Laura Sandys is a
British Conservative politician, currently the Tory candidate for
Parliament from the
Thanet South constituency in the next general election.
The seat is currently held by
Labour MP
Stephen Ladyman. She lives in
Ramsgate, a town within the constituency in
East Kent.Profile .
Sandys' father,
Duncan Sandys was a Member of Parliament and a life peer he served as
Defence Secretary in
Harold Macmillan's government and was the son-in-law of
Winston Churchill.
Prior to the May
2005 general election, Sandys entered 14 Conservative party selection meetings and made the final shortlists for
Surrey Heath and
Arundel and South Downs, won by
Michael Gove and
Nick Herbert respectively. In
2006 she was placed on the A-list of Conservative candidates ahead of the next general election .
On
16 October 2006, Sandys was selected to stand as the Conservative candidate for the
Thanet South constituency, comprehensively beating
Mark McGregor, who had become a controversial figure who lacked support from the parliamentary party , in the process.
With a group of other women Conservatives, Sandys signed a letter in support of
David Cameron's election as Conservative Party leader which was printed in the
Daily Telegraph in August
2005 . Sandys nominated
Christabel Flight in the May 2006
Westminster City Council elections.
In the 1980s Sandys was a Director of
Barter Group, an organisation doing business by exchange of goods or services rather than cash in the former Eastern Bloc. She moved on to run the Parliamentary Unit at the
Consumers' Association.
Like David Cameron, Sandys has been a
public relations professional. Since 1992 she has worked through "Laura Sandys Associates", also known by its three letter acronym LSA She later became Head of Communications at the Shopping Hours Reform Council - an organisation which promotes people having Sundays off.
Laura Sandys writes for newspapers, and appears on TV and radio on issues ranging from urban development through to
Iraq.
She has contributed the opening chapter to a book entitled
The War in Iraq published in
October 2004 authored by Paul Cornish.
Sandys is currently a
trustee of the
Open University Foundation which was established in 1973 as an independent charitable trust intended to further the objects of the
Open University. Laura completed an
Open University course on Environment and Development in 1993. She is an executive director and chair of the board at ; her biography on that site describes her as: "having experience of political structures across Europe, Turkey, South America and the US". The site also states that she has recently worked as a journalist and policy strategist in
Washington D.C.
As of May
2004 Sandys was a Senior Research Associate for the
Centre For Defence Studies, King's College London. She was appointed a Trustee of the
Civic Trust on
18 July 2000 and is a member of the Policy Committee.
Her biography on the Civic Trust website states: "She has worked on several environmental projects including coordinating the
Peruvian Government's submission to the
UNED's Rio 92 conference; on
BP's clean fuel programme; and on several water issues."
Laura Sandys' campaign website is at
Campaign Website.
