Anna Turley

Anna Turley   (politician)
Born	9 October 1978
Alma mater	Greyfriars (Oxford)
Chairwoman In office 8 June 2019 - Present Employer Co-operative Party  Member of Parliament for Redcar In office 8 May 2015 - 6 November 2019

Anna Catherine Turley (born 9 October 1978) is a British Labour Co-op politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Redcar from 2015 until the UK/2019 General Election. Anna Turley has been Chairwoman of the Co-operative Party since 8 June 2019.

On 19 December 2019, Anna Turley won £75,000 libel damages against Unite the Union and the SKWAWKBOX blog:

"Very pleased with today’s verdict, and to be able to say that I have won my libel action against Unite the Union and Skwawkbox. My full statement:"

On 20 December 2019, Unite tweeted:

"For the record, Anna Turley sued Unite, for an article not published by Unite. Unite did not take legal action against Anna Turley. From the outset and contrary to her statement Anna Turley always sought damages from the union.

"Suggestion that the legal costs for this case amount to in excess of £1 million is utter nonsense."

Early life and career

Turley was born in Dartford, Kent and received an academic scholarship to attend the independent Ashford School. She went on to read History at Greyfriars, Oxford.

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, specialising in child poverty issues. In 2005, Turley became a Special Adviser in the Department for Work and Pensions under David Blunkett, then in 2006 for the Cabinet Office under Hilary Armstrong.

Early political career

In 2006, Anna Turley stood for election as a Labour council candidate for Wandsworth Common.

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, and in 2010 co-founded the Co-operative Councils Innovation Network designed to enable local authorities to work in partnership with local communities.

Anna Turley was shortlisted for the North West Durham seat for the 2010 General Election but lost out to Pat Glass. In 2011, Turley founded a consultancy and online forum ProgLoc (Progressive Localism) for progressive debate of key issues affecting local government,

In 2012 Turley was listed as a speaker for the New Labour pressure group Progress. 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, in a contentious selection process that was ultimately associated with the resignation of ten Labour councillors.

Parliamentary career

Anna Turley became MP 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 in July 2015.

She supported Andy Burnham in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election.

Soon after becoming an MP, Turley had to respond to major local employer Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI UK), which operated the Teesside Steelworks, going into liquidation, leading to about 3,000 local job losses. The steelworks had once employed about 40,000.

In September 2015, the newly elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appointed Anna Turley as shadow civil society minister in his first shadow cabinet.

She resigned as a Shadow Minister in June 2016. In the 2016 leadership election campaign soon afterwards, Turley was critical of Corbyn stating he was "completely out of touch with reality", and supported Owen Smith for leader.

In October 2016, Turley joined the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

She introduced a private member's bill to increase the maximum sentences available to the courts for specified offences related to animal cruelty to five years.

In the UK/2017 General Election, Turley was re-elected with 23,623 votes, a share of 55.5%. In November 2017, it was announced that Turley had withdrawn from work at Westminster for the rest of the year in order to recuperate following emergency surgery.

She was the Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups ("APPGs") on Hydrogen and Bingo the Secretary of the APPG on Steel and Metal Related Industry and a member of the APPGs on Endometriosis, Speedway, Loan Charge, Carbon Capture and Storage, Performers Alliance, Music, 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, LGBT Labour, Jewish Labour Movement, Labour Campaign for International Development, Labour Friends of Israel, Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East and Labour Party Irish Society.

In the UK/2019 General Election, Anna Turley lost her seat to the Conservative candidate and blamed party leader Jeremy Corbyn for the loss.

Personal life

She lives in Redcar. Previously she lived in Islington, London. In the second half of 2017, Turley required five operations to alleviate problems with infected cysts.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Progress MP joins Unite's unwaged section for GenSec vote	blog post	7 April 2017		Joining Unite in order to participate in the General Secretary ballot is legitimate and some are known to have done so to support Len McCluskey. However, making a false declaration in order to do so ‘on the cheap’ is certainly not legitimate and such applications need to be rooted out and their votes invalidated.

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 19 December 2019.
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