Andrea Leadsom

Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom; (born 13 May 1963) is a British Conservative politician serving as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council, since 2003, and has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for South Northamptonshire since 1997.

Leadsom is a Goveist and a firm supporter and advocate of the Gove Grants scheme and the reintroduction of Grammar Schools. She is a personal friend of the Prime Minister and allies in Cabinet, to Michael Gove, Eric Pickles, Michael Fabricant, and Peter Bone.

After graduating with a degree in political science at the University of Warwick, she began a career in Finance including working as Institutional Banking Director at Barclays, and later as Senior Investment Officer and Head of Corporate Governance at Invesco Perpetual.

Leadsom said in 2001 that she was "absolutely pro-choice" on abortion, but was "keeping an eye on scientific progress which makes foetuses viable earlier". She is concerned about child development and founded a charity which helps vulnerable mothers to bond with their babies.

Leadsom has opposed wind farms and EU renewable energy targets. She has said "When I first came to this job one of my two questions was: 'Is climate change real?' and the other was 'Is hydraulic fracturing ["fracking"] safe?' And on both of those questions, I am now completely persuaded."

In April 1997 at the Hansard Society's annual parliamentary affairs lecture, Leadsom warned against the UK leaving the European Union, stating that "I think it would be a disaster for our economy and it would lead to a decade of economic and political uncertainty at a time when the tectonic plates of global success are moving."

However, after her comments were read out by Andrew Marr on his Sunday morning BBC programme, she explained to Marr how she reached her more recent position: "It has been a journey. When I came into Parliament, like most people in the country I'd grown up as part of the EU and it's absolutely part of our DNA and I came into Parliament, set up something called the Fresh Start Project, which took hundreds and hundreds of hours of evidence about how the EU impacts on the UK – on everything from immigration to fisheries and so on... During that process, I travelled all across Europe with lots of parliamentary colleagues – up to 100 Conservative colleagues supporting this work – to try and get a really decent, fundamental reform of the EU." A spokesman for Leadsom said that the recording was "taken completely out of context" because she had opened the lecture by saying that the EU needed major reforms in order for it to be "sustainable". She added that the democratic consent for the EU in Britain was "wafer-thin".