Antoinette Sandbach

Antoinette Sandbach
MP
Member of Parliament
for Eddisbury
Assumed office
7 May 2015
Preceded by Stephen O'Brien
Majority 11,942 (23.2%)
Member of the Welsh Assembly
for North Wales
In office
6 May 2011 – 8 May 2015
Preceded by Brynle Williams
Succeeded by Janet Haworth
Personal details
Born Antoinette Geraldine Mackeson-Sandbach
(1969-02-15) 15 February 1969
Hammersmith, London, England
Political party Conservative
Spouse(s)
Matthew Sherratt (m. 2012)
Children 2
Alma mater University of Nottingham
Website Official website

Antoinette Geraldine Mackeson-Sandbach (born 15 February 1969),[1] known as Antoinette Sandbach, is a Conservative Party politician who was elected as the Member of Parliament for Eddisbury in Cheshire at the 2015 general election. The following day, 8 May 2015, she resigned as the Welsh Assembly Member for the North Wales region, having been elected as a North Wales regional Assembly Member at the May 2011 election.[2]

Early life

Born in Hammersmith,[1][3] Sandbach is the eldest of four sisters[4] and practised as a criminal barrister in London for 13 years. She was twice elected to the Bar Council in that time. She then ran a farming business in the Elwy valley[5] of North Wales. She was educated at the University of Nottingham.[1]

Political career

In the 2010 general election, Sandbach contested the Labour-held parliamentary constituency of Delyn. She lost, but achieved a swing of 6.7% from Labour to Conservative.[6] Following the death of Brynle Williams in 2011, she became a Conservative Regional Assembly Member for North Wales.[5]

During her time in the Assembly she was appointed Shadow Rural Affairs Minister.[5] In 2014, she was appointed Shadow Minister for the Environment. Sandbach also sat on the Assembly's Environment and Sustainability Committee.

In March 2015, Sandbach was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for the Conservative-held seat of Eddisbury in Cheshire, England.[7] She held the safe Conservative seat with a majority of nearly 13,000, and promptly resigned from the Welsh Assembly, to be succeeded by Janet Haworth.[8]

On entering the House she was elected to the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, which she sat on until it was disbanded in October 2016. In March 2017, she was elected on to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee and has subsequently been re-elected to the Committee since the 2017 General Election.[9] She has also been an elected executive member of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs since 2015.

One of her main policy interests is improving services for those who suffer the loss of a baby.[10] Following a debate in the House of Commons in November 2015, she helped set up the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Baby Loss, of which she was also appointed co-chair. Since its formation the group has made recommendations to the Department of Health and has been working closely with Ministers to improve policy in this area.

Sandbach has always been a strong advocate for improving representation of women in the workforce. In some of her first appearances in the House she raised the issue of encouraging more girls to study Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths subjects in order for them to access those highly paid, highly skilled jobs and reduce the gap between men and women in the workplace.

Sandbach was opposed to Brexit prior to the 2016 EU membership referendum.[11]

She retained the Eddisbury seat at the United Kingdom general election, 2017, with a majority of just under 12,000.[12]

In June 2018, Antoinette Sandbach reported a 64-year-old constituent to the police for criticising her stance on Brexit in an email sent to the local Conservative Party office. Sandbach had been "copied-in" to the letter which she believed to be abusive and inappropriate. The story was widely reported by the UK print media, and given additional prominence by the pro-Brexit newspapers,[13] given Antoinette's long-standing demands that Parliament is given a free, meaningful vote on the final terms of the Brexit deal.[14][15]

Private life

Sandbach-Mackeson's daughter Sacha was born in 2002 but she split from Sacha's father in 2003 and moved back to Hafodunos in 2005.[5] She lost a five-day-old son, Sam, to SIDS in 2009[4] and married Matthew Sherratt, a sculptor, in 2012.[1][5] Antoinette Sandbach is 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) tall.[10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Mackeson-Sandbach, Antoinette, (Mrs M. R. Sherratt), (born 15 Feb. 1969), MP (C) Eddisbury, since 2015". Who's Who. 2015. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.271373.
  2. ↑ "Election results 2011: Welsh assembly results in full". The Guardian. 6 May 2011. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  3. ↑ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  4. 1 2 Forgrave, Andrew (30 June 2011). "Art mirrors life for new North Wales Tory AM". Daily Post. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Batley, Sarah (19 July 2013). "At home with Antoinette Sandbach – Assembly Member for North Wales". Cheshire Life. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  6. ↑ "Election 2010 – Delyn". BBC News. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
  7. ↑ Flint, Rachel (26 March 2015). "North Wales AM Antoinette Sandbach selected as Tory election candidate in safe Cheshire seat". Daily Post. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
  8. ↑ "Election 2015: Antoinette Sandbach quits Welsh assembly". BBC News. 8 May 2015. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
  9. ↑ "Membership - Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee". Parliament of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
  10. 1 2 Woods, Judith (4 November 2015). "Antoinette Sandbach: Why I relived the day my baby died, in the middle of the House of Commons". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
  11. ↑ Goodenough, Tom (16 February 2016). "Which Tory MPs back Brexit, who doesn't and who is still on the fence?". The Spectator. Retrieved 11 October 2016.
  12. ↑ "Election 2015: Eddisbury Parliamentary Constituency". BBC News. 9 June 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
  13. ↑ Rogers, Jon (9 June 2018). "'Living in fear': Pensioner fears police raid after Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach reported her to cops for grumbling email". The Sun. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  14. ↑ "Theresa May: We're on course to deliver Brexit despite vote". BBC News. 14 December 2017. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  15. ↑ Austin, Henry (13 December 2017). "Brexit vote: The 11 Tory rebel MPs who defeated the Government". The Independent. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
National Assembly for Wales
Preceded by
Brynle Williams		 Assembly Member
for North Wales
2011–2015		 Succeeded by
Janet Haworth
Political offices
Preceded by
Brynle Williams		 Shadow Minister for Rural Affairs
2011–2015		 Incumbent
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Stephen O'Brien		 Member of Parliament
for Eddisbury
2015–present		 Incumbent
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