Parliamentary career
In 2013, Caulfield was selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Lewes by the Lewes Conservative Association.[6] At the 2015 general election, Caulfield was elected to Parliament as MP for Lewes, winning with 38% of the vote and a majority of 1,083.[15][16]
Caulfield backed Brexit during the 2016 EU membership referendum.[17]
At the snap 2017 general election, Caulfield was re-elected as MP for Lewes with an increased vote share of 49.5% and an increased majority of 5,508.
In September 2017, she faced criticism after she hosted a Parliamentary event with the Royal College of Nursing to gain support for scrapping the below-inflation cap on nurses pay but did not take part in a parliamentary debate on this. Defending her position, Caulfield argued the only way to lift the nurses' pay cap would be during a meaningful budget vote.[18]
On 8 January 2018, Caulfield was appointed vice-chair of the Conservative Party for Women; the appointment was criticised by women's rights groups, including the Women's Equality Party, because she had opposed a Ten Minute Rule bill in March 2017 which sought to allow abortion to term and for voting in 2015 with the government to oppose the removal of the so-called tampon tax levied on female sanitary products as the UK could not zero-rate VAT on these products while a member of the EU.[19] She resigned from this position on 10 July 2018 in protest at the Brexit strategy of the Prime Minister, Theresa May.[20]
In the House of Commons Caulfield sat on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the Women and Equalities Committee and the Committee on Exiting the European Union until becoming a Government whip in 2019.[21]
Caulfield employed her husband as her office manager. The practice of MPs employing family members has been criticised by some sections of the media on the grounds that it promotes nepotism.[22][23] Although MPs who were first elected in 2017 have been banned from employing family members, the restriction is not retrospective – meaning that Caulfield's employment of her husband was lawful.[24]
In July 2019, Caulfield voted against legalising abortion in Northern Ireland.[25] On 1 August 2019, Caulfield was made Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps as part of a government reshuffle.[26]
In October 2019, Caulfield signed a letter to The Guardian pledging climate action.[27] Caulfield also supported plans for a Green Brexit, by enhancing environmental protections after the UK left the European Union.[28]
Caulfield was again re-elected at the 2019 general election, with a decreased vote share of 47.9% and a decreased majority of 2,457.[29]
In March 2020, Caulfield announced that whilst continuing to fulfill her parliamentary duties, she would be answering the UK government's call for former doctors and nurses to volunteer in order to help the NHS deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.[30][31]
In May 2020, Caulfield shared a 22-second video clip from her Twitter account which had been doctored to depict the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, apparently giving reasons as to why he, as the Director of Public Prosecutions, had not prosecuted grooming gangs. She accompanied the tweet with the words: "True face of the Labour leader #shameful".[32] In fact, Starmer had been answering a question about what the "wrong approach" was and why historic child sexual abuse allegations had been ignored for decades by the authorities. The doctored video came from a Twitter account that had spread far-right and anti-Islam views, which was subsequently suspended. A Downing Street spokesman said: "These tweets have rightly been deleted. The MPs involved have been spoken to by the Whips' Office and reminded of their responsibility to check the validity of information before they post on social media sites."[33][34] Caulfield later apologised.[35]
In May 2024, Caulfield was called upon by opposition MPs, including Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper, to refer herself to the government's ethics advisor for having spread the '15-minute cities' conspiracy theory in publications she had sent out to her constituents.[36] The '15-minute cities' conspiracy theory was one of eight included in a guide to MPs published by Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt in May 2024. The guide stated that the conspiracy theories 'can pose a danger to democracy'.[37]
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