Ann Winterton

Ann, Lady Winterton MP
Lady Winterton (right) in 1990 with Ian Smith (seen standing).
Member of Parliament for Congleton
Incumbent
Assumed office  9 June 1983
Preceded by	new constituency
Majority	8,246 (17.7%)
Born	6 March 1941 (1941-03-06) (age 68) Sutton Coldfield, England, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Sir Nicholas Winterton

Jane Ann, Lady Winterton (née Hodgson) (born 6 March 1941 in Sutton Coldfield) is the British Member of Parliament for Congleton, and was first elected as a Conservative MP in 1983. She is married to Sir Nicholas Winterton, who is also a Conservative MP representing the neighbouring constituency of Macclesfield.

Early life and parliamentary career

Winterton was educated at Erdington Grammar School for Girls. Since her election to Congleton in 1983, she has been a member of several select committees, including Agriculture (1987-1997), the Chairman's Panel (1992-1998) and the National Drug Strategy (1998-2001), Social Security (2000-2001) and the Unopposed Bills Panel since 1997. She is also a representative of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and a Patron of Cheshire National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Ann is also President of the Congleton Pantomime Society.

She and her husband both managed to ask questions at Tony Blair's last Prime Minister's Questions.

Allegations of racist comments

Pakistani joke

Winterton became Shadow Rural Affairs Minister in 2001,^[1] and was sacked the next year for telling the following joke at a rugby club dinner:

An Englishman, a Cuban, a Japanese man and a Pakistani were all on a train.

The Cuban threw a fine Havana cigar out the window. When he was asked why, he replied: "They are ten a penny in my country."

The Japanese man threw an expensive Nikon camera out of the carriage, adding: "These are ten a penny in my country."

The Englishman then picked up the Pakistani and threw him out of the train window.

When the other travellers asked him to account for his actions, he said: "They are ten a penny in my country."'^[2]

Joke about the 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling disaster

In February 2004 she had the Conservative whip removed (that is to say, she was suspended from the party) for telling the following joke (which alluded to the recent death of twenty-three illegal immigrant Chinese cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay) at a Whitehall private dinner party to improve Anglo-Danish relations, and refusing to apologise:

One shark turned to the other to say he was fed up chasing tuna and the other said, 'Why don't we go to Morecambe Bay and get some Chinese?'^[3]

A month later, Winterton apologised for that joke, and had the whip restored.^[4] Lord Taylor of Warwick, the only black Conservative peer in the House of Lords, condemned her being restored and said she was not fit to be an MP.^[5]

Dr Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe, who was at the dinner, told BBC Radio 4's Today: "People were a bit stunned really. It was a very low-key friendly dinner. I was very sorry for the host — it was just a group of people discussing Danish issues. Most people make a bad joke now and then, but to make a joke about people who have just died in particularly horrible circumstances — the contrast between standing on the beach in the dark being drowned and sitting round a comfortable table making jokes about them is just, just horrible."^[6]

Michael Howard, the then leader of the Conservatives, said in a statement: "Ann Winterton's remarks about the tragic deaths in Morecambe Bay were completely unacceptable. Such sentiments have no place in the Conservative Party. I deplore them and I apologise for them on behalf of my party."^[6]

Comment in 2005

In September 2005 (following the May general election) Winterton said she felt that Britain is a country where:^{[7][dead link]}

"Crime is out of control ... and where thousands of illegal immigrants are waved in with no checks on whether they are criminals or potential terrorists. [...] We live in times of tremendous change, but the United Kingdom is still, thankfully, a predominantly white, Christian country. [...] Some might say we are now paying the price for the so-called ‘benefits’ of the multicultural society, the product of almost uncontrolled immigration and the abuse of asylum."^{[cite this quote]}

MPs' Use of Expenses

Together with Nicholas Winterton, Ann has been investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who has concluded that they misused their MPs' expenses to pay rent for a flat that they had already bought outright. The Wintertons transferred the ownership of the flat into a family trust to avoid the inheritance tax threshold. Since 2002 they had paid the rent for living in the flat from their MPs' expenditure. The Wintertons had declared their intentions to the Commons' Fees Office.^[8] On 25 May 2009 it was announced that both the Wintertons would stand down as MPs at the next General Election.^[9]

Bibliography

• Times Guide to the House of Commons 2005 (ISBN 9780007211821)^{[citation needed]}

References

External links

Profiles

• ePolitix - Ann Winterton official site
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Ann Winterton MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Ann Winterton MP
• Ann Winterton: A 'family values' Tory - BBC profile

Controversies

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (December 2009)

• Senior Tory sacked over racist joke - BBC News (5 May 2002)
• Sacked MP regrets dismissal - BBC News (7 May 2002)
• MP's 'race joke' reported to police - BBC News (14 May 2002)
• No charges over Tory's racist joke - BBC News (31 May 2002)
• Tories disown cockler joke MP - BBC News (26 February 2004)
• Cockler joke MP returns to Tories - BBC News (31 March 2004)
• FURY AT 'RACIST' TORY'S BANANA REPUBLIC SLUR - SundayMirror.co.uk (25 September 2005)
• MP's article 'highly offensive' - BBC News (26 September 2005)