Trudy Harrison is the Conservative MP for Copeland, having first been elected to Parliament in a by-election in 2017. This by-election gain by the Conservatives was the first time that a governing party had won a by-election at Westminster for thirty five years.
Harrison was reelected in the 2019 General Election with a majority of 5,832.
The Copeland constituency is located on the west coast of Cumbria, and spreads inland from the coastal town of Whitehaven into the Lake District. The seat is home to the Sellafield nuclear facility, as well as England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike. Previously a Labour seat ever since the Second World War, it is one of a number of constituencies in this part of West Cumbria who have turned Conservative for the first time in recent years. Some 59.2% of the local electorate backed Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum.
Trudy Harrison has announced that she is standing down from Westminster at the next election.
- Trudy Harrison MP was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by Liz Truss in September 2022.
She briefly served as Minister of State at the Department of Transport between July and September 2022, having previously been the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Transport since September 2021.
Harrison was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Prime Minister Boris Johnson between 2019 and 2021. This was despite her supporting Michael Gove in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election.
Born in 1976, Harrison grew up in Copeland and her grandfather was a local miner. She was educated at Wyndham School, Egremont, and later at Salford University.
After leaving school, Trudy worked as a technical clerk at Sellafield nuclear plant for five years. A strong supporter of nuclear power, she is Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on nuclear energy.
She also ran and managed her own childcare business before being elected to Parliament. She is married with four children. Harrison lives with her family in Bootle in Merseyside.
In 2018 Harrison introduced a private members bill designed to prevent the use of live animals in circuses.
She supports the plans for the creation of a controversial new coal mine at Whitehaven in her constituency.
Email – trudy.harrison.mp@parliament.uk
Website – https://www.trudyharrison.co.uk/
Twitter – @CopelandTories
