Jessica Asato

Jessica Asato is a Labour politician.^[1] She was selected in 2012 as the parliamentary candidate in Norwich North for the 2015 General Election.^[2] She was one of 15 Labour candidates each given financial support of £10,000 by Lord Matthew Oakeshott the former Liberal Democrat in January 2015.^[3] In the May 2015 General Election, she came second to Chloe Smith in the Norwich North constituency, having increased the Labour vote by 2%.

Personal and family life

She grew up in Gorleston and Rollesby where she lived with and cared for her grandmother, who had serious health problems. She went to Flegg High School in Great Yarmouth. When she was 16 in 1997, she moved from Norfolk to live with her mother in London and went to Francis Holland School, an all-girls private school. She was a keen debater at Sixth Form level, reaching the semi-finals of the Oxford Union schools’ debate competition.^[4] She went to Cambridge to study law. She was quickly divorced from her first husband, Howard Dawber. Her second husband, journalist Gareth Butler, died of a heart attack in 2008.^[5] She married her third husband, Rob Chaplin, in 2014 and had a baby.^[6]

Political career

In 2009 she was ranked no 78 among the Top 100 most influential Left-wingers by the Daily Telegraph.^[7]

In 2010 she made The Independent's list of 10 names to watch, perhaps because she was "Social media lead" on David Miliband's leadership election campaign^[8] and was featured in the Total Politics video Make Your Mind Up (And Vote!) with Bucks Fizz and "famous political figures".^[9]

She was a councillor on Islington London Borough Council from 2010 to 2013 but resigned in order to spend more time in Norwich. She was attacked in Islington by local Liberal Democrats for spending too much time in Norfolk, and for being the type of professional politician that Labour activists – and its leadership – say there are too many of in its Parliamentary ranks.^[10] She works in Westminster two days a week as political adviser to former cabinet minister and culture secretary Tessa Jowell. She was featured as one of the Evening Standard's Lucky 13 in 2013.^[11] She is reported as saying that spending her formative years growing up in a low income household in Norfolk - from 11 until she left home at 16, and being the first person in her family to have made it to university, gives her a good foundation for life as an MP.^[12]

In Islington she was chair of the Corporate Parenting Board. At the Labour Party Conference in 2014, when she was noticeably pregnant, she highlighted figures which she claimed showed there were 1,000 fewer childcare places in the East of England (in comparison with what?), that one in five parents had been forced to call in sick over the summer to look after their children and that child minder costs were up 44% in the last four years in the East of England.^[13]

In 2009 she wrote to shadow health secretary Andy Burnham raising concerns about his plans to make the NHS the “preferred provider” of NHS services and she has been accused of hypocrisy for subsequently supporting Clive Efford's National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers Bill).^[14]

Employment

She was employed as a health policy researcher at the Social Market Foundation and was director of the Labour Yes! Campaign in favour of Alternative vote Plus. She was previously acting director of Progress, a director of Left Foot Forward and is vice-chairman of the Fabian Society.^[15] It has been suggested that under her directorship, Progress became less of a cheerleader group for Blairite politics than it was when it started.^[16]

She is Vice-Chair of the Electoral Reform Society and chair of governors of Jack Taylor Special School for children with disabilities and learning difficulties, and served as joint acting chair of Brook.^[17] She is on the advisory board of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.^[18]

Publications

• By Choice, Not Chance: Fabian Facts for Socialists (with Howard Dawber and Paul Richards), Fabian Society 2001 ISBN 0716340461
• Direct to Patient Communication: Patient Empowerment or NHS Burden? (editor) Social Market Foundation 2004 ISBN 1-904899-03-X
• Charging Ahead?: Spreading the Costs of Modern Public Services, Social Market Foundation, Oct 2007 ISBN 1904899412

References

External links

• Personal Website