Natascha Engel

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Natascha Engel

Natascha Engel.Portrait.jpg

Name Natascha Engel (born 9 April, 1967)
Politics
Party Labour
Constituency North East Derbyshire (2005 - present)
Positions • Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons (June 2015 present)
• Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee (June 2010 - March 2015)
Likes Parliamentary reform, transparency, contraception, sex and relationship education
Dislikes Private schools, abstruse political language, smacking children
Friends Ed Miliband, John Bercow
Enemies ?
Relationships
Partners David Salisbury-Jones (? - 2012, divorced)
Children Malek (2003), Anton (2005) and Lukas (2008)
Personal Attributes
Nationality English
Religion ?
Sexuality Straight
Height 5' 9"
Eye Colour Hazel
Handedness Right
Accent Southern with occasional German consonants
Languages German, Spanish, and Portuguese

A democracy purist.~ Anonymous colleague

Natascha Engel first rose to prominence as the chairwoman of the Backbench Business Committee. Loliticians with a keen interest in constitutional matters noted her robust defence of the rights and privileges of backbenchers in general and her committee in particular during procedural debates, but she remained obscure to the wider fandom until 2015, when she replaced Dawn Primarolo as the second Labour Deputy Speaker in the new Parliament.

Life and Career[edit | edit source]

Early Life[edit | edit source]

Natascha was born in West Berlin to a German father and an English mother, the eldest of four siblings. When she was nine, her parents divorced, and her mother was forced to move with her small children back to England. The move was awful for her mum, who had been a housewife and had no career to fall back on; she had to take odd jobs like fruit-picking to support the children. When the family first arrived in England they didn't even have anywhere to stay and had to live in a B&B for a while. The move was equally awful for Natascha and her siblings, who spoke no English.

Natascha attended Kent College, a boarding school in Canterbury. In fifth form she went off the rails dramatically and was politely excluded, so she enrolled at The King’s School in Canterbury for sixth form. A teen rebel (she'd started smoking at the age of twelve, something she now describes as her biggest regret), she was no happier there and railed against the entrenched privilege of the private school system.

She went to King's College London for university and read linguistics, studying Portuguese along with her native German. She then went on to earn a Master's in Technical and Specialised Translation at the University of Westminster.

Pre-political Career[edit | edit source]

I started writing subtitles for Teletext, which was great – you get paid to watch TV all day.~ Natascha Engel

After leaving uni she worked as a journalist for the Dover Express and Folkestone Herald newspapers for a while before moving to Madrid for two years, where she taught English and German and volunteered for Amnesty International. When she returned to Britain she began working on her Master's and got a job as a Teletext subtitler. She'd got in on the ground floor of a rapidly expanding industry, and her employer quickly grew from a small business employing a handful of people to a large company. Natascha joined the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union and wound up unionising her whole company.

She was part of the first intake of the Organising Academy of the TUC, serving as an organiser for the Graphical, Paper and Media Union. The political officer at the union introduced her to John Mann, now an annoying gadfly on the Treasury Committee, then the Labour Party's Trade Union Liaison Officer. In 1998 Mann hired her to work on his staff, and Natascha's political career was launched.

Natascha at a union protest against blacklisting.

Early Political Career[edit | edit source]

Natascha started out as Policy Coordinator at the Trade Union Liaison Office. It was her job to collect the affiliated trade unions' input to national, regional and branch level policy forums and work with them to constructively influence party policy. Since this was in the heart of the New Labour era it's unclear how much policy was actually coordinated, but the party was pleased with Natascha's work and promoted her to replace John Mann when he resigned to contest Bassetlaw at the 2001 general election. In her new role as head Liaison Officer she organised the union campaign for the Labour Party in marginal seats in the 2001 election.

She took year off from party work to become programme director of the Smith Institute, a think tank set up in memory of John Smith. She did research on skills, regional economic policy, and the needs of working women. She also co-authored a book, Age of Regions: Meeting the Productivity Challenge, and a TUC pamphlet urging unions to offer adult education and training to bolster recruitment.

She then set up the Trade Union Co-ordinating Committee which brought all the unions with political funds together to run a joint campaign urging their members to retain their political levies. The Yes campaign was extremely successful with every union returning large majorities. Afterwards she worked briefly as a spad for John Healey, then Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

Natascha was selected as the Labour candidate for North East Derbyshire when the serving MP Harry Barnes decided to step down before the 2005 general election. She won the selection in the face of some local opposition, possibly due to the all-woman shortlist or the perception she was a parachute candidate, but she easily overcame it and went on to win the election as well. Her son Anton was born only three weeks later, delaying her maiden speech until October.

Parliamentary Career[edit | edit source]

First Term[edit | edit source]

Natascha was initially billed as a "Brown Babe" and a rising star, but her first term in Parliament was a quiet one. She joined the Work and Pensions Select Committee and was appointed PPS to a few ministers, but unlike other prominent ex-spads and party workers in the 2005 intake she was never promoted to the front bench.

It's amazing Winterton still has a hand.

She probably garnered the most national attention for an incident she would have preferred never to have happened at all: at one point Tory MP Nicholas Winterton slapped her bottom while they were waiting in line in the Tea Room. Winterton claimed they were friends and it was "instinctive, natural behaviour" and "camaraderie". Natascha understandably took a different view and recounted the incident to her friends in appalled fascination when she got back to her table. Unfortunately one of those friends was inveterate gossip Kerry McCarthy, who wrote about the incident on her blog and Twitter. To Natascha's chagrin it blew up into a minor media storm.[1]

However, beneath the media radar Natascha had done something quite important. In 2009 she was appointed to the new Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons. When it came back with its recommendations to create the Backbench Business Committee and elect select committee chairs by secret ballot, Natascha wrote a dissenting minority report saying that the changes would be used to dismiss the need for any further parliamentary reform and the lack of transparency would place power into the hands of a cabal of senior backbenchers and the party whips. Although five years on it's clear that her fears were not realised and the reforms were positive, her thoughtful dissent raised her profile enough that when the Backbench Business Committee was formed in the new Parliament she was elected as its chair.

The Backbench Business Committee[edit | edit source]

Every week at business questions I stand up and whine at George Young – 'We need more time' – and it’s getting a bit boring, frankly.~ Natascha Engel

As Chair of the newly created committee Natascha had a key role in deciding how it would operate and creating the current process for awarding backbench debates, which has been likened to Dragon's Den. She was determined that the process would be robust and transparent and not just a stitch-up in which the committee members all picked debates on their favourite topics behind closed doors.

She has also been a tireless advocate for her committee in procedural debates and at Business Questions, trying to force the Government to allocate them more time. In the new Parliament, with the CBCJS now holding the whip hand, future chairs may meet with more success, but if so it will be due in large part to Natascha's legacy.

Deputy Speaker[edit | edit source]

In the 2015 general election Natascha was predicted to lose her seat based on the BBC exit poll but she managed to hold on, albeit with a slightly reduced majority.

She stood for Deputy Speaker in the new Parliament as the replacement for Dawn Primarolo and was elected unopposed.

Natasha caused somewhat of a stir one day in parliament by sitting in Speaker's Chari and kicking off her shoes. Some choice comments included "Bernard Weatherill would never have done that" and that "standards are slipping". Natasha didn't give a fuck.

Shock! Horror! Feet!
Full List of Appointments
• PPS to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Peter Hain (28 June, 2007 - 24 January, 2008)
• PPS to Cabinet Office Minister Liam Byrne (17 December, 2008 - 16 January, 2009)
• PPS to John Denham (2009 sometime)
• Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee (22 June, 2010 - 30 March, 2015)
• Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons (June 3, 2015 - present)

Natascha has a habit of picking winners: she was one of the fifteen MPs to formally nominate John Bercow for Speaker in 2009 and she cast her sole vote for Ed Miliband in the 2010 Labour leadership contest. All eyes are on her to see who she'll nominate for Labour Leader in 2015.

Personal Life[edit | edit source]

Natascha has three small boys who she schlepps back and forth from Derbyshire every weekend in a drive she describes as "absolutely horrible". Her father died in 2011 and she divorced her ex-husband David the following year, so she had a pretty rough time in the last Parliament.

Portrayal[edit | edit source]

In the Media[edit | edit source]

Natascha has a low media profile. As Chair of the Backbench Business Committee her portrait did once appear in an exhibition on democracy alongside David Cameron, Nick Clegg, William Hague and John Bercow, much to her bafflement and surprise.

In Fanon[edit | edit source]

Natascha hasn't appeared on the meme yet, although as she's single and Bercow soon may be there is untapped potential in her new role.

Look how happy they are together!

References[edit | edit source]