Geraldine Smith
| Geraldine Smith | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament for Morecambe and Lunesdale |
|
|
In office 2 May 1997 – 12 April 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Mark Lennox-Boyd |
| Succeeded by | David Morris |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
29 August 1961 Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Labour |
Maria Geraldine Smith (born 29 August 1961) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Morecambe and Lunesdale from 1997 to 2010.
She is former pupil of Morecambe High School on Dallam Avenue and Lancaster and Morecambe College on Morecambe Road in Lancaster, where she gained a Diploma in Business Studies. Her first campaign was supported by the Communication Workers Union, for whom she was formerly an officer. Prior to becoming an MP she was a Lancaster City Councillor and worked for the Royal Mail from 1980–97.
After the Labour Party's poor showing in the local government elections of 4 May 2006 she was linked to a campaign [1] on a timetable for Tony Blair's departure as Prime Minister and also expressed a preference for Gordon Brown to succeed him. She also found "outrageous" the survival of John Prescott as a government minister following the reshuffle.[2]. For this criticism of the Deputy Prime Minister's behaviour, as well as for her defence of the Chinese Cockle Pickers rights in her Morecambe constituency, Richard Littlejohn described her as a "heroic MP" on the BBC's Question Time programme on 4 May 2006. She has said that she believes William Hague will be the next Conservative Prime Minister rather than David Cameron [3]. In August 2009 she criticised the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 which conferred legal parenthood on a biological mother's female partner, saying "To have a birth certificate with two mothers and no father is just madness."[4] Smith is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Flag Group.
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