Kitty Ussher

Kitty Ussher
Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury
In office 9 June 2009 – 17 June 2009
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	Angela Eagle
Succeeded by	Sarah McCarthy-Fry
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
In office 5 October 2008 – 9 June 2009
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	James Plaskitt
Succeeded by	Helen Goodman
Economic Secretary to the Treasury
In office 29 June 2007 – 5 October 2008
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	Ed Balls
Succeeded by	Ian Pearson
Member of Parliament for Burnley
In office 5 May 2005 – 6 May 2010
Preceded by	Peter Pike
Succeeded by	Gordon Birtwistle
Personal details
Born	(1971-03-18) 18 March 1971 Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England
Political party	Labour
Spouse	Peter J Colley
Children	1 son, 1 daughter
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford, Birkbeck, University of London

Katharine Anne "Kitty" Ussher (born 18 March 1971) is a British economist and former Labour Party politician.

After training as an economist, she was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Burnley from 2005 until 2010, succeeding Peter Pike. She served as a minister in Gordon Brown's Government from 2007–09, mainly at the Treasury but also at the Department for Work and Pensions. She did not stand in the 2010 election instead taking a position as the chief economist of the think tank Demos. She was appointed the Director of Demos in September 2010 and wrote four pamphlets over the next year on aspects of economic and industrial policy including recommendations on how to mitigate the risks from future financial crises and which argued the recession was not caused by the UK's over-dependence on finance. On 12 August 2011 she resigned from her position at Demos and switched to a portfolio that includes Chief Economic Adviser for Portland, a member of TheCityUK's Independent Economists' Panel and associate arrangements with a number of London-based think-tanks. In 2014 she established the research company, Tooley Street Research .

Biography

Ussher is the daughter of an Anglo-Irish lawyer father, and headmistress mother whose brother is Peter Bottomley. Consequently, this makes her the niece of the former Conservative cabinet minister, Virginia Bottomley and the granddaughter of the diplomat Sir James Bottomley.

She was educated on a free place at the independent St Paul's Girls' School, and Balliol College, Oxford, where she read PPE, and Birkbeck College, London, where she took a MSc in Economics.

Career

Prior to her election she worked as chief economist for Britain in Europe and as an economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Centre for European Reform. In addition she has worked as secretary to Paul Boateng and as researcher to MPs Martin O’Neill, Kim Howells and Adam Ingram. From 2001 until her selection as a parliamentary candidate in 2004 she was special adviser to Patricia Hewitt in the Department of Trade and Industry. She served as a councillor in the London Borough of Lambeth for Vassall ward from 1998 to 2002 where she chaired the finance and environment scrutiny committees.

After deciding not to seek re-election at the 2010 UK general election, but said that she would return to politics possibly when her children were older. Ussher commenced work for the Demos think tank. Ussher now works for a number of different think-tanks. In late 2011, she wrote for Policy Network in favour of In the Black Labour, calling on her party to embrace a language of fiscal responsibility, reforming the market and reforming welfare. She called for balanced budget legislation, rent controls in the private rented sector and looking as to whether wealthy individuals should keep certain universal benefits.

Parliamentary career

Ussher was elected as the member of Parliament for Burnley at the 2005 general election, having been selected as the Labour candidate for the constituency through an All-Women Shortlist.

As a constituency MP her local campaigning has focused on bringing a university to the town, as well as greater funding for housing renewal projects and a direct train link to Manchester. She has also run a long-running campaign regarding changes to local hospital provision.

From 2005 - 2006 she was a member of the Public Accounts Committee. She was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Margaret Hodge MBE the Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry until 29 June 2007.

In Gordon Brown's first reshuffle she was appointed as Economic Secretary to the Treasury, succeeding Ed Balls. One of her first speeches was to London First's "Building the Capital's Capital". She described this position as "her dream job" and told her audience, "we want our decisions to be informed by your expertise. And more than that, we need them to be.”.

The timing of her appointment gave her a ringside seat at the credit crunch, party to crucial meetings of the Tripartate Committee of Treasury, FSA and the Bank of England as the authorities dealt with the collapse of Northern Rock, the subsequent financial crisis and its legislative response.

Her time also saw a review of the policy towards co-operatives and credit unions, to give them greater commercial freedom and ability to expand. She also developed the policy leading to the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act 2009 that redistributes unclaimed banking assets to community use, and the Savings Gateway Act 2009 that provides financial incentives to poorer people to save.

On 5 October 2008 she moved to become Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions taking on broad welfare reform responsibilities previously undertaken by Stephen Timms and James Plaskitt. At the time of the reshuffle, she was described by The Times' city diarist Martin Waller as "one of the brighter denizens of the lower depths of the Brown administration" who had "made herself popular enough in the City".

She became responsible for the government's review of housing benefit policy and a review of the social fund, as well as the Child Support Agency and welfare policy on lone parents.

In December 2008 she was the minister responsible for explaining the Government's position on charging interest on Social Fund loans. She said that the Government was “absolutely not” proposing charging interest on loans from the Social Fund, although a consultation paper was clearly proposing such an idea and included a worked example of interest charges. The idea was comprehensively rejected in the Government's formal response.

Ussher was moved back to HM Treasury in the June 2009 reshuffle, this time becoming Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury however she resigned to prevent embarrassment to the government regarding her tax position ten days later and was replaced by Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the MP for Portsmouth North.

Expenses controversy

Main article: United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal

On 10 May 2009 the Sunday Telegraph reported that within a year of being elected, Ussher inquired about claiming for around £20,000 worth of repairs to her London house, which she owned before becoming an MP. As she explained to her constituents in her weekly Burnley Express column of that week, she had moved to Burnley in 2004 purchasing and renovating her own home in the constituency at her own expense; her children were then born in Burnley. The London house had been kept to be used when she was voting in Westminster.

On 17 June 2009, after controversial details of MP's expenses had been released in the press, Ussher resigned, citing a desire to "prevent embarrassment to the government" after allegations that she changed the designation of her "main" home for capital gains tax purposes to reduce her tax bill. In her resignation letter Ussher said that she had done nothing wrong and that her actions were "in line with HM Revenue and Customs guidance and based on the advice of a reputable firm of accountants who in turn were recommended to me by the House of Commons fees office". She also denied any abuse of the allowances system of the House of Commons. Four years later in an article on her blog she said she had nevertheless voluntarily paid the amount in question to HMRC stating that "Public servants should always be at pains to ensure that they are not only compliant with the letter of the law but also with the spirit of it, and I did not focus on that."

At the same time Ussher announced that she would not contest the next election, citing the difficulties in reconciling her parental responsibilities with the working hours of Parliament, stating that this decision had preceded the expenses controversy. Commenting on her resignation, the BBC described her as a "rising star" who had risen quickly through the ranks, despite only being elected in 2005.

On 5 June 2009 the police at Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service issued a statement stating that the incidents of flipping second homes to avoid paying capital gains tax was not a matter for police investigation. An investigation by Sir Thomas Legg into MPs' claims found that Ussher had breached the retrospectively-applied £11,000 limit for building work in her kitchen and ordered her to repay £1,271.65. Her appeal against the ruling, on the grounds that the limit was not in place at the time the expenses were incurred, was rejected as being outside the scope of the terms of enquiry of Sir Thomas Legg's investigation.

Personal life

She married accountant Peter J Colley in September 1999 in Hammersmith; they have one daughter (born 7 June 2005) and a son (born 3 January 2008).

Ussher is niece of Sir Peter Bottomley, MP, and (many generations back) of Archbishop James Ussher.

External links

• Official website
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Kitty Ussher MP
• HM Treasury page
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Kitty Ussher MP
• Family tree
• BBC Politics page