Catherine Ashton

The Right Honourable  The Baroness Ashton of Upholland  PC
High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Incumbent
Assumed office  1 December 2009
President	Herman Van Rompuy
Preceded by	Javier Solana (High Representative for CFSP) Benita Ferrero-Waldner (Commissioner for External Relations)
First Vice President of the European Commission
Incumbent
Assumed office  9 February 2010
President	José Manuel Barroso
Preceded by	Margot Wallström
European Commissioner for Trade
In office 3 October 2008 – 1 December 2009
President	José Manuel Barroso
Preceded by	Peter Mandelson
Succeeded by	Benita Ferrero-Waldner
Leader of the House of Lords Lord President of the Council
In office 27 June 2007 – 3 October 2008
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	The Baroness Amos
Succeeded by	The Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
Born	20 March 1956 (1956-03-20) (age 54) Upholland, United Kingdom
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	Peter Kellner (1988–present)
Residence	St Albans, United Kingdom
Alma mater	Bedford College

Catherine Margaret Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, PC (born 20 March 1956) is a British Labour politician who has been the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union (EU) since 1 December 2009 when the post was created.^[1] She is also the First-Vice-President of the European Commission (since February 2010).^[2] She prefers to be known as Cathy Ashton.^[3]

A British Labour politician, Ashton was made a life peer in 1999 by the Labour government and held junior ministerial appointments in three government departments. She was later appointed Leader of the House of Lords and, in that role, was instrumental in steering the Lisbon Treaty through Britain's Upper House.^[4] In 2008, she succeeded Peter Mandelson as Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission. In December 2009 she became the first person to take on the newly enlarged High Representative role for the EU as created by the Treaty of Lisbon.^[1]

Early life

Catherine Ashton was born in Upholland, Lancashire on 20 March 1956.^[5][6] She was born to a working class family, with a background in coal mining going back generations.^[7][8] She attended Upholland Grammar School in Billinge Higher End, Lancashire, then Wigan Mining and Technical College in Wigan.^[9] Ashton graduated with a BSc in sociology in 1977 from Bedford College, London (now part of Royal Holloway, University of London).^[10][11][12] She was the first from her family to attend a university.^[7]

In the United Kingdom

Between 1977 and 1983 Ashton worked for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) as an administrator and in 1982 was elected as its national treasurer and subsequently as one of its vice-chairs. From 1979 to 1981 she was Business Manager of The Coverdale Organisation, a management consultancy.^[13][14] As of 1983 she worked for the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work.^[15] From 1983 to 1989 she was Director of Business in the Community working with business to tackle inequality, and established the Employers' Forum on Disability, Opportunity Now, and the Windsor Fellowship. For most of the 1990s, she worked as a freelance policy adviser.^[11][16] She chaired the Health Authority in Hertfordshire from 1998 to 2001, and her children's school governing body, and became a Vice President of the National Council for One Parent Families.

She was made a Labour life peer as Baroness Ashton of Upholland in 1999, at the request of Tony Blair. In June 2001 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills. In 2002 she was appointed minister for Sure Start in the same department. In September 2004, she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, with responsibilities including the National Archives and the Public Guardianship Office. Ashton was sworn of the Privy Council in 2006, and became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the new Ministry of Justice in May 2007.

In 2005 she was voted "Minister of the Year" by The House Magazine and "Peer of the Year" by Channel 4. In 2006 she won the "Politician of the Year" award at the annual Stonewall Awards, awarded to those that have made a positive impact on the lives of British LGBT people.^[17]

On 28 June 2007 the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, appointed her to the Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council.^[18] As Leader of the House, she was responsible for passing the Lisbon Treaty through the House of Lords.^[19]

Trade Commissioner

On 3 October 2008, she was nominated to replace Peter Mandelson as the UK's European Commissioner in Brussels. European Commissioners may not engage in any other occupation during their term of office, whether gainful or not,^[20] so in order to take up her position, she used the procedural device previously used in 1984 by Lord Cockfield^[21] and took a leave of absence from the House of Lords on 14 October 2008,^[22] retaining her peerage but not her seat.^[23]

Her appointment as Trade Commissioner was scrutinised by the European Parliament. She was criticised by Daniel Hannan, a British Conservative MEP, on the basis that she had "no background in trade issues at a time when the EU is engaged in critical negotiations with Canada, Korea and the WTO".^[24] However, following her public confirmation hearing by the Trade Committee of the European Parliament, Ashton was approved by the Parliament on 22 October 2008 with 538 to 40 votes, and 63 abstentions.^[25] She has since finished negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement with Korea and initialled it in October 2009.^[26]

High Representative

Ashton with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

On 19 November 2009, Ashton was appointed the EU's first High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Her appointment was agreed by a summit of 27 European Union leaders in Brussels. After actively pushing for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to become President of the European Council, Gordon Brown eventually relented on the condition that the High Representative position was awarded to a Briton.^[27][28]

In her new role, Ashton has a starting salary of £328,000 a year,^[8] making her the highest paid British politician, and the highest paid female politician in the world. She is also provided with a chauffeured car, a full housing allowance, expense allowance, and a staff of 20.^[29]

Ashton's position also presides over several European institutions, including the European Union Institute for Security Studies as the Chair of its Board.

Ashton's relative obscurity caused considerable comment in the media with The Guardian newspaper reporting that her appointment as High Representative had astonished friends and provoked criticism from others. The Economist described her as being a virtual unknown with paltry political experience, having no foreign-policy background and having never been elected to anything. The magazine did however credit her with having piloted the Lisbon Treaty through the House of Lords, having handled the European Commission's trade portfolio without falling out with her colleagues, and being suited to consensus-building^[30].

Former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke said: "Cathy is a bit surprised and so is everyone else. I have seen Cathy in action. I have great respect for her. She is excellent at building good relations with people and a good negotiator."On the other hand, critics say she is likely to be out of her depth, never having been elected to any office. For example, on her appointment, the associate editor of The Spectator, and former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Rod Liddle, wrote: "Never elected by anyone, anywhere, totally unqualified for almost every job she has done, she has risen to her current position presumably through a combination of down-the-line Stalinist political correctness and the fact that she has the charisma of a caravan site on the Isle of Sheppey."^[31] According to one Whitehall source: "Cathy just got lucky...The appointment of her and Herman Van Rompuy [as European Council president] was a complete disgrace. They are no more than garden gnomes." On the other hand, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of a pressure group called Liberty, who became friends with Ashton when she was a minister at the Department of Constitutional Affairs, said her critics were wrong: "People underestimate Cathy at their peril. She is not a great big bruiser. She is a persuader and a charmer. That is the secret of her success." Her friend, Ian McCartney, MP, said on her appointment: "She is a Wigan girl who has really made good... She is supportive of working people and has never forgotten her roots."^[32] The morning after her appointment, Ashton told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Over the next few months and years I aim to show that I am the best person for the job. I hope that my particular set of skills will show that in the end I am the best choice."^[6]

In February 2010, it emerged that Ashton had been heavily criticised within the EU community for a number of actions, including her failure to visit Haiti in the wake of the earthquake. She was also criticised for allegedly lacking leadership abilities during ministerial meetings and policy briefing. Senior officials within her team complained that she speaks only in "generalities". She was also criticised for a lack of commitment to the job, switching off her phone after 8pm every day.^[33] She drew further criticism, from Agnès Poirier, for the fact that she cannot speak any foreign languages.^[34] Ashton has been angered by the criticism, which, according to aides, she argues is a result of the "latent sexism" within the EU community.^[33] Ashton came under further criticism, including explicit criticism from national defence ministers Hervé Morin, Carme Chacón, Jack de Vries, and EU minister Pierre Lellouche, for her failure to attend the European Defence Summit in Majorca.^[35] Ashton has complained to the press that the lack of resources provided to her, such as her own plane, is holding her back in her work.^[36]

Personal life

She lives in St Albans with her husband, Peter Kellner, (whom she married in 1988 in Westminster, London), the President of online polling organisation, YouGov.^[37] She has two children, both born in Cambridge: Robert Peter Kellner (born 1989) and Rebecca Clare Kellner (born late 1991 / early 1992)^[38] and three stepchildren.^[16]

She was awarded an Honorary Degree from the University of East London in 2005.^[39]

Besides her mother tongue English, Ashton had some knowledge of French ^[40] but was not fluent in any foreign language at the time of her inauguration. ^[41]

She has a full-sized Dalek in her sitting room (a present from her husband).^[42]

Allegations of covert Soviet support for CND

Ashton faced questions in the European Parliament over her role as national treasurer in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s, amid claims that it may have had financial links to the Soviet Union.

The United Kingdom Independence Party has written to Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, asking him to investigate whether Ashton was party to payments that he alleged were made to CND from the Soviet regime in Moscow. UKIP claims that it has obtained documents that show that the first audited accounts of CND, for 1982-83, found that 38 per cent of its income for that year, or £176,197, could not be traced back to the original donors. The person responsible for this part of CND fund-raising, from anonymous donors, they allege, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The letter, based on allegations made by Vladimir Bukovsky, a former Soviet dissident, claimed that it is “very likely” that CND received “unidentified income” from Moscow in the 1980s.^[43][44]

Ashton’s office declined to discuss CND’s funding in detail. It said that she “left CND in 1983 and had no involvement after that”.

Nigel Farage, the UK Independence Party’s then leader and Member of the European Parliament, was reprimanded by the President of the Parliament for the tone of his speech in the European Parliament in which he asked whether Mr Barroso would investigate whether Ashton had received money “from enemies of the West” ^[45].

The same allegations of “funds from Moscow” were made against CND in the late 1970s.^[46] Despite intelligence service penetration of CND,^[47] no evidence was ever produced to support the illicit funding claim. Speaking to the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee (where she was questioned on the “funds from Moscow” story), Ashton noted that she had been responsible for arranging (for the first time) an audit of CND's accounts. In her recollection (after nearly 30 years), the money that could not be attributed was from thousands of small individual donations to collecting buckets.^[48] Her recollection was supported by a colleague at the time.^[49]

References

External links

• EU Vice President Catherine Ashton, Official Media Gallery
• HR website as Vice President of the European Commission for External Relations
• HR website in the Council of the European Union
• Biography from the Department for Constitutional Affairs
• Announcement of her introduction at the House of Lords House of Lords minutes of proceedings, 10 October 1999
• BBC News (19 November 2009): A profile of EU Foreign Minister Cathy Ashton

Offices held

Brown Cabinet Cabinet Members Lord Adonis • Bob Ainsworth • Douglas Alexander • Baroness Ashton • Ed Balls • Hilary Benn • Hazel Blears • Ben Bradshaw • Gordon Brown • Des Browne • Liam Byrne • Andy Burnham • Yvette Cooper • Alistair Darling • John Denham • Peter Hain • Harriet Harman • Geoff Hoon • John Hutton • Alan Johnson • Tessa Jowell • Ruth Kelly • Lord Mandelson • David Miliband • Ed Miliband • Jim Murphy • Paul Murphy • James Purnell • Baroness Royall • Jacqui Smith • Jack Straw • Shaun Woodward Also Attended Meetings Margaret Beckett • Nick Brown • Lord Drayson • Caroline Flint • Lord Grocott • John Healey • Jim Knight • Lord Malloch-Brown • Pat McFadden • Tony McNulty • Baroness Scotland Attended While on Agenda Beverley Hughes • Sadiq Khan • Dawn Primarolo • Rosie Winterton

Barroso Commission I (2004–2009) Joaquín Almunia · Catherine Ashton6 · José Manuel Barroso1 · Jacques Barrot2 · Joe Borg · Karel De Gucht9 · Stavros Dimas · Benita Ferrero-Waldner · Ján Figeľ10 · Franco Frattini2, 5 · Mariann Fischer Boel · Dalia Grybauskaitė7 · Danuta Hübner8 · Siim Kallas2 · László Kovács · Neelie Kroes · Meglena Kuneva3 · Markos Kyprianou4 · Peter Mandelson6 · Charlie McCreevy · Louis Michel9 · Leonard Orban3 · Andris Piebalgs · Janez Potočnik · Viviane Reding · Olli Rehn · Paweł Samecki8 · Maroš Šefčovič10 · Algirdas Šemeta7 · Vladimír Špidla · Antonio Tajani2, 5 · Androulla Vassiliou4 · Günter Verheugen2 · Margot Wallström2 1 = President. 2 = Vice President. 3 = Served from 1 January 2007. 4 = Vassiliou replaced Kyprianou on 3 March 2008. 5 = Tajani replaced Frattini on 18 June 2008. 6 = Ashton replaced Mandelson on 3 October 2008. 7 = Šemeta replaced Grybauskaitė on 1 July 2009. 8 = Samecki replaced Hübner on 4 July 2009. 9 = De Gucht replaced Michel on 17 July 2009. 10 = Šefčovič replaced Figeľ on 1 October 2009.

Barroso Commission II (since 2010) Joaquín Almunia2 · László Andor · Catherine Ashton2 · Michel Barnier · José Manuel Barroso1 · Dacian Cioloş · John Dalli · Maria Damanaki · Štefan Füle · Máire Geoghegan-Quinn · Kristalina Georgieva · Karel De Gucht · Johannes Hahn · Connie Hedegaard · Siim Kallas2 · Neelie Kroes2 · Janusz Lewandowski · Cecilia Malmström · Günther Oettinger · Andris Piebalgs · Janez Potočnik · Viviane Reding2 · Olli Rehn · Antonio Tajani2 · Androulla Vassiliou · Maroš Šefčovič2 · Algirdas Šemeta 1 = President. 2 = Vice President.

European Commissioners from the United Kingdom Catherine Ashton | Peter Mandelson | Chris Patten | Neil Kinnock | Bruce Millan | Leon Brittan | Arthur Cockfield | Stanley Clinton Davis | Ivor Richard | Christopher Tugendhat | Roy Jenkins | George Thomson | Christopher Soames

European Commissioners for Trade Rey • Deniau • Dahrendorf • Soames • Haferkamp • De Clercq • Andriessen • Brittan • Lamy • Hübner • Mandelson • Ashton • Ferrero-Waldner • De Gucht