Heidi Suzanne Allen ( Bancroft, 18 January 1975) is a British businesswoman and former politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Cambridgeshire from 2015 to 2019. Initially elected as a Conservative, she resigned from the party in February 2019, joining and later serving as leader of Change UK. She resigned from Change UK in June of the same year, and joined the Liberal Democrats in October 2019. She announced on 29 October that she would not stand for re-election at the next general election.
Early life and career
Allen was born in 1975 in Notton, a small rural village near Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Her mother is German; her father worked for the colour division of ICI.
She attended Wakefield Girls' High School, before receiving a BSc degree in astrophysics from University College London (1993–1996).
Allen worked in corporate positions, including with ExxonMobil and the Royal Mail. In 2008, she joined the family classic-motorcycle paints business, RS Bike Paints Limited, established by her parents in 1978 and now run by her husband Phil Allen.
Allen has said she was inspired to become active in politics after watching the scenes of the Tottenham riots; she first became a councillor in St Albans. Allen served as a councillor for 18 months before making a bid to become an MP.
Parliamentary career
In February 2014, Allen ran in an open selection process for the South East Cambridgeshire parliamentary constituency Conservative Party candidacy. She was beaten by Lucy Frazer, but there was initially a controversy about a possible miscount of votes on Frazer's selection. Frazer was reaffirmed as the candidate in January 2014, and in October 2014 Allen was selected as prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) for South Cambridgeshire.
The seat was held by the Conservative Andrew Lansley, then a cabinet minister, who had decided to stand down at the 2015 general election. Allen won the seat in the general election, increasing the Conservative majority and taking 51.1% of the votes cast.
In July 2015, Allen was elected to the Work and Pensions Select Committee. Allen made her maiden speech before the House of Commons on 20 October 2015, when she detailed criticism of proposed cuts to tax credits, saying, "because today I can sit on my hands no longer". She wanted to criticise the proposed tax credit cuts and to intervene before it was "too late" to stop the changes to tax credits, even though she did not wish to support the motion put forward by Labour because she disagreed with the party's overall stance, whilst also not being in favour of the Government's motion over tax credit cuts. Isabel Hardman of The Spectator described her speech as "truly brave" and "well argued". Despite her speech, she voted in favour of tax credit cuts, in line with the Conservative whip.
Allen supported continued membership of the European Union in the 2016 referendum.
On 5 December 2016, Allen announced her intention to put her name forward for the Conservative nomination for the election of Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough in May 2017. Allen proposed to combine the role with her current position as MP for South Cambridgeshire. In January 2017, she failed to win the Conservative Party nomination for the role.
In June 2017, Allen was re-elected as Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire in the snap general election. Over that summer it was mooted that Jacob Rees-Mogg would be a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and Allen announced that if he became leader she would leave the party.
In December 2017, Allen was tearful during a House of Commons debate on Universal Credit after hearing fellow MP, Frank Field, describe how he had talked a man out of suicide. The Department for Work and Pensions later stated that "the two examples that [Field] gave were not claimants on Universal Credit." In the same month Allen voted along with fellow Conservative Dominic Grieve and nine other Tory MPs against the government, and in favour of guaranteeing Parliament a "meaningful vote" on any Brexit deal Theresa May might agree with Brussels.