Preceded by Colin Barrow Parents Marion Roe | Nationality British Children 2 | |
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Full Name Philippa Marion Roe Spouse(s) John Ricketts, Stephen Couttie Books Reforming the Private Finance Initiative Profiles | ||
Philippa Marion Roe, Baroness Couttie (born 25 September 1962) is a British Conservative politician, who has served as Leader of Westminster City Council since 2012. Before entering public life she was an investment banker and a director of the financial services company Citigroup.
Life
Born in Hampstead and educated at the University of St Andrews, Roe was a director of Citigroup before entering politics in 2006. She is a daughter of James Roe and Dame Marion Roe. She has one younger sister and one younger brother. In 1982, she became the first student in 572 years to be elected to the University of St Andrews Senate, the institution's governing body. After leaving the university she began her career in the public relations industry, joining Burson Marsteller.
In the 1990s she served on a panel of experts from the private sector consulted by the Conservative government in establishing the private finance initiative, and in 2004 she was the joint author of a report called "Reforming the Private Finance Initiative" published by the Centre for Policy Studies.
Married to Stephen Couttie, a fund manager, she gave up her job at Citigroup when she became the mother of twins, Genevieve and Angus, and was elected to Westminster City Council soon afterwards, in 2006. At that time she had recently recovered from cancer.
She was appointed as a governor of Imperial College London and in 2008 became the member of Westminster's cabinet for Housing. In June 2010 she stated her support for the new coalition government's decision to cap housing benefit at £400 a week. In 2011 she took on the cabinet portfolio for Strategic Finance. The next year she succeeded Colin Barrow as Leader of the council, beating Edward Argar for the nomination, and quickly distanced herself from a comparison with a predecessor, Dame Shirley Porter. The same year, she took over the role of chairman of the statutory Health and Wellbeing Board for Westminster. She also sits on the London Enterprise Panel. In 2013 she was quoted as saying that "local people know best" and that "The funding challenge is an opportunity to break free of orthodoxy and review all the services provided and how they can be delivered more efficiently."
In 2014 she was re-elected in the three-member Knightsbridge and Belgravia ward, where she topped the poll and the Conservative candidates took 79.6 per cent of the votes.
In July 2015 Roe announced that she was seeking her party's nomination to stand as Mayor of London at the May 2016 election. However, she was not shortlisted by the Conservatives.
She was nominated for a life peerage in David Cameron's Resignation Honours and was created Baroness Couttie, of Downe in the County of Kent, on 5 September 2016. Couttie is the surname of her husband Stephen.