Earlier this year, Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne were criticised for being “two arrogant posh boys” with “no passion to want to understand the lives of others”. Neither of Nadine Dorries’ stinging criticisms, however, can be leveled at the Coalition Government’s second Minister for Disabled People, Esther McVey MP.
“I was born in Liverpool; I grew up in Liverpool,” she says. “My grandparents were dockers on one side, railway workers the other side, and my dad decided to set up his own business so he could afford to support me and his wife. When I came down to London to study law, I couldn’t just afford to live in London; so I ended up working at a restaurant in Covent Garden. Whilst I was there, I mixed with lots of different people.”
While she now describes that particular stint of waitress work as “life changing”, it nevertheless fits with her own lifelong interest in people and their stories, which is the common strand through her career after initially dropping engineering in favour of studying law. “I got the law degree and gave myself a year to get into the media,” she says. “If not, I would have followed the route of a barrister.”
MEDIA SAVVY
McVey’s media career began as a graduate trainee at the BBC, which ultimately led to nearly 14 years work with the Corporation, Channel 4 and ITV — as often working behind the cameras as in front of them. “The presenting was the icing on the cake but, to keep constantly employed and also to understand what you’re actually doing, it’s really good to research and produce.”
Yet, by 2000, she consciously made the decision to head back up north and leave the media world behind, setting up her own business and working to promote career opportunities for women. Not that she didn’t intend to return to London, but she wanted to do so as an MP. “When I was in the media, it was about understanding and communicating, but it came to a point — am I feeding into the confusion? Am I really getting the message across? Politics was always something I’d been interested in as a kid, but you can’t be political in the media.”
Yet there was nothing ‘sudden’ about her becoming an MP; it took McVey 10 years and two General Elections before she finally entered the House of Commons as the first Conservative MP from Merseyside since Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. She has no regrets about heading for home, however, when other ‘safer’ seats might have been available. “I wanted to represent my area, the people I knew and people like me,” she says. “It is about your journey of life and the unfairnesses you see and the battles or prejudices you see; I’d like to make a difference and effect some change. Therefore, for me, I felt there was a greater integrity to do what I wanted, hence I went home.”
HIGH FLYER
Although part of a large intake of new Conservative MPs in 2010, McVey’s obvious people skills and business experience were noted early on; within six months, she was appointed a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the then Employment Minister Chris Grayling. “That was my apprenticeship,” she says. “One of my key things was looking at youth unemployment, at social mobility, at how you achieve and how you break down barriers. I had worked for 10 years with women in business, with school girls, looking at opportunities, understanding the characteristics and personality traits of people who succeed. Understanding people’s stories, what they need to do and how they’ve achieved — to me, that’s what life’s about.”
Nevertheless, she was both surprised and pleased — if also genuinely daunted — when she was offered the role of Minister for Disabled People. “There IS a lot to take on board,” she says. “You do understand the pressures and implications of a job like that. You are looking to do the very best you can, working within a system, but really championing what you think are key issues. I do have friends who have got disabled children; so I got involved with the charity Full of Life that was helping parents with seriously autistic children — looking at them, giving them knowledge, giving them understanding, giving them free time and space to have their lives as well. Equally I want to bring my knowledge of employment, of self-employment and that whole Access to Work notion. I have my own interests.”
So will she differ in the post from her predecessor, the new Culture Minister Maria Miller? “Well, I guess we’re different people, so I will be!” she says. “I think that to do your job the best, you have to say: ‘What can I add to this?’ And then put that dimension in. So, very much working within the Disability Strategy, we’re setting up a new alliance group. I will work with that, and see where the group think there are gaps, and what I can do to champion that strategy. So it’s working within my knowledge, my personality type, to really move this agenda forward.”
ESTHER McVEY TIME-LINE:
1967: (October) Esther Louise McVey born in Liverpool. She attends the city’s Belvedere School before completing a law degree at Queen Mary & Westfield College, London.
1991: Becomes graduate trainee with the BBC in 1991. She goes on to work in the media for 14 years, presenting and producing programmes for the BBC, Channel 4 and GMTV.
2000: Returns to Merseyside, and establishes Making It (UK) Ltd, developing office space for new start-up companies. Also founds Winning Women, which becomes the biggest business women’s network in the northwest.
2003: Works with Iain Duncan Smith to help establish the Centre for Social Justice, the right-wing think tank which will heavily influence the Conservative party’s future policies on welfare reform.
2005: Stands as Conservative Party candidate in Wirral West constituency, but loses to sitting Labour MP Stephen Hesford by 1,097 votes.
2009: Graduates from Liverpool John Moores University with a distinction for her MSc in Corporate Governance. Also wins the North of England excellence award for her studies. She publishes her career book “If Chloe Can”, in which she interviews many of the world’s most successful women in the hope of inspiring young girls to develop their career choices. She will later be asked to write a similar book for boys.
2010: (May) Wins Wirral West seat, beating Labour’s Phil Davies by 2,436 votes. She is the first Conservative MP in Merseyside since 1997. She is also the first MP to employ an apprentice, pushing for the House of Commons authorities to introduce the scheme.
2010: (November) Appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Employment Minister Chris Grayling, helping see the Welfare Reform Bill through Parliament.
2011: (November) Premiere of If Chloe Can stage-play at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, London, in front of a 1,000-strong audience of inner-city school girls aged 14-16.
2012: (February) Votes with Government defeating amendments agreed in House of Lords which would have protected young disabled people’s eligibility for contributory Employment Support Allowance and prevented DLA cuts of up to £1,400 a year for around 100,000 children.
2012: (September) Appointed Minister for Disabled People.
First published by Access magazine, December 2012.
