Anne Jenkin, Baroness Jenkin of Kennington

The Right Honourable
The Baroness Jenkin of Kennington
Official portrait, 2024
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office
26 January 2011
Life Peerage
Personal details
Born
Anne Caroline Strutt

(1955-12-08) 8 December 1955 (age 69)
NationalityBritish
Political partyConservative
Spouse
​
(m. 1988)​
RelationsRobert Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh (paternal grandfather)
Children2
Parent(s)Hon. Charles Strutt
Hon. Jean Davidson

Anne Caroline Jenkin, Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (née Strutt; born 8 December 1955) is a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

Political career

Jenkin stood for election as a Member of Parliament in Glasgow Provan in the 1987 general election.[1] In 2005, she co-founded Women2Win with Theresa May, a campaign to increase the number of female Conservative MPs. She is currently its co-chair with Mark Harper.[2] She hired the director of Women2Win, Charlotte Carew Pole, to serve on her parliamentary staff.[3]

She co-founded the Conservative Friends of International Development in 2011.[4]

She was created a life peer on 26 January 2011 as Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, of Hatfield Peverel in the County of Essex.[5] She was introduced to the House of Lords on 27 January 2011, where she sits on the Conservative benches.[6]

In 2013, she spoke in favour of equal marriage.[7][6]

In 2014, she was a member of the all-party parliamentary group on Food Poverty and Hunger when it co-produced a report on food poverty, with the charity Feeding Britain. One of the report's findings was that there were 4 million people in the UK struggling to afford food.[8] At the publication press conference on 8 December, she said that the report found that one cause of the rise of hunger and food bank use in the UK was because, "We [as a society] have lost a lot of our cooking skills, and poor people don't know how to cook."[9][10] Later that day, in another interview about the report's launch, she apologised for the remark, saying she was speaking without a script and had made a mistake:[10] "What I meant was as a society we have lost our ability to cook" which was a problem affecting low income families most severely.[11]

In January 2018, Jenkin criticised what she claimed was language used by constituents to describe candidates during the 2017 general election.[12] In the debate on social media regulation in the House of Lords, Jenkin claimed that a candidate had been referred to as a "fucking Tory cunt". Jenkin said: "During the election campaign in June, the Ealing Central and Acton Conservative candidate was met daily outside her home by a large group of Momentum and Labour activists yelling at her, and I quote—and please, my Lords, forgive the unparliamentary language and block your ears if you are sensitive or easily offended—“Fucking Tory cunt”. This young woman has a young child. How can this be acceptable?"[12]

As of 2022, Jenkin is a member of parliamentary committees on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision (since 2018) and Hybrid Instruments (since 2019). She has previously served on committees addressing Equality Act 2010 and Disability (2015–2016) and Charities (2016–2017).[6]

In 2021, perceiving a conflict between rights of "trans-women and those of women and girls", Jenkin dissociated herself from recent stances of Stonewall, a charity she had previously supported, and declared herself "gender critical".[13] In 2022, The Daily Telegraph reported that, with fellow "gender critical" parliamentarians Rosie Duffield and Joanna Cherry she was setting up a cross-party "biology policy unit", "to help ensure policies across the public sector that are based on gender identity theory are documented and scrutinised".[14] In 2023, she criticized the Lord Chancellor's decision to recognize Matilda Simon, a transgender woman, as the 3rd Baron Simon of Wythenshawe.[15]

Other roles

In 2016, Jenkin became founding chancellor of Writtle University College, on its achieving university college status. The college is in Essex and specialises in agricultural and horticultural courses.[16]

In 2017, Jenkin was chair of the Centre for Social Justice Off the Scales working group on childhood obesity in England.[17]

Personal life

Since 1988 she has been married to the Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Bernard Jenkin, whose father was the Conservative life peer The Lord Jenkin of Roding.[18] Jenkin and her husband have two sons.

She separated from her husband in 2023.[19]

References

  1. ^ Childs, Sarah (2008). Women and British Party Politics: Descriptive, Substantive and Symbolic Representation. Routledge. p. 52. ISBN 9781134211586.
  2. ^ "About us". Women2Win. Archived from the original on 18 March 2015. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  3. ^ https://members.parliament.uk/member/4229/staff [bare URL]
  4. ^ "About CFID". Conservative Friends of International Development. Archived from the original on 29 July 2024. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  5. ^ "No. 59688". The London Gazette. 2 February 2011. p. 1745.
  6. ^ a b c "Baroness Jenkin of Kennington". Membership of the House of Lords. Parliament of the United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 12 November 2014. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  7. ^ "Baroness Jenkin: 'Times have changed and my family would have been ashamed if I opposed equal marriage'". PinkNews. 5 June 2013.
  8. ^ "A strategy for zero hunger in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland" (PDF). Feeding Britain. All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom. 8 December 2014. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 November 2020. Retrieved 18 July 2021.
  9. ^ Griffin, Andrew (8 December 2014). "Baroness Jenkin: Tory peer claims poor people go hungry because they 'don't know how to cook'". The Independent. Archived from the original on 8 December 2014. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  10. ^ a b Holehouse, Matthew (8 December 2014). "Poor going hungry because they can't cook, says Tory peer". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 29 July 2024. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  11. ^ "Tory peer apologises for saying 'poor can't cook'". BBC News Online. 8 December 2014. Archived from the original on 8 December 2014. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  12. ^ a b "Social Media: News". Hansard. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  13. ^ Jenkin, Anne (23 July 2021). "Why I changed my mind about trans self-identification". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 24 July 2021. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  14. ^ Clarence-Smith, Louisa (22 October 2022). "Unit aims to stop gender ideology 'compromising' women's rights". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 22 October 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
  15. ^ Somerville, Ewan (13 May 2023). "Daughters excluded from peerage due to gender outraged by trans woman standing for Lords seat". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 4 June 2023. Retrieved 2 June 2023.
  16. ^ "Writtle University College Founding Chancellor Baroness Jenkin of Kennington". Writtle University College. Archived from the original on 29 July 2024. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  17. ^ "Off The Scales - Tackling England's Childhood Obesity Crisis" (PDF). The Centre of Social Justice. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 January 2020. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  18. ^ Fitch, Rachel (22 November 2010). "MP's wife Anne Jenkin gets seat in House of Lords". The Daily Gazette. Archived from the original on 29 July 2024. Retrieved 27 January 2011.
  19. ^ Moffat, Macaully (10 December 2022). "Sir Bernard Jenkin and Baroness Jenkin of Kennington separate". Basildon, Canvey, Southend Echo. Newsquest Media Group. Archived from the original on 27 March 2024. Retrieved 29 July 2024. Harwich and North Essex MP Sir Bernard Jenkin and wife Baroness Jenkin of Kennington have separate after 34 years of marriage.