The Conservative member for South Cambridgeshire used her maiden Commons speech to attack the government’s plans to cut tax credits, but who is she?

Conservative MP Heidi Allen is making headlines after she used her first speech in the Commons to attack the government’s proposed cuts to tax credits. But who is she?

Allen, 40, is from Notton, a village in West Yorkshire, and is an astrophysics graduate who had 18 years’ experience in business before becoming an MP earlier this year. She won the seat for South Cambridgeshire in May’s general election, succeeding former health secretary Andrew Lansley, who had held it since it was first contested in 1997. Allen received 51.1% of the vote beating Labour’s Daniel Greef, who had 17.6%.

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She has said she was inspired to enter politics after she witnessed the London riots in 2011. “So worried was I our country was in danger of total breakdown, I felt I had to do something – so instead of shouting at the television every night, I decided to get involved,” she said. “Because I’ve experienced some very different environments, I’ve worked and lived alongside real people. I haven’t been stuck in an ivory tower – I can talk to people, I’ve been able to represent and lead them.”



The University College London graduate has previously worked for ExxonMobile and in the public sector with the Royal Mail. For the past six years, Allen has been managing director of her family’s manufacturing business. Her website says she has “developed what was a solely UK-oriented company into one which exports its products all over the world”.

Her husband, Phil, whom she lives with in Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire, has taken over the day-to-day running of the business so Allen can concentrate on her work as an MP.

In July, Allen was elected as one of the members of the work and pensions select committee. She has consistently voted for more powers for local councils, when most Conservative MPs tended to vote against. She has also voted for replacing Trident with a new nuclear weapons system, for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU and for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits.



Other matters Allen has consistently voted for include raising the threshold at which people start to pay income tax and reducing the rate of corporation tax. She has also voted against transferring more powers to the Scottish parliament and measures to prevent climate change.

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Allen has spoken in 16 debates since joining parliament and received answers to seven written questions – both below the average among MPs. The debates have covered a variety of topics, including Greece, health and social care, and the Scotland bill. In July, she emphasised the importance of tackling child poverty. She told the Commons:

I want to draw on my own experiences as a business owner. It is important that, however we choose to describe the measures, we tackle child poverty head on. During the early days of one particular employee’s employment, it felt like I had to drag him to work. He was a young man aged 21 with three small children and it was clear that nobody, including his peers and parents, had brought him up in the world. When I gave him employment and put his money up, he was still culturally unable to find the mental drive to go to work. We have to tackle child poverty by getting to people when they are young, through education, giving them hope and making sure they have food in their bellies – whatever it takes – and we have to achieve that together. I have seen it at the other end – you can drag a horse to water – so I welcome what the secretary of state is trying to do.

In the same month, she spoke at the second reading of the welfare reform and work bill, saying:

I want to reiterate two of the points my honourable friend has made. First, I am also an employer and have lost count of the number of times part-time workers have turned down wage increases or further hours – when I know that their households are short of money – purely because of tax credits. On the flipside, just this Friday I was visited in one of my constituency surgeries by a young married lady with three autistic children – it is a very sad case – who was scared to accept payment for the precious hours she worked as a volunteer teacher, for fear of having her benefits taken away.



