Justine Greening

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Justine Greening is a Conservative politician in the United Kingdom, and Member of Parliament for Putney.

Greening was born on April 30, 1969, in Rotherham. She attended the University of Southampton and the London Business School (MBA). Prior to entering Parliament she trained as an accountant and worked as an accountant / finance manager for amongst others Price Waterhouse Coopers, GlaxoSmithKline and Centrica.

She won the seat of Putney in the 2005 election on 5 May 2005. Greening received 15,497 votes (42.4% of the vote) giving her a majority of 1,766 (4.8%). She unseated Tony Colman, who had held the seat for Labour since defeating David Mellor in 1997.

As the first Conservative to be elected on the evening of the election her victory was the first sign that the Conservative Party was to achieve a degree of success and begin to recover from landslide defeats of the 1997 and 2001 general elections. Michael Howard, who had visited Putney to give a speech on his first day as Conservative leader, returned there on the morning following the election to congratulate Putney Conservatives, and give the speech in which he announced his intention to step down.

Greening had previously contested the constituency of Ealing, Acton & Shepherd's Bush in 2001.

Greening was appointed a vice-chairman (with responsibility for youth) of the Conservative Party on 15 December 2005, having earlier in the year been appointed a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

She is currently the youngest female Conservative MP in the House of Commons.