate on her political career.

Grant joined the Labour Party in 2004 & was asked by a senior local party figure to consider becoming a local councilor but she rejected the idea. She became disillusioned with Labour & joined the Conservatives in 2006. In 2006 Grant worked with Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice in the formation of Conservative policy to deal with family breakdown. Grant was one of the authors of the Social Justice Policy Group Report 'State of the Nation - Fractured Families' published in December 2006, & the follow-up solutions report 'Breakthrough Britain' published in July 2007.

Grant applied to become a parliamentary candidate, & was approved as a candidate in May 2006. She was selected by the Conservative Party as the prospective candidate for Maidstone & The Weald in January 2008, replacing longstanding MP Ann Widdecombe who had announced that she would be stepping down at the next general election. The seat, at the time, had a majority of 15,000. Grant was selected as an A-List candidate and, although she was publicly supported by the sitting MP, Widdecombe criticised David Cameron's policy of ensuring 50% of the Conservatives' A-list candidates were women—a policy thought to have helped Grant win the nomination. This was quickly followed by revelations from a Sunday newspaper regarding her previous membership of Labour.

She was elected at the 2010 general election on 6 May 2010, achieving a reduced majority of 5,889.

In June 2010 she was elected to the Justice Select Committee, a House of Commons select committee which oversees the policy, administration, & spending of the UK's Ministry of Justice.

Grant received her first government appointment on 4th September 2012, following a government reshuffle, when she received the dual roles of Under-Secretary of State for Justice & Under-Secretary for Women & Equalities.

Adapted by Ms A.J Allison from information found at: http://en.wikipedia.org