Preceded by none (seat created) Name Anne Morris Majority 11.288 (23.4%) Role British Politician | Nationality British | |
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Born 5 July 1957 (age 67) London, England, United Kingdom ( 1957-07-05 ) Website www.annemariemorris.co.uk Similar People Sarah Wollaston, Caroline Nokes, Nick Boles, Anne Milton | ||
Pmqs anne marie morris s outburst in house of commons
Anne Marie Morris (born 5 July 1957) is a British politician who was elected at the 2010 general election as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Newton Abbot. In July 2017, she had the Conservative whip suspended following the emergence of a recording of her using the racist idiom "nigger in the woodpile".
Contents
- Pmqs anne marie morris s outburst in house of commons
- Anne marie morris most over the top and enthusiastic pmqs question ever
- Early life and career
- Parliamentary career
- Controversy
- References
Anne marie morris most over the top and enthusiastic pmqs question ever
Early life and career
Morris was elected as a councillor on West Sussex County Council for the division of Cuckfield & Lucastes in 2005. She chaired the council's Health Scrutiny Committee. In March 2007 Morris resigned after she was selected as the Conservative candidate for Newton Abbot.
Parliamentary career
In 2006 Morris was selected by the local Conservative association to contest the Newton Abbot parliamentary constituency.
In the 2010 general election Morris was elected to the seat of Newton Abbot on a 5% swing from the Liberal Democrats. In a close contest, she defeated the incumbent, Richard Younger-Ross, by 523 votes.
Morris attracted attention during Prime Minister's Questions in July 2012 as she shouted a long question on technical colleges in Devon over a noisy and increasingly amused Commons chamber, whilst waving a left arm held in a sling. Video of her "high-pitched outburst" was widely circulated on social media. Morris said she cared about the issue raised and would "always speak passionately about issues in my constituency."
In 2013 she was one of 30 Conservative rebels whose votes helped defeat the government's plans for military action in Syria. She later said she made the decision because the military action plans "felt ill-thought through and smacked of regime change", but supported plans for air strikes against ISIL.
In the 2015 general election, she increased her majority to 11,288 and again in the 2017 election to 17,160.
Morris is interested in small businesses, and co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Micro Businesses. In Newton Abbot she has established Teignbridge Business Buddies, a scheme that offers support to small businesses.
Controversy
In July 2017, Morris faced calls for the Conservative whip to be withdrawn from her after being recorded on a parliamentary panel using the racist idiom "nigger in the woodpile" to describe the threat of leaving the EU without a deal, at the launch of a report into the future for the UK's financial sector after Brexit. Morris later stated that the comment was "totally unintentional" and gave her unreserved apology. The suspension came after Prime Minister Theresa May ordered the Chief Whip to suspend the party whip after Morris' comments were published on the HuffPost website. The term had been previously been used in the House of Lords by Conservative peer Lord Dixon-Smith in 2008.
During the 2017 general election campaign a few weeks earlier, Morris had distanced herself from a "racist remark" made by her partner and election agent, Roger Kendrick, at a hustings, in which he blamed the "high birth rates" of immigrants for problems in the education system.