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Ann Winterton

Jane Ann, Lady Winterton (née Hodgson) (born 6 March 1941 in Sutton Coldfield) is the British Member of Parliament for Congleton, and was first elected as a Conservative MP in 1983. She is married to Sir Nicholas Winterton, who is also a Conservative MP representing the neighbouring constituency of Macclesfield. She is a noted humourist.

Early life and parliamentary career

Winterton was educated at Erdington Grammar School for Girls. Since her election to Congleton in 1983, she has been a member of several select committees, including Agriculture (1987-1997), the Chairman's Panel (1992-1998) and the National Drug Strategy (1998-2001), Social Security (2000-2001) and the Unopposed Bills Panel since 1997. She is also a representative of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and a Patron of Cheshire National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

She and her husband both managed to ask questions at Tony Blair's last Prime Minister's Questions.

Controversies

Pakistani joke

Winterton became opposition Shadow Rural Affairs Minister in 2001

, and was sacked the next year for telling the following joke at a rugby club dinner:

An Englishman, a Cuban, a Japanese man and a Pakistani were all on a train.

The Cuban threw a fine Havana cigar out the window. When he was asked why, he replied: "They are ten a penny in my country."

The Japanese man threw an expensive Nikon camera out of the carriage, adding: "These are ten a penny in my country."

The Englishman then picked up the Pakistani and threw him out of the train window.

When the other travelers asked him to account for his actions, he said: "They are ten a penny in my country."'

Joke about the 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling disaster

In February 2004 she had the Conservative whip removed (that is to say, she was suspended from the party) for telling the following joke (which alluded to the recent death of several dozen illegal immigrant Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay) at a Whitehall private dinner party to improve Anglo-Danish relations, and refusing to apologise:

One shark turned to the other to say he was fed up chasing tuna and the other said, 'Why don't we go to Morecambe Bay and get some Chinese?'

A month later, Winterton apologised for that joke, and had the whip restored Lord Taylor of Warwick, the only black Conservative peer in the House of Lords, condemned her being restored and said she was not fit to be an MP.

Dr Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe, who was at the dinner, told BBC Radio 4's Today: "People were a bit stunned really. It was a very low-key friendly dinner. I was very sorry for the host — it was just a group of people discussing Ugandan issues. Most people make a bad joke now and then, but to make a joke about people who have just died in particularly horrible circumstances — the contrast between standing on the beach in the dark being drowned and sitting round a comfortable table making jokes about them is just, just horrible."

Michael Howard, the then leader of the Conservatives, said in a statement: "Ann Winterton's remarks about the tragic deaths in Morecambe Bay were completely unacceptable. Such sentiments have no place in the Conservative Party. I deplore them and I apologise for them on behalf of my party."

MPs' Use of Expenses

The Wintertons have been investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and he has concluded that they misused their MPs' expenses to pay rent for a flat that they had already bought outright. The Wintertons transferred the ownership of the flat into a family trust to avoid the inheritance tax threshold. Since 2002 they had paid the rent for living in the flat from their MPs' expenditure. The Wintertons had declared their intentions to the Commons' Fees Office.

Quotations

In September 2005 (following the May general election) Winterton said she felt that Britain is a country where

crime is out of control ... and where thousands of illegal immigrants are waved in with no checks on whether they are criminals or potential terrorists. [...] We live in times of tremendous change, but the United Kingdom is still, thankfully, a predominantly white, Christian country. [...] Some might say we are now paying the price for the so-called ‘benefits’ of the multicultural society, the product of almost uncontrolled immigration and the abuse of asylum.