Thérèse Coffey

Thérèse Anne Coffey (born 18 November 1971) is a British politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from September to October 2022 under Liz Truss.

She has also served in the cabinet positions of Environment Secretary, Health Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary.

The daughter of Tom Coffey and Alice (Sally) George, Coffey was born on 18 November 1971 in Billinge Hospital, Wigan, Lancashire, and grew up in Liverpool.

Educated at St Mary's College, Crosby, and St Edward's College, Liv briefly, she briefly attended Somerville College, Oxford in 1989 to study chemistry.

However, in 1991 she was required to withdraw from the college on academic grounds, having obtained poor college examination results twice.

She was noted by her peers to be zealous in her championing of the Conservative Party Society.

Coffey then attended University College London, where she obtained a BSc degree (with upper second class honours) in chemistry in 1993 and later a PhD in chemistry in 1998.

After graduating Coffey worked in a number of roles for Mars Incorporated, including as finance director for Mars Drinks UK.

She then worked for the BBC as a property finance manager.

In the European Parliament elections in June 2004, Coffey stood for election to the European Parliament for South East England.

The Conservative Party won 35.2% of the vote, giving it four seats, but Coffey was seventh on the list in this proportional representation system, and was not elected.

Coffey stood as Conservative Party candidate for Wrexham at the 2005 general election.

She came third with 6,079 votes (20% of the vote).

Coffey received 25,475 votes (46.4% of the vote), an increase of 1.8% on John Gummer's 2005 campaign.

She is a supporter of the Free Enterprise Group.

In 2009, at the European elections, Coffey was living in Andover, Hampshire; she missed out by one place on being elected to the European Parliament for South East England.

The Conservative Party won 34.79% of the vote, giving it four seats, and placing her fifth on the party list.

A member of the Conservative Party, Coffey has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Suffolk Coastal since 2010.

At the 2010 general election, Coffey was elected for Suffolk Coastal, becoming the constituency's second MP and first female MP ever to represent a Suffolk constituency.

After serving as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee from July 2010 to October 2012, Coffey was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Michael Fallon, Minister for Business and Energy.

On 6 July 2011, Coffey defended Rebekah Brooks over the News of the World's involvement in the news media phone hacking scandal.

She said a "witch hunt" was developing against Brooks, and that simply to say Brooks was editor of the newspaper at the time was not enough evidence against her.

Coffey also faced criticism from some Suffolk residents over her support for the government's proposal to sell off forestry and woodland in public ownership, in 2011.

Protesters argued that "experience shows us that when private landowners come in they close car parks and make access as difficult as possible".

The government later dropped the proposal.

Coffey became a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee inquiry into the hacking scandal in 2012.

In that committee, she declined to support any motions critical of Rupert and James Murdoch.

However, she later joined the majority of her party in voting for exemplary damages to be a default consequence to deter press misbehaviour.

In 2013, Coffey voted against the legalisation of same-sex marriage, stating: "I shall be voting against the Bill because my perspective on what marriage is really about is different from that of some other Members ... for me it is fundamentally still about family, the bedrock of society."

In July 2014, she was appointed an assistant government whip.

Coffey served under Prime Minister Theresa May as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2016 to 2019, before serving under Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a Minister of State at the same department from July to September 2019.

In September 2019, after Amber Rudd resigned from Johnson's cabinet, Coffey was appointed to the post of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

After Johnson resigned in 2022, Coffey supported Liz Truss's bid to become Conservative leader.

Coffey and Truss are close friends and political allies.

Following Truss's appointment as Prime Minister in September 2022, Coffey was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

After Truss resigned in October 2022, Coffey was appointed by Rishi Sunak as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

She resigned in November 2023.

She again voted against same-sex marriage in 2019 when Parliament considered the same question for Northern Ireland.

Coffey's decision to write a paper for the Free Enterprise Group recommending pensioners should pay National Insurance contributions on earnings provoked criticism among some older constituents, who claimed that in an already tough economic environment, it was wrong to tax pensioners further.

Coffey said that she had "no regrets writing about National Insurance" and that it was "a policy proposal – it is by no means, at this stage, anymore than that".