Personality profile
‘I wasn’t head girl material’
Helen Whately looks tired. It is her own fault, really.
The previous night, in an effort to stop her youngest daughter, aged four, sucking her thumb, she crept into her bedroom while she slept and applied Stop’n Grow to her nail.
All seemed to have gone well until about 1am when a wail from the bedroom signalled the plan had not quite worked and mum spent three hours cuddling and reassuring the child.
A couple of hours later, she would be up with the rest of the family and facing a long day at the House of Commons, tearing from meeting to meeting.
Her recent appointment as a
parliamentary private secretary to the minister of state for international trade, Greg Hands, simply puts extra pressure on her precious commodity – time.
With three children – a son and two daughters aged between four and eight – managing everything that needs to be done at home as well as the duties and demands placed on her at work, surely must seem a struggle at times.
“It really annoys me that people ask how I do the job of an MP as a woman with three young children.”
There are about 190 female MPs in the House of Commons – the highest number ever – but this still represents fewer than 30% of the 650 who sit there.
The question that will inevitably be asked is, how does she cope?
She once told this observer: “People ask me how I do the job of an MP as a
Outspoken and ambitious, MP Helen Whately is a rising star at Westminster. Simon Finlay went to meet her…
woman with three young children. That really annoys me.
“They don’t ask a male MP with a
young family the same question, so why do they ask me?”
It’s a fair point. As this remark clearly displays, the Conservative MP for the Faversham and Mid-Kent constituency has developed something of a reputation for plain speaking on issues she cares about.
Whether it is illegal parking by lorries, another school for Bearsted, housing or roads, Mrs Whately tends to get to the point. Quickly.
(In fairness, she is just as fast to wax lyrical about the Kentish countryside,
Mid Kent Living 7
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