Elizabeth Truss

Elizabeth Truss MP
Truss in 2013
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education and Childcare
Incumbent
Assumed office 4 September 2012
Prime Minister	David Cameron
Preceded by	Sarah Teather (as Minister of State for Children and Families)
Member of Parliament for South West Norfolk
Incumbent
Assumed office 6 May 2010
Preceded by	Christopher Fraser
Majority	13,140 (26.7%)[1]
Personal details
Born	(1975-07-26) 26 July 1975[2] Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Hugh O'Leary
Children	Two
Residence	Downham Market, Norfolk
Alma mater	Merton College, Oxford
Profession	Economist
Website	www.elizabethtruss.com

Elizabeth Mary Truss^[3] (born 26 July 1975), also known as Liz Truss, is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk since the 2010 general election. In September 2012, she was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for education and childcare in the Department for Education.^[4]

Truss grew up in a left-wing family in Paisley and Leeds, before attending Oxford. She worked in sales and as an economist, before becoming deputy director at the think-tank Reform. She was elected in 2010 for South West Norfolk.

As a backbencher, Truss called for reform in a number of policy areas, including childcare, maths education, and the economy.^[5] She founded the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs. She has authored and co-authored a number of papers and books, including After the Coalition (2011) and Britannia Unchained (2012).

Early life

Truss was raised in a northern, left-wing household; her father is a professor with an interest in mathematical logic, and her mother was a nurse, teacher, and member of the CND.^[6] Truss has described both as being 'to the left of Labour'.^[5] While her mother agreed to campaign for Truss when she ran for election to Parliament, her father – due to his politics – refused to do so.^[5][7]

Truss attended a state primary school in Paisley, in Scotland,^[5] followed by Roundhay School, a comprehensive school in north-east Leeds. She lived in Canada for a year, and contrasts the competitive attitude in schooling there with the 'trendy' education she received in Leeds.^[5] Amongst her A-levels, Truss studied both Ordinary Maths and Advanced Maths.^[8] She read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Merton College, Oxford.

After graduation in 1996, she worked for Shell as a commercial manager and Cable & Wireless as economics director, and became a qualified management accountant.^[9] Truss became the deputy director of Reform in January 2008,^[10] where she advocated more rigorous academic standards in schools, a greater focus on tackling serious and organised crime, and urgent action to deal with Britain's falling competitiveness. She co-authored The Value of Mathematics^[11] and A New Level^[12] amongst other reports.

Truss was President of Oxford University Liberal Democrats and expressed republican sentiments at the 1994 Liberal Democrats conference.^[6][13] Truss joined the Conservative Party in 1996.^[2] She served as the chairman of the Lewisham Deptford Conservative Association from 1998 to 2000.^[2] She was elected as a councillor in the London Borough of Greenwich in 2006, standing down in 2010, shortly before the end of her term of office.

Candidate

She had previously unsuccessfully fought the parliamentary seats of Hemsworth in 2001 and Calder Valley in 2005.^[14]

In October 2009, she was selected for the Norfolk seat by members of the constituency Conservative Association, and won over 50% of the vote in the first round of the final against five other candidates, one of whom was local to the county.^{[15] [16]} However, shortly afterwards, some members of the constituency Association, dubbed the 'Turnip Taliban' and led by former High Sheriff of Norfolk Sir Jeremy Bagge, 7th Baronet,^[17] objected to Truss’s selection, claiming that information about the candidate had been withheld from the members.^[18] A motion was proposed to terminate Truss’s candidature, but this was defeated by 132 votes to 37 at a general meeting of the Association’s members three weeks later.^[19]

Parliamentary career

Since being elected to Parliament on 6 May 2010, she has campaigned for issues including the retention of the RAF Tornado base at RAF Marham in her constituency^[20] and the dualling of the A11 west of Thetford.^[21] Her work to campaign for design improvements to road junctions in her constituency, notably the A47, led to her being named as Road Safety Parliamentarian of the Month by road safety charity Brake in January 2013.^[22] From March 2011, she was a Member of the Justice Select Committee^[23] until she was appointed as a minister.

In March 2011, she wrote a paper for the liberal think-tank CentreForum in which she argued for an end to bias against serious academic subjects in the education system so that social mobility can be improved.^[24] Truss wrote a further paper for the same think-tank in May 2012, in which she argued for change in the structure of the childcare market in Britain.^[25]

In October 2011, she founded the Free Enterprise Group, now supported by 41 other Conservative MPs.^[26] In September 2011, together with four other members of the Free Enterprise Group, she had co-authored After the Coalition, a book which sought to challenge the consensus that Britain's economic decline is inevitable by arguing for the return of a more entrepreneurial and meritocratic culture.^[27] A further volume by the same authors, Britannia Unchained, billed as "an insightful and critical assessment of Britain's challenges in the face of future uncertainty", was published in September 2012.^[28] As part of a serialisation in the Daily Telegraph, Truss wrote an article previewing her chapter on the importance of science in education.^[29] The piece was praised by the physicist Brian Cox as an "excellent article".^[30]

Truss has championed Britain following Germany's lead in allowing people to have tax-free and less-heavily regulated 'mini-jobs'.^[31] Since Truss published a paper on the policy for the Free Enterprise Group in February 2012, the policy has been examined by the Treasury as a policy to promote growth.^[32][33]

Truss has campaigned for improved teaching of more rigorous school subjects, especially mathematics. She has publicised that only 20% of British students study maths to 18,^[8] and called for maths classes to be compulsory for all of those in full-time education.^[34] Truss herself studied double A-level maths.^[8] She's argued that comprehensive school pupils are being 'mis-sold' easy, low-value subjects to boost school results: with comprehensive school pupils six times as likely to take media studies at A-level as privately educated pupils are.^[35] Truss has also criticised the over-reliance on calculators to the detriment of mental arithmetic.^[36]

On 4 September 2012, Truss was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education, with responsibility for education and childcare.^[4] In this role, she has developed some of the policy areas that she had pursued as a backbencher.

In January 2013, she announced proposals to reform A-Levels, by concentrating examinations at the end of two-year courses.^[37]

Later in the same month, Truss outlined plans to reform childcare, intended to overhaul childcare qualifications, and provide more choice of quality education and care for parents.^[38] The proposed reforms were broadly welcomed by some organisations such as the charity 4Children,^[39] the Confederation of British Industry^[40] and the College of West Anglia.^[41] However, the proposals met opposition from others. The TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady and the then Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg were among those criticising the reforms,^[42] echoed by some parents and childcare bodies, such as the charity National Day Nurseries Association.^[43] The columnist Polly Toynbee was highly critical of the minister's plans,^[44] and challenged Truss to demonstrate how to care for two babies alongside four toddlers on her own. Truss responded to Toynbee's challenge by saying that being an early educator was a very demanding job, requiring great and specialist expertise, for which she was not trained.^[45] In the event, aspects of the reforms relating to relaxation of childcare ratios were blocked by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.^[46]

Personal life

Truss is married with two daughters, and lives in Downham Market, in her constituency, and Greenwich, London.

Bibliography

• The Value of Mathematics (June 2008)
• A New Level (June 2009)
• Academic rigour and social mobility: how low income students are being kept out of top jobs (March 2011)
• A decade of gains - learning lessons from Germany (February 2012)
• Affordable quality: new approaches to childcare (May 2012)

• After the Coalition (2011)
• Britannia Unchained (2012)

References

External links

• Elizabeth Truss official website
• Free Enterprise Group official website