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Where is God to be found? In the place where He is given entry. Menachem Mendel of Kotzk |
Lynne Choona Featherstone (born Lynne Choona Ryness, 20 December 1951), is a British Liberal Democrat politician, and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hornsey and Wood Green.
Under the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010 she was appointed as a junior Home Office minister with responsibility for equality. Previously she was Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Youth and Equality issues, and chair of the Liberal Democrats technology board.
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Featherstone was born and brought up in North London to a British Jewish family, and educated at the Highgate Primary School, the independent South Hampstead High School (then a direct grant grammar school) and gained a Diploma in Communication and Design at Oxford Polytechnic. Her family's wealth is generated from a family business started by her parents - the Ryness chain of hardware and electrical shops in London.
She was elected as a councillor in the London Borough of Haringey in 1998 for Muswell Hill ward. She and her two colleagues (June Andersen and Julia Glenn) were the first three Liberal Democrat councillors to be elected in the borough. She was leader of Liberal Democrat Group (and thereby Leader of the Opposition) on the council 1998-2002.
She stood down from Haringey Council at the May 2006 elections. She played a substantial role in the May 2006 election campaign in Haringey where Labour's majority was cut from 25 to 3, with 30 Labour councillors elected to 27 Liberal Democrats.
From 2000 until 2005, when she stood down, Featherstone was a member of the London Assembly. She was replaced as a member of the London Assembly by Geoff Pope. In 2005, a speech she made pointing out that local councillors receive an allowance which they could use to free up time to do council work by hiring domestic cleaners and babysitters was used against her by opponents. A transcript of this speech was reported in the Evening Standard newspaper.
Featherstone was promoted by some as a potential Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London in the 2008 election. In response to a poll on the Liberal Democrat Voice website, she ruled herself out, stating that, of the other people in the poll, she would back Brian Paddick.
Lynne Featherstone first contested the Hornsey and Wood Green seat at the 1997 general election where she finished in third place some 25,998 votes behind the winner Barbara Roche. She again fought Hornsey and Wood Green at the 2001 general election, moving into second place and reducing Roche's majority to 10,614. In one of the largest swings at the 2005 general election, Featherstone defeated Roche with a majority of 2,395 votes.
She made her maiden speech in Parliament on 24 May 2005. She was appointed as a junior home affairs spokesperson by Charles Kennedy in 2005, and to the environment audit select committee. She was co-chair of Chris Huhne's unsuccessful campaign to be leader of the Liberal Democrats following the resignation of Kennedy in January 2006. In March, following the election of Menzies Campbell as party leader, she was promoted to number two in the Liberal Democrat home affairs team and made London spokesperson. In December 2006, she succeeded Susan Kramer as the Liberal Democrat Shadow International Development Secretary, and two months later was succeeded by Tom Brake as London spokesperson.
In 2007, following the resignation of Menzies Campbell, she again chaired Chris Huhne's leadership election campaign. On 20 December 2007 the new Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, who defeated Chris Huhne, made her Youth and Equalities spokesperson.
Following Peter Connelly's death, Haringey Council initiated an internal audit Serious Case Review (SCR). Although the actual report was completed months earlier, the Executive Summary of the report was released immediately after the resulting court case had completed. The full details of the report have been kept confidential. Featherstone had been particularly critical of Haringey Council, writing "I personally met with George Meehan and Ita O'Donovan — Haringey Council's leader and chief executive — to raise with them three different cases, where the pattern was in each case Haringey seeming to want to blame anyone who complained rather than to look at the complaint seriously. I was promised action — but despite repeated subsequent requests for news on progress — I was just stonewalled."
In November 2008, at Prime Minister's Questions, Featherstone asked the Prime Minister to order an inquiry into the Connelly case. She was leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition on Haringey Council at the time of the murder of Victoria Climbié.
In April 2006 one of Featherstone's researchers received a hoax email warning about an apparent date rape drug called Progesterex. Featherstone submitted a question to a government minister inquiring "what assessment he has made of the use of progesterex in cases of date rape". Paul Goggins replied in the House of Commons that Progesterex did not exist: "It has been the subject of a hoax e-mail". The hoax first originated in 1999. Featherstone criticised the minister's response, stating "they need to do more to discover the unearthly monster who sends them out" and that "their cavalier attitude will not do"., However, critics such as fellow Liberal Democrat James Graham castigated Featherstone's conduct in "criticising the Home Office for not having a response to made up drugs and made up crimes", stating "trivialising rape in this way without bothering to do basic research first doesn’t help anybody".
In April 2007, Featherstone was forced to return large quantities of stationery after her office ordered £22,000 worth in the previous month in an attempt to beat new rules on stationery allowances. Featherstone blamed a staff member for the incident, stating she "knew nothing". In a leaked email, Parliamentary official Cliff Harris reportedly stated "it's quite alarming when you see that Lynne Featherstone spent over £22,000 in one month, the equivalent to three years of the new capped rate". Featherstone subsequently said she would be putting in place better office procedures.
She came to the attention of the national media in 2008 when she was criticized by Conservative Member of the London Assembly Brian Coleman for calling 999 (the UK's emergency number) when her boiler began making noises and sparking. Coleman referred to her as a "dizzy airhead", Featherstone responded by calling his comments "sexist" and "political" in nature. A London Fire Brigade spokeswoman told the BBC: "If it's obvious that there has been an ongoing problem with the boiler, then you can call a plumber. But if your boiler suddenly starts making strange noises in the middle of the night, call the fire brigade."
In May 2009, she was listed by The Daily Telegraph as one of the "Saints" in the expenses scandal.
She has indicated she would attempt to ban topless models from appearing on The Sun newspaper's Page Three, stating "I would love to take on Page 3".
Under the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010 she was appointed as a junior minister at the Home Office as Parliamentary Under secretary for equalities. She announced her appointment herself ahead of the formal announcement and expected some compromise with the Tories on her previous aims; her senior minister Theresa May is noted as not voting favouring homosexual equality.
In December 2010 Featherstone introduced a move that would allow positive discrimination which is primarily aimed at addressing female under-representation in the workforce. It will also mean that a manager will be able lawfully to hire a black man over a white man, a homosexual man over a heterosexual man, if they have the same skill set. Featherstone, denied the plans were about “political correctness, or red tape, or quotas” and would help make the workplace fairer.
In September 2011 Featherstone caused controversy by claiming men make "terrible decisions" when they are in charge. Speaking at the Liberal Democrat conference Featherstone blamed men for the mess the world was in, and commentators drew parallels with similar comments by one of Featherstone's predecessors Harriet Harman. Her comments attracted criticism from across the political spectrum and were considered particularly inappropriate given her role as a minister in charge of ending sexism. MP Priti Patel stated "These comments are really ill-thought out. As equalities minister she has got to be unbiased about the value that both men and women bring to decision-making." Elizabeth Day of The Observer newspaper was equally troubled by the remarks, writing "the notion that women are not as aggressive as men, that we would all just sit around a table eating red velvet cupcakes and talking out the world's problems rather than firing off phallic-shaped nuclear weapons is a complete fallacy".
In 2006, she was shortlisted in the "Rising Stars" category of the Channel 4 political awards, but did not win. She has also been nominated for the prestigious Dods "Woman Of The Year" award.
At the Liberal Democrat Conference in Brighton in 2006, she was named by The Sun as one of four "Lib Dem lovelies", and in a February 2010 Sky News poll she was named the most fanciable MP in the UK.
She married Stephen Featherstone in Haringey in 1982, but divorced in 1996. They have two daughters (born February 1984 and July 1989). She is a millionaire and lives in Highgate, London.
Lynne Featherstone
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