Natalie Elphicke

Natalie Cecilia Elphicke (née Ross; born 5 November 1970) is a British Conservative Party politician and finance lawyer.

Natalie Cecilia Ross was born in Welwyn Garden City, England on 5 November 1970, and grew up in social housing.

She attended Queenswood School in Hertfordshire, Clarendon House Grammar School in Ramsgate and Canterbury College, before studying law at the University of Kent in Canterbury, gaining an LLB (Hons) degree.

She was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1994 on a Hardwicke Scholarship, and admitted as a solicitor in 1999.

She worked as a lawyer for the Inland Revenue from 1995 to 1997.

She married Charlie Elphicke in 1995; he is the former Conservative Party MP for Dover.

The couple have a son and a daughter.

Elphicke was the author of the 2010 report Housing People; Financing Housing for the conservative think-tank Policy Exchange.

She had previously narrowly lost out to Matt Hancock for selection as the candidate for West Suffolk prior to the 2010 general election.

Dover had previously been represented by her then husband Charlie, who had stood down after being charged with three counts of sexual assault against two women.

She led the Conservative Policy Forum when it was launched in 2011.

Elphicke worked for Stephenson Harwood, becoming a partner in their banking practice.

She left in 2013 to found Million Homes, Million Lives, with Calum Mercer, a former finance director at Circle Housing.

Announced in the 2013 Autumn Statement, the remit included the restriction that any proposals should not involve breaching the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap.

It involved canvassing the views of over 400 organisations up and down the country.

The review entitled From statutory provider to Housing Delivery Enabler: Review into the local authority role in housing supply was published on 27 January 2015.

Elphicke is the chief executive of the privately funded Housing and Finance Institute set up by the Cameron–Clegg coalition in 2015.

However, this company was dissolved in 2016.

She was a non-executive director of the Student Loans Company, and chair of its Audit and Risk Committee.

She was also an independent member of the Audit and Risk Committee at the Department for Education.

Elphicke co-authored a review into the role of local authorities in providing housing.

In January 2017, she launched a pilot scheme to facilitate a more effective way of integrating the provision of infrastructure such as water, electricity, gas, broadband and roads in proposals to develop housing.

Following an initial report due by the end of January, the scheme was due to run until May 2017, with reports being submitted to the MPs Gavin Barwell, Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Stephen Hammond MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Infrastructure.

At the 2019 general election, she was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dover, succeeding her then husband Charlie Elphicke following charges for sexual harassment.

Prior to her parliamentary career, Elphicke was a finance lawyer who specialised in housing finance and conservative policy development.

Elphicke was selected as the Conservative candidate for the Dover constituency on 8 November 2019.

She was the only name on the ballot in the selection vote at the local association.

She was elected as the MP for the seat at the 2019 general election with a majority of 12,278.

In February 2020, Elphicke was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

In May 2020, she became the chair of the New Homes Quality Board, an independent body created by the government to create a framework for improving quality in the house building industry.

For this role she earned £21,000 from May to November 2020 and earned £3,000 per month from January 2021 to April 2022 for approximately 8 hrs work per week.

In July 2021, she was one of five MPs found to have breached their code of conduct by the Commons Select Committee on Standards for attempting to influence senior judges in November 2020 in her husband's sentencing appeal after his conviction for sexual assault.

The committee recommended that Elphicke and two other MPs receive a one-day suspension from parliament.

She apologised for her actions.

On 17 March 2022, Elphicke attended a protest against the mass sacking of 800 staff members by P&O ferries in Dover.

She was heckled by some protestors who blamed her party for laws that allowed the sackings to take place which she called "nonsense".

She supported Penny Mordaunt in the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.

In 2023, Elphicke was appointed the Chair of the APPG for Blockchain Technology.

After his conviction in July 2020 for sexual assault, she announced that they had separated after a 25-year marriage.

After he was sentenced in September to two years in jail for the offences, Elphicke spoke out in support of his appeal against the conviction and sentencing, as, although she felt that he had "behaved badly", she thought the sentence was "excessive" and criticised the court as being "on a bit of a mission".