Dame Eleanor Laing has been the MP for Epping Forest since 1997. She was elected Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons in 2013, appointed a Privy Counsellor in 2017 and became the first woman to be elected to the position of Chairman of Ways and Means in 2020. Eleanor was awarded her Damehood in Her Majesty The Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2018.
Before becoming Deputy Speaker, she was a member of the influential Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee and Chairman of the 1922 Home and Constitutional Affairs Committee. Eleanor was a member of the controversial Joint Committee on the House of Lords, the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege and the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. She has also been Shadow Minister for Justice, Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Shadow Minister for Women, Shadow Minister for Children and an Opposition Whip.