Maria Caulfield

Early life

Maria Caulfield was born in 1973 to Irish immigrant parents and grew up on a council estate in Wandsworth, London. Her father was from a farming family in Ireland but, after emigrating, worked as a builder while her mother was a nurse and she considers herself to be working class.

While Caulfield was in her teens, her mother died from breast cancer and after leaving school she became an NHS nurse. She has spoken about her upbringing saying that she "grew up in a run-down area of South London where the only careers advice given to us was the phone number of the local council housing office for when you became a single mum and needed a council flat".

Career

As a nurse she eventually specialized in Cancer research and moved to the south coast of England where she worked at the Royal Sussex County Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital and then the Royal Marsden. She became involved with the Conservative Party after joining a campaign to save local hospitals in the Brighton area.

In 2007 Brighton and Hove City Council election she became a member of the local city council for the previously safe Labour ward of Moulsecoomb. She served in the cabinet of the then Conservative authority and held the Housing Portfolio. In the 2011 local election she lost her seat to the Labour Party candidate.

At the 2010 general election she unsuccessfully stood in the Caerphilly constituency, a safe Labour seat, coming second to Wayne David, the defending sitting MP.

For several years, she held the role of Deputy Regional Chairman for the South East Conservatives and was a Co-ordinator in the NO2AV campaign in the 2011 AV referendum. In 2013 she was selected for her local constituency of Lewes by the Lewes Conservative Association, and at the 2015 general election she overturned a 7,647 majority and defeated the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker.

Caulfield backed Brexit during the 2016 referendum on the UK's European Union membership. However, this view was not shared by the majority of her constituents, as 52.1% of voters in the Lewes constituency voted to remain a member of the European Union.

Personal life

She lives with her partner and fiancé Steve Bell who is an ex-serviceman and now works as a builder. He is also a Brighton and Hove City Councillor, as well as being active in the voluntary party and was President (2015-16) of the Conservative National Convention, the organizing body of the voluntary party.

Caulfield is an urban shepherdess, part of an environmental project which uses sheep and cattle to graze public open spaces. She also holds a non-executive director position on the board of the housing charity BHT Sussex.

A practising Roman Catholic, she supports lowering the current abortion time limit. She is also a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship. She supports Arsenal and Lewes football clubs, and is a share holder of the latter.