Anna Catherine Turley (born 9 October 1978) is a British politician. She was the
Labour and Co-operative
Labour and Co-operative Party (often abbreviated Labour Co-op; cy, Llafur a'r Blaid Gydweithredol) is a description used by candidates in United Kingdom elections who stand on behalf of both the Labour Party and the Co-operative Party.
Candidat ...
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...
(MP) for
Redcar
Redcar is a seaside town on the Yorkshire Coast in the Redcar and Cleveland unitary authority in the county of North Yorkshire, England. It is located east of Middlesbrough.
The Teesside built-up area's Redcar subdivision had a population of ...
from
2015
File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the Apri ...
until
2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
. Turley was chair of the
Co-operative Party
The Co-operative Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom, supporting co-operative values and principles. Established in 1917, the Co-operative Party was founded by co-operative societies to campaign politically for the fair ...
from 8 June 2019 until December 2019. She currently serves as chair of the North East Child Poverty Commission (NECPC).
Early life and career
Turley was born in
Dartford
Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located south-east of Central London and
is situated adjacent to the London Borough of Bexley to its west. To its north, across the Thames estuary, is Thurrock in ...
, and received an academic scholarship to attend the independent
Ashford School
Ashford School is a coeducational independent boarding and day school in East Hill, Ashford, Kent. There are 480 students in the senior school (ages 11 to 18) and 360 in the prep school (ages 3 to 11).
The school is owned and run by the Unit ...
.
She went on to read History at
Greyfriars, Oxford
Greyfriars is a Roman Catholic friary and parish located in East Oxford, which until 2008 was also a permanent private hall of the University of Oxford. Situated on the Iffley Road in East Oxford, it was one of the smallest constituent halls o ...
.
From 2001 to 2005, Turley was a fast-stream civil servant at the Home Office, initially working on youth crime issues, and later moved to the
Department for Work and Pensions
, type = Department
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, logo = Department for Work and Pensions logo.svg
, logo_width = 166px
, formed =
, preceding1 =
, jurisdiction = Government of the United Kingdom
, headquarters = Caxton House7th Floor6–12 Tothill Stree ...
, specialising in child poverty issues.
In 2005, Turley became a
special adviser in the
Department for Work and Pensions
, type = Department
, seal =
, logo = Department for Work and Pensions logo.svg
, logo_width = 166px
, formed =
, preceding1 =
, jurisdiction = Government of the United Kingdom
, headquarters = Caxton House7th Floor6–12 Tothill Stree ...
under
David Blunkett
David Blunkett, Baron Blunkett, (born 6 June 1947) is a British Labour Party politician who has been a Member of the House of Lords since 2015, and previously served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough ...
, then in 2006 for the
Cabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for supporting the prime minister and Cabinet. It is composed of various units that support Cabinet committees and which co-ordinate the delivery of government objecti ...
under
Hilary Armstrong
Hilary Jane Armstrong, Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top, DL (born 30 November 1945) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for North West Durham from 1987 to 2010.
Early life
Armstrong was born on 30 Nove ...
.
[
]
Early political career
In 2006, Turley stood for election as a Labour council candidate for Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Common is a public common in Wandsworth, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, south London. It is and is maintained and regulated by Wandsworth Council. It is also a Ward of the London Borough of Wandsworth. The population of the ward ...
.
In 2007, Turley worked for public relations agency The Ledbury Group. In April 2008, she became deputy director of the local government research organisation the New Local Government Network
New Local, formerly known as the New Local Government Network, is an independent think tank and local government network with a mission to transform public services and unlock community power. It was founded in 1996, and is currently based in Lond ...
,[ and in 2010 co-founded the Co-operative Councils Innovation Network designed to enable local authorities to work in partnership with local communities.]
Turley was shortlisted for the North West Durham
North West Durham is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 12 December 2019 by Richard Holden of the Conservative Party.
Constituency profile
The constituency is in the north west of County Durham ...
seat for the 2010 general election but lost out to Pat Glass
Patricia Glass (born 14 February 1957) is a Labour Party former politician who was the Member of Parliament for North West Durham from 2010 to 2017. She was appointed Shadow Education Secretary on 27 June 2016 by Jeremy Corbyn, but resigned tw ...
.
In 2011, Turley founded a consultancy and online forum ProgLoc (Progressive Localism) for progressive debate of key issues affecting local government, and became an associate researcher for the NGO Future of London. In 2012 Turley was listed as a speaker for the New Labour
New Labour was a period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid to late 1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen ...
pressure group Progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
.
In 2013, Turley became a senior research fellow at IPPR North.
In 2013, Turley was selected to stand in the Redcar constituency from an all-women shortlist
All-women shortlists (AWS) is an affirmative action practice intended to increase the proportion of female Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom, allowing only women to stand in particular constituencies for a particular political p ...
,[ in a contentious selection process that was ultimately associated with the resignation of ten Labour councillors.]
Parliamentary career
Turley became the member of parliament for Redcar at the May 2015 general election, winning the seat from the Liberal Democrats. She was appointed as a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee
The Home Affairs Select Committee is a Departmental Committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Remit
The Home Affairs Committee is one of the House of Commons Select committees related to government departments: its ...
in July 2015, and later the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee
The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department f ...
.
Soon after becoming an MP, Turley had to respond to major local employer SSI UK, which operated Teesside Steelworks
The Teesside Steelworks was a large steelworks that formed a continuous stretch along the south bank of the River Tees from the towns of Middlesbrough to Redcar in North Yorkshire, England. At its height there were 91 blast furnaces within a 10 ...
, going into liquidation, leading to about 3,000 local job losses. The steelworks had once employed about 40,000. Turley set up a local SSI Taskforce, and secured £50 million pounds from the government to help support retraining and new jobs.
She supported Andy Burnham
Andrew Murray Burnham (born 7 January 1970) is a British politician who has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. He served in Gordon Brown's Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008, Culture Secretary from 2008 ...
in the 2015 leadership election. In September 2015, the newly elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist ...
appointed Turley as shadow civil society minister in his first shadow cabinet.[ Turley was a critic of Corbyn, and resigned as a Shadow Minister in June 2016.] In the 2016 leadership election campaign soon afterwards, Turley stated that Corbyn was "completely out of touch with reality", and supported Owen Smith
Owen Smith (born 2 May 1970) is a former Labour Party politician and subsequently a British lobbyist, who has been the UK government relations director for pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb since 2020. Smith was Member of Parliamen ...
for leader. She would later argue that Labour had "moved too far to the left" and had "issues around national security as well as with antisemitism".
In 2016, Turley introduced a private member's bill
A private member's bill is a bill (proposed law) introduced into a legislature by a legislator who is not acting on behalf of the executive branch. The designation "private member's bill" is used in most Westminster system jurisdictions, in whi ...
to increase the maximum sentences available to the courts for specified offences related to animal cruelty to five years. She queued from 2am until 10am to table the bill. The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act was passed in April 2021, and came into force on 29 June 2021.
In the 2017 general election, Turley was re-elected with 23,623 votes, a share of 55.5%. She became chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups
An all-party parliamentary group (APPG) is a grouping in the Parliament of the United Kingdom that is composed of members of parliament from all political parties, but have no official status within Parliament.
Description and functions
All-party ...
("APPGs") on Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...
and Bingo
Bingo or B-I-N-G-O may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Gaming
* Bingo, a game using a printed card of numbers
** Bingo (British version), a game using a printed card of 15 numbers on three lines; most commonly played in the UK and Ireland
** Bi ...
, Secretary of the APPG on Steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
and Metal Related Industry and a member of the APPGs on Endometriosis
Endometriosis is a disease of the female reproductive system in which cells similar to those in the endometrium, the layer of tissue that normally covers the inside of the uterus, grow outside the uterus. Most often this is on the ovaries, f ...
, Speedway
Speedway may refer to:
Racing Race tracks
*Edmonton International Speedway, also known as Speedway Park, a former motor raceway in Edmonton, Alberta
*Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a motor raceway in Speedway, Indiana
Types of races and race cours ...
, Loan Charge, Carbon Capture and Storage
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon capture and sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) before it enters the atmosphere, transporting it, and storing it (carbon sequestration) for centuries or millennia. Usually th ...
, Performers Alliance, Music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
, Equitable Life, Fair Business Banking and the All-Party Parliamentary Dog Advisory Welfare Group. She is also a member of various Labour Party groups, including the Labour Movement for Europe
The Labour Movement for Europe (LME) is the only pro-EU society affiliated to the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. It is one of 20 "socialist societies" affiliated to the UK Labour Party, just like the Fabians and The Jewish Labour Movement. ...
, LGBT Labour
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is ...
, Jewish Labour Movement
{{Infobox organization
, name = Jewish Labour Movement
, pronounce =
, nickname =
, named_after =
, logo = JewishLabourMovementLogo.png
, image_border =
, size ...
, Labour Campaign for International Development, Labour Friends of Israel
Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) is a group in the Parliament of the United Kingdom that promotes support for a strong bilateral relationship between Britain and Israel, and seeks to strengthen ties between the British Labour Party and the Isra ...
, Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East and Labour Party Irish Society
The Labour Party Irish Society is a socialist society affiliated to the British Labour Party. It is a collective body of Labour Party members of Irish birth or descent, and those interested in Ireland and Irish affairs. It promotes the inter ...
.
In the 2019 general election, Turley lost her seat to the Conservative candidate. She blamed party leader Jeremy Corbyn for the loss. On 19 December 2019, following a six-day trial at the Royal Courts of Justice, Turley won a libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
claim against Unite the Union
Unite the Union, commonly known as Unite, is a British and Irish trade union which was formed on 1 May 2007 by the merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU). Unite is the second largest trade union in the UK (after ...
and Stephen Walker (editor of The Skwawkbox
''The Skwawkbox'' is a left-wing news site based in the United Kingdom, founded in 2012 by Steve Walker.
Aims
''The Skwawkbox'' states that its aim is to "present information and analysis that will rarely make it into the mainstream media." Fou ...
); the court upheld that her reputation had been damaged by Walker and Unite during the election.
Post-political career
During the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, Turley helped run the local foodbank, and set up a charity to distribute books to disadvantaged children.
In February 2022, she was appointed chair of the North East Child Poverty Commission (NECPC), an organisation campaigning to end child poverty in the North East.
Personal life
Turley has lived in Redcar
Redcar is a seaside town on the Yorkshire Coast in the Redcar and Cleveland unitary authority in the county of North Yorkshire, England. It is located east of Middlesbrough.
The Teesside built-up area's Redcar subdivision had a population of ...
since 2012. Previously she lived in Islington
Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...
, London.[
In the second half of 2017, Turley required five operations to alleviate problems with infected cysts;] the emergency surgery caused her to suspend parliamentary work for over a month. She became a vocal campaigner on endometriosis
Endometriosis is a disease of the female reproductive system in which cells similar to those in the endometrium, the layer of tissue that normally covers the inside of the uterus, grow outside the uterus. Most often this is on the ovaries, f ...
, and launched an inquiry into women's experiences through the APPG on Endometriosis.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turley, Anna
1978 births
Living people
Alumni of Greyfriars, Oxford
English civil servants
Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
Labour Co-operative MPs for English constituencies
Labour Friends of Israel
People educated at Ashford School
UK MPs 2015–2017
UK MPs 2017–2019
21st-century British women politicians
21st-century English women
21st-century English people