Biography of Sally-Ann

Sally-Ann grew up in Hexham, Northumberland. Her first job was a Saturday job at her local delicatessen, which she loved.

She studied geography at UCL (London) and then did a law conversion degree.

Sally-Ann’s first professional job was with a big City law firm in the early 90’s as a trainee solicitor. She says it was ‘daunting’ at first and she felt as if she was ‘punching above my weight’ but she soon settled in to the job. She feels that a lot of women suffer from ‘imposter syndrome’ but she has never subscribed to the notion that women are either unable, or prevented, from doing the work, they wish to do.

After she had children she and her husband moved out of London to the Rye area. She has now lived in the area for 26 years.

After the birth of her first child most of her salary was going on childcare and so when she had the second child, she took a career break.

She went to work as a Magistrate in Hastings (Magistrates are not paid) and then re-trained as a family lawyer, before becoming a councillor for the Eastern Rother Ward. 

One of the driving forces for her becoming an MP was to do more for children and families.

Being an MP is a difficult job, she says. MPs, especially women, get a lot of online abuse, including death threats. Because of social media and e-mails, MPs now get far more correspondence than in the past. In 2020 she received 22,000 pieces of correspondence, and although MPs do now have a secretary it is a huge workload. Sally-Ann feels that dealing with this level of correspondence can sometimes be detrimental to the work of an MP – their case-work for local constituents and the scrutiny of legislation. She feels that we need to really think about the role of the MP in the modern age.

Although Sally-Ann does not feel there is direct discrimination, she does feels that the current culture of parliament is not geared towards women – partly because of its bars and after-hours networking.  She also worries that there is more polarisation between men and women nowadays. 

Audio of interview with Sally-Ann