Sandra Gidley

Sandra Gidley
Gidley at a Health Hotel session during the 2009 Liberal Democrat Party Conference
Member of Parliament for Romsey
In office 4 May 2000 – 12 April 2010
Preceded by	Michael Colvin
Succeeded by	constituency abolished
Personal details
Born	(1957-03-26) 26 March 1957 (age 59) Rossett, Wrexham, Wales
Nationality	British
Political party	Liberal Democrat
Spouse(s)	Bill
Children	1 son, 1 daughter
Alma mater	University of Bath
Profession	Pharmacist

Sandra Julia Gidley (née Rawson; born 26 March 1957) is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom. She was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Romsey in Hampshire from 2000 to 2010, when she lost her seat to Conservative MP Caroline Nokes.

Born Sandra Julia Rawson in Rosset, Denbighshire in Wales, she was educated at the Eggar's Grammar School in Alton, Hampshire; the Afcent International School in Brunssum, Netherlands; and the Windsor Girls' School in Hamm, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She finished her education at the University of Bath where she was awarded a BPharm degree in 1978. She became a MRPharmS in 1979.

In 1979 she joined Badham Chemists as a pharmacist in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, until she was appointed as a pharmacy manager with GK Chemists in Gloucester in 1980. She became a locum pharmacist in 1982 before joining Safeway as a supermarket pharmacy manager in 1992, and joined Tesco in the same position in 1999 where she remained until her election to the House of Commons.

She joined the Liberal Democrats in 1994, was elected as a councillor to the Test Valley Borough Council in 1995 and was, in 1997, the youngest ever female mayor of Romsey. After Romsey's Conservative MP Michael Colvin died in a fire at his home in Tangley on 24 February 2000, Gidley was selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the resulting by-election. She won the by-election, on 4 May, with a majority of 3,311 votes and won in the 2001 and 2005 general elections. However, in 2005 her majority was reduced to only 125 votes, the smallest of any Lib Dem MP, by the Conservative candidate, Caroline Nokes. She was appointed as the party's spokeswoman on women's issues and older people from 2001. In January 2006, as Kennedy faced allegations of a drink problem, Gidley was one of 11 members of the front-bench team to write to Kennedy asking him to resign. Gidley chaired her party's Gender Balance Task Force, an initiative to get more women into politics. The Romsey constituency was abolished for the 2010 election, and in the new Romsey and Southampton North constituency she was defeated by the Conservative candidate Caroline Nokes, who took the new seat a majority of 4,165 votes following the expenses scandal, in which it emerged Gidley accepted a £18,700 'windfall' from her London landlord in return for an increase in her taxpayer funded rent.