Lady Olga Maitland

Lady Helen Olga Hay ( Maitland; born 23 May 1944), usually known as Lady Olga Maitland, is a British Conservative politician and journalist, formerly member of parliament for Sutton and Cheam.

Maitland was a reporter for the Fleet Street News Agency and the Blackheath and District Reporter, and a columnist for the Sunday Express (1967–91).

On 19 April 1969, Maitland married Robin William Patrick Hamilton Hay, M.A., LL.B., a barrister who later became a Crown Court Recorder.

They have two sons, Alastair and Fergus, and a daughter, Camilla.

In the mid-1980s, Maitland formed the campaigning group Women and Families for Defence, which aimed to counter the protests against the deployment of American Cruise missiles on British soil and to oppose the Greenham Common Peace Camp.

In the 1980s, Maitland reported to MI5 that a Russian journalist and spy, Yuri Sagaidak, tried to recruit her.

In 1983 she was founder and thereafter chairman of Families for Defence, and from 1992 was President of the Defence and Security Forum.

At the 1987 General Election, Maitland was the Conservative candidate at Bethnal Green and Stepney, but was unsuccessful.

Sagaidak was exposed and sent back to the Soviet Union in 1989.

She subsequently became Member of Parliament for Sutton and Cheam from 1992 to the 1997 General Election, which removed the Conservative Party from government, when she lost to Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow.

She promoted Private Members Bills in the House of Commons on Prisoner's Return to Custody (1995), and Offensive Weapons (1996), and in 1996–97 was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sir John Wheeler, then Minister of State for Northern Ireland at the Northern Ireland Office.

In 1998 she became a contributor to the Daily Mail.

She unsuccessfully fought the seat again in 2001.

During her time as an MP at Westminster, Maitland was a member of the Parliamentary Select Committees for Education, Health and Procedures, Northern Ireland, and Defence and Foreign Affairs, and was sometime secretary to the Conservative Backbench Committee.

She was also a member of the Yugoslav Parliamentary Group.

In 2005, Lady Olga Maitland launched the Algeria British Business Council (ABBC) in partnership with Arslan Chikhaoui.

She is currently the ABBC chairman.

The daughter of Patrick Maitland, 17th Earl of Lauderdale, and his wife Stanka (née Losanitch), Maitland was educated at St Mary and St Anne's School, Abbots Bromley, later the Abbots Bromley School for Girls, and the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington.