Claire Perry

Claire Louise Perry^[4] (born 3 April 1964) is a Conservative Member of Parliament for Devizes, elected in the 2010 general election.

Early life

The youngest of three children, Perry was raised in North Somerset. Perry was educated at Nailsea School and Brasenose College, Oxford, where she read Geography, graduating in 1985. She later obtained an MBA at Harvard University.

Perry worked in banking and finance for Bank of America, McKinsey & Company and Credit Suisse.^[5]

Political career

After joining the Conservative party in 2006, she worked for the Chancellor George Osborne.^[6] Perry was selected in November 2009 as a Conservative candidate to replace the outgoing Member for Devizes, Michael Ancram, in a safe seat for her party.^[7]

Appointments

In October 2011 Perry was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Philip Hammond, the Secretary of State for Defence.^[8] Perry held this role until October 2013 when she assumed her new position as Government Assistant Whip. On 15 July 2014 and again in May 2015 Claire Perry was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, with responsibility for rail fares, rail franchising, freight and logistics and transport agencies.^[9] She resigned from this position on 14 July 2016 at the time of the reshuffle when Theresa May became Prime Minister, the day after saying in a debate she was "often ashamed to be the Rail Minister."^[10][11]

Online Safety Camapaign

Claire Perry has campaigned for improvements in Online Safety and in 2011 led an Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection. More than sixty cross-party MPs and Peers supported the Inquiry whilst a core team of 17 cross-party MPs led four oral evidence sessions. Following this Inquiry, David Cameron appointed Perry as Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of children. Much of her work has been criticised by groups such as the Open Rights Group who say that default filtering is a form of censorship.^[12]

Internet issues

Claire Perry is in favour of a form of Internet censorship which applies to all users unless they opt out of it. She considers that children should thereby be prevented from obtaining access to information and images which she believes they should not see.^[13][14][15]

In July 2013, Perry's website was targeted by hackers who "placed indecent images on the site". Perry used her official Twitter account to make accusations that the political blogger Paul Staines - known as Guido Fawkes - had sponsored the attack,^[16][17] while Staines himself threatened to sue her for libel if the claim was not removed.^[18]

After Internet filters started to be rolled out, news agencies reported that a wide range of non-pornographic websites were now being censored by UK ISPs as a result of false-positive results for blocked phrases, such as child-protection charities, women's charities, and gay rights groups. This list also included Perry's own website, as a result of her frequent use of words such as "porn" and "sex" in web posts about her pro-censorship campaign.^[19][20]

Reporting of comments over Debt and Deficit

On 8 October 2012, Perry stated that the national debt and national deficit were the same thing on BBC Radio 5 Live.^[21][22] Reference to this comment was later made by David Dimbleby, when introducing her as a panelist on a following episode of Question Time.^[23]

Personal life

Perry has three children from her former marriage.^[2] She currently lives in Pewsey Vale.^[24]

References

External links