Eleanor Laing

Dame Eleanor Fulton Laing, (née Pritchard; born 1 February 1958) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Epping Forest constituency since 1997.

A member of the Conservative Party, Laing has served in the shadow cabinets of Michael Howard and David Cameron.

Laing contested Paisley North in the 1987 general election, but was defeated by the Labour incumbent Allen Adams.

Laing won 15.8% of the vote, a decrease of 5.6% from the previous election, in line with the Conservative losses in Scotland that election.

In 1995, she sought selection for the Southend West seat, but was narrowly defeated in the selection process by David Amess, the sitting MP for Basildon.

Laing was later selected for the Epping Forest seat, when the incumbent MP Steve Norris decided to leave the House to focus on his business career.

When Laing was first elected as the MP for Epping Forest at the 1997 general election, the previously safe seat was reduced to marginal status by the Labour landslide.

Laing achieved a hugely reduced majority of 5,252, winning 45.5% of the vote, but at the expense of a 13.3% swing away from the Conservatives to Labour.

Following the election, she was selected for the Education Select Committee, chaired by Labour's Margaret Hodge.

Once in Parliament, Laing signed up to the Eurosceptic wing of the party, first supporting Michael Howard then William Hague for the Conservative leadership.

She was an opponent of devolution, and criticised the Blair government on many of the details of the transfer of power.

In December 2000, she was appointed as opposition Scottish spokeswoman.

At the 2001 general election, Epping Forest returned to safe seat status, with Laing winning a majority of 8,426 and 49.1% of the vote.

Laing first entered the shadow cabinet in 2004 as Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities under the leadership of Michael Howard.

Whilst continuing in this role, Laing became Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, serving briefly from May 2005, shortly after the 2005 general election, to December 2005 when David Cameron came to power as Leader of the Opposition.

She was re-elected at the 2005 general election with an increased majority of 14,358 and 53.0% of the vote.

Laing continued as Shadow Women and Equalities Minister until a July 2007 reshuffle, when she became Shadow Minister for Justice, a role she remained in until the 2010 general election.

At the 2010 general election, Laing was again re-elected, winning an increased majority of 15,131 and an increased vote share 54.0%.

After the election, and the formation of the Cameron–Clegg coalition, Laing did not receive a government post, thus returning to the backbenches.

During this period, she took special interest in the coalition's programme of political and constitutional reform, voting against the third reading of the proposed House of Lords Reform Bill 2012, and opposing a referendum on Scottish independence.

She also spoke in favour of a referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union, and paid tribute to Margaret Thatcher and her legacy during a Commons session dedicated to tributes to the late former Prime Minister, which took place shortly after her death.

Since 2013, Laing has served as a Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons; and since 2020, as Chairman of Ways and Means, making her the senior Deputy Speaker, and the first woman to hold this post.

Laing was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and raised in the nearby village of Elderslie, where her father was a councillor.

She was privately educated at St Columba's School, an independent school.

Laing graduated from Edinburgh University with Master of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees.

She was the first female President of the Edinburgh University Students' Association.

She worked as a solicitor in Edinburgh and the City of London.

In May 2013, the First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means, Nigel Evans, was arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault.

He was acquitted of those charges, but resigned from his position in the Chair on 10 September 2013.

On 16 October, Laing was elected to succeed Evans as the First Deputy Chair, the holder of which post is one of the Deputy Speakers of the House.

At the 2015 general election, Laing was again re-elected with an increased majority of 17,978 and an increased vote share of 54.8%.

In January 2016, Laing publicly criticised Tulip Siddiq, who was seven months pregnant at the time, for breaking the customs of the House by leaving a debate shortly after speaking.

Siddiq had already been in the debate for two hours and left at 14:30 to eat.

According to witnesses, Laing told Siddiq not to use her pregnancy as an excuse for her behaviour.

Laing voted leave in the 2016 European Union membership referendum and was happy with the result.

Laing was again re-elected at the 2017 general election with an increased majority of 18,243 and an increased vote share of 62.0%.

She continued in her role as a deputy speaker.

Laing was re-elected at the 2019 general election with an increased majority of 22,173 and an increased vote share of 64.4%, an election which she described as "very nasty".

Laing stood in the 2019 Speaker election, to replace John Bercow, campaigning on restoring trust to the House of Commons.

Evans would return to the Chair as Second Deputy Chairman in 2020.