# Sandra Gidley

# Sandra Gidley

Sandra Gidley (born 26 March 1957) is a British pharmacist and Liberal Democrat politician. She was Member of Parliament for Romsey in Hampshire from a by-election on 4 May 2000 until 2010. The BBC later described that by-election as the only contest in which a British seat changed hands during the 1997–2001 Parliament. A registered pharmacist since 1979, she later chaired the English Pharmacy Board of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and in July 2019 was elected its president, the first woman in that office since the Society was reconstituted as a professional leadership body.

She studied pharmacy at the University of Bath and became a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in 1979. A 2001 BBC candidate profile lists her pre-parliamentary posts as pharmacist in Cheltenham (1979–80), pharmacy manager in Gloucester and then Cheltenham (1980–82), locum pharmacist (1982–92), and pharmacy manager for Safeway (1992–99) and Tesco (1999–2000). She later told *The Pharmaceutical Journal* that she had read pharmacy partly to please her parents, with an academic career in mind, and decided during her final-year project that laboratory research did not suit her.

In 1992 she offered to help a Liberal Democrat canvasser, and in 1995 she was elected a councillor, becoming in 1997, at the age of 40, the youngest woman to serve as mayor of Romsey. The parliamentary vacancy followed the death of the sitting Conservative MP Michael Colvin and his wife in a house fire. On 4 May 2000 Gidley polled 19,571 votes and a majority of 3,311 over the Conservative Timothy Palmer, who had inherited a 1997 majority of about 8,500; Labour’s Andrew Howard took 1,451 votes and lost his deposit. [Charles Kennedy](/people/charles-kennedy), then Liberal Democrat leader, called the result sensational, while Palmer said his party would have the seat only “on loan.”

She held Romsey in 2001 and 2005, the second of those elections by 125 votes. In 2001 she became the party’s spokeswoman on women’s issues, a post Kennedy later placed on the Liberal Democrat front bench, and she sat on the Health Select Committee. Boundary changes replaced Romsey with Romsey and Southampton North. On 6 May 2010 [Caroline Nokes](/people/caroline-nokes) gained the new seat for the Conservatives with 24,345 votes (49.7 per cent) to Gidley’s 20,189 (41.3 per cent), a majority of 4,156 on a turnout of 71.8 per cent. Gidley said the Conservative campaign had been “negative and personal.”

In March 2010 the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges found that Gidley and three other Liberal Democrat tenants at Dolphin Square had shown “serious misjudgment” by accepting payments from the block’s new owners in exchange for giving up protected tenancies; she was ordered to repay a quarter of the £18,751 she had received, less any capital gains tax. After leaving the [House of Commons](/organizations/house-of-commons) she went back to locum and consultancy work, joined the English Pharmacy Board in 2012 and chaired it from June 2015 until 2019. She announced in 2021 that she would not seek another term on the board, citing her support for a limit on how long an elected member should serve.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Sandra Gidley was born on 26 March 1957. The *Dictionary of Women Worldwide* gives her birth name as Sandra Rawson. Her father served in the British Army. In 2008, supporting former personnel who had left before April 1975 with less than 22 years’ service and no pension, she said the issue was “very close to my heart” because of that service.

A BBC candidate biography for the 2001 general election lists her schools as Eggar’s Grammar School in Alton, Hampshire; the AFCENT International School in Brunssum, in the Netherlands; and Windsor Girls’ School in Hamm, Germany.

The Brunssum school, now AFNORTH International School, was founded in September 1967 to educate children of staff at the NATO headquarters there and of other NATO personnel serving in the Netherlands. Pupils were taught in national sections, including British, American, Canadian and German classes. Windsor Girls’ School was a British Forces secondary boarding school at Newcastle Barracks in Hamm, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Girls had been part of a mixed Windsor School at Brixton Camp until 1959; the separate girls’ school closed in 1981 and was amalgamated with Windsor Boys’ School. The BBC entry gives those schools without dates, so it does not show how her time in Hampshire, the Netherlands and Germany was divided.

### Pharmacy degree at Bath

Gidley has traced the choice of degree to both her family and her own plans. She liked science, and her parents wanted her to train for a job, but she did not want to become a doctor; she hoped to teach and to become a university lecturer. She read pharmacy at the University of Bath in order to please her parents and with that academic career in mind. A later profile for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society records the qualification as a BPharm from Bath, as does the 2001 BBC biography.

The final-year project ended the academic plan. She described herself as “totally temperamentally unsuited to a life in research repeating the same experiments, stuck in a lab”, and she took her pre-registration training with a community-pharmacy company, R. Gordon Drummond, in Wales. She has also said that she avoided hospitals “mainly because my mother spent a lot of time there when I was young”. The placement in Wales changed her view of the work. To her surprise she enjoyed the work and the contact with people, and she stayed in community practice as a pharmacist rather than moving into research or teaching. The BBC biography records her as MRPharmS, a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, from 1979.

## Community pharmacy

Before entering Parliament, Gidley spent about 21 years as a community pharmacist, working mainly as a locum and in supermarket pharmacies. A BBC profile for the 2001 general election recorded a BPharm from the University of Bath and membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (MRPharmS) from 1979, and listed the posts she held up to 2000.

### Independent and locum practice

She has said that she took her preregistration training in community pharmacy rather than in hospital, which she associated with time her mother had spent in hospital, and that she liked the contact with people. The placement was with a firm she named as R Gordon Drummond, in Wales; she later said she was surprised to find that she enjoyed the work. After registration she worked for a small family company and then moved to GK Chemists in Gloucester, where she felt that her skills were not being used. A 2001 BBC profile, which does not name those employers, records a pharmacist’s post in Cheltenham from 1979 to 1980 and a pharmacy manager’s post in Gloucester, then Cheltenham, from 1980 to 1982.

She has described a pregnancy that was not planned, and said that having a young family changed her plans: she wanted to spend time with her children rather than use full-time nursery care, but was “going stir crazy at home”, so she locumed one day a week “partly to keep my hand in” and used to say she “went to work for a rest”. The BBC profile dates locum work from 1982 to 1992. Those days were long, which she described as awkward with small children, and in the same period she became involved with the National Childbirth Trust, whose lobbying she said she enjoyed.

### Supermarket pharmacy management

In 1990 she went back as a locum in the supermarket sector and suggested becoming a pharmacy manager four days a week. She has said that her store manager was enthusiastic, but that others in that part of the company were unsure, because department managers were full-time and “it was unheard of for a woman to do it”. The BBC profile lists a pharmacy manager’s post at Safeway from 1992 to 1999 and the same role at Tesco from 1999 to 2000. She told *The Pharmaceutical Journal* that a job in the supermarket sector became a management position across two stores. In March 2001 the *Daily Echo* reported that she had worked as a pharmacist in Safeway’s Bitterne and Eastleigh stores for about six years.

Looking back, she said she had tried not to “hide behind the dispensary wall”, but that clinical services were not then available in the same way and that she did not feel the role stretched her intellectually. By the time of the two-store management post, she said, politics had become a much larger part of her life. The Tesco post ran until 2000; the BBC records her as MP for Romsey from May of that year.

## Local government and the 2000 Romsey by-election

### Test Valley Borough Council and the mayoralty

Sandra Gidley was already a Liberal Democrat councillor in Romsey when the parliamentary seat fell vacant. The *Independent* reported that she had joined the local council as a Liberal Democrat in 1995 — it said “Romsey Borough Council” — and that in 1997, aged 40, she had been made the district’s youngest female mayor. A BBC profile in 2002 identified her as a member of Test Valley Borough Council and as, in 1997, the youngest ever female mayor of Romsey.

At the borough elections of 6 May 1999 she stood in the two-member Tadburn ward as a sitting councillor and finished first, with 662 votes. Fellow Liberal Democrat S. Leach polled 575, Conservative candidates J. White and S. Edwards 533 and 451, and Labour’s J. Denham and C. Nixson 189 and 162. Counting each party’s best-placed candidate, the shares were 47.8 per cent Liberal Democrat, 38.5 per cent Conservative and 13.7 per cent Labour. Turnout was 37.9 per cent of an electorate of 3,512, and a Liberal Democrat had also headed the ward in 1995.

A pharmacist who had lived in the Hampshire town for more than 14 years and had managed her own pharmacy, she was, the *Independent* reported, already known to many of the people she canvassed — an advantage one Liberal Democrat worker said no leaflet could match.

### Campaign and result

Early on 24 February 2000 Michael Colvin, the Conservative MP for Romsey, and his wife Nichola died in a fire at their house at Tangley, near Andover. The *Guardian* reported that the alarm was raised shortly before 4am, that there were no smoke detectors, and that heat of about 1,000C kept firefighters out. At the Winchester inquest in July, coroner Grahame Short recorded an open verdict: a discarded match in a waste-paper basket was the most likely cause of the fire, but the damage made the cause of death impossible to establish.

Polling was on 4 May 2000, alongside local elections. Gidley stood for the [Liberal Democrats](/organizations/liberal-democrats). At the Museum of Army Flying in Over Wallop, the Romsey Conservative Association preferred Timothy Palmer to its chair, Liz Perry, and to Winchester councillor George Hollingbery, although [William Hague](/people/william-hague) had asked that local candidates be preferred. The *Southern Daily Echo* described Palmer as a 46-year-old farmer from near Salisbury, councillor for Crane ward on Dorset County Council who also sat on East Dorset District Council, and who put housing and agriculture first; the *Guardian* called him an Old Etonian. Labour had already selected Andrew Howard.

Charles Kennedy toured Southampton General Hospital with Gidley about a fortnight before polling. The *Independent* listed health, school funding, post-office closures and the 75p pension increase as the themes, and said the party hoped to squeeze Labour’s vote. The *Echo* reported their visit to Knightwood Primary School at Chandler’s Ford, short of room before it opened. In Harefield ward a council by-election swung 17.1 points from Conservative to Liberal Democrat: Conservatives 54 per cent, Liberal Democrats 43 and Labour 2.1. Conservatives held the seat; Kennedy said Labour were out of the parliamentary race, and the Conservatives said Palmer was still comfortably placed.

Conservative chairman [Michael Ancram](/people/michael-ancram) claimed Liberal Democrats would scrap the pound, close post offices, permit “a flood of asylum-seekers”, back gay marriage, legalise brothels and “go soft on drugs”. Kennedy called Hague’s comments on asylum “immature, dangerous” politics. [UK Independence Party](/organizations/uk-independence-party) candidate Garry Rankin-Moore remained in the Liberal Democrat group on Test Valley Borough Council after leaving the national party over its pro-European line. Labour’s local-government minister, [Hilary Armstrong](/people/hilary-armstrong), called that a “farce”; group leader Mark Cooper said the views were long known. Rankin-Moore dismissed talk of a two-horse race. Derrick Large stood for the Legalise Cannabis Alliance and Thomas Lamont as an independent.

Gidley won 19,571 votes (50.56 per cent), a majority of 3,311 (8.55 per cent) over Palmer’s 16,260 (42.01 per cent). Howard took 1,451 (3.75 per cent) and lost his deposit; Rankin-Moore polled 901 (2.33 per cent), Large 417 (1.08 per cent) and Lamont 109 (0.28 per cent). The electorate was 69,858 and turnout 38,709 (55.41 per cent). In 1997 Colvin’s majority over Mark Cooper had been 8,585 — 23,834 (45.99 per cent) to 15,249 (29.43 per cent) — with Labour’s Joanne Ford on 9,623 (18.57 per cent) and turnout 76.99 per cent. Against those shares the *Guardian* recorded a swing of 12.56 per cent from Conservative to Liberal Democrat: Liberal Democrat up 21.13 points, Conservative down 3.98 and Labour down 14.82.

Gidley said Romsey had neither forgotten nor forgiven the Conservatives, that Labour had still to deliver, and that Hague had nothing to offer on hospitals, schools or pensioners; she told Kennedy, “This has been your success as well as mine.” Palmer said that on a 55 per cent turnout the Conservative vote had held while Labour’s collapsed, and that the seat was only “on loan”. Kennedy said Hague’s leadership had been “shattered”. Hague set an election “in which 35,000 people voted” against council gains “in which five million people voted”; the BBC reported control of 16 more authorities and more than 500 seats, called Romsey the Conservatives’ 50th safest seat, and later described the by-election as the only seat to change hands in Britain in the 1997–2001 parliament.

## Member of Parliament, 2000–2010

### The 2001 and 2005 general elections

Gidley, the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Romsey, defended the seat at the [2001 general election](/facts/2001-united-kingdom-general-election) on 7 June, a year after taking it from the Conservatives at a by-election. She received 22,756 votes (47.0 per cent), 17.6 points higher than the Liberal Democrat share at the 1997 general election. The Conservative candidate, Paul Raynes, was second with 20,386 (42.1 per cent, down 3.9 points). Labour’s Stephen Roberts polled 3,986 (8.2 per cent, down 10.4), Anthony McCabe of the UK Independence Party 730 (1.5 per cent, down 2.0), and Derrick Large, for Legalise Cannabis, 601 (1.2 per cent). Her majority was 2,370 (4.9 per cent), narrower than the 3,311 votes by which she had won the by-election. Turnout was 48,459, or 68.7 per cent, 7.7 points below 1997, and the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat since 1997 was 10.7 per cent.

At the [2005 general election](/facts/2005-united-kingdom-general-election), on 5 May, the contest was much closer. Gidley held the seat with 22,465 votes (44.7 per cent, down 2.3). Caroline Nokes, the Conservative candidate, took 22,340 (44.4 per cent, up 2.3). Labour’s Matthew Stevens received 4,430 (8.8 per cent, up 0.6) and Michael Wigley of the UK Independence Party 1,076 (2.1 per cent, up 0.6). The majority was 125 votes, 0.2 per cent, after two recounts watched by Liberal Democrat and Conservative officials; the swing from Liberal Democrat to Conservative was 2.3 per cent. Turnout was 50,311 (69.7 per cent). The BBC listed Romsey as Conservative target number 31. Gidley told the Southern Daily Echo that she had thought she had lost when she arrived at the count: “Romsey is used to high drama but I never want to go through this drama again.”

### Constituency casework and the Commons

Constituency case files are not published, but Gidley used the House of Commons to press local services. On 24 January 2006 she opened a Westminster Hall debate on rail travel in south-east England, opposing a plan to replace the through passenger service from Romsey to Totton via Chandler’s Ford with a shuttle between Romsey and Eastleigh. The station had opened in May 2003. She said Hampshire County Council had spent more than £3 million on the station and line, that about 1,500 people a week were using it, and that a survey of passengers found 41 per cent had previously travelled by car and 35 per cent by bus. She argued that making many of them change trains would push journeys back onto the roads.

On 19 November 2008 she asked how many people in the constituency held a Post Office card account, used to collect benefits and pensions at a post office. The [Department for Work and Pensions](/organizations/department-for-work-and-pensions) answered with the number of such payment accounts in Romsey each April, rounded to the nearest ten: 560 in 2004, 3,700 in 2005, 3,660 in 2006, 3,480 in 2007 and 3,210 in 2008.

Her maiden speech, on 16 May 2000, came in a debate on the future of the teaching profession. She described Romsey as often thought of as rural, taking in [the River](/organizations/the-river) Test and Hampshire countryside, but said that 80 per cent of constituents lived in urban or suburban areas, and she contrasted schools in Test Valley and Romsey with those serving parts of Southampton. She argued that teachers were leaving under stress and bureaucratic load, and criticised performance-related pay as divisive and likely to disadvantage schools in poorer areas.

In recorded divisions she usually followed her party. The Public Whip put her attendance at 69.1 per cent of divisions from her election in May 2000 until the 2001 dissolution (273 of 395), 69.9 per cent in the 2001 parliament (871 of 1,246) and 69.4 per cent in the 2005 parliament (894 of 1,288). Over those three periods she was recorded as rebelling against the Liberal Democrat whip 4 times out of 273 votes (1.5 per cent), 9 out of 871 (1.0 per cent) and 6 out of 894 (0.7 per cent). On the Commons amendment stating that there was no moral case for war against Iraq, the BBC recorded that all 53 Liberal Democrat MPs voted against the government. TheyWorkForYou summarises her divisions as votes against the [Iraq War](/facts/iraq-war) and against university tuition fees.

On 5 March 2008 she was one of 13 Liberal Democrat MPs who supported a Conservative proposal for a referendum on the [Treaty of Lisbon](/facts/treaty-of-lisbon). The Commons rejected it by 311 votes to 248; 50 Liberal Democrat MPs did not vote. She said she was keeping a promise to voters at the 2005 election of a referendum on the European Union constitutional treaty, after [Nick Clegg](/people/nick-clegg) had told the party to abstain.

## Frontbench and select-committee work

### Women, older people and gender balance

In 2001 Gidley, MP for Romsey, became the Liberal Democrats' spokeswoman on women's issues, a post that party leader Charles Kennedy later placed in the shadow cabinet. By October 2002 her first House of Commons question had concerned the private finance initiative in the National Health Service, and most of her later interventions were on health, including unauthorised organ retention and treatment for children with Down's syndrome. At the 2001 conference she backed a motion from health spokesman [Evan Harris](/people/evan-harris) on doctors' and nurses' pay, arguing that if staff left the NHS it was patients who suffered.

In a reshuffle reported in October 2003, Paul Burstow replaced Harris on health after Harris left the shadow cabinet because his partner had cancer, and Gidley, already shadow minister for women, took Burstow's brief as the shadow cabinet's representative for older people. TheyWorkForYou later listed Women and Older People from 26 January 2004 to 1 June 2005, Older People alone from 1 June 2005 to 19 October 2005, and Women and Older People again from 19 October 2005 to 21 March 2006.

The 2001 conference had rejected all-women shortlists and agreed a task force to encourage women candidates. By September 2002 Gidley chaired the Gender Balance Task Force; five of the party's 52 MPs were women. In September 2003 its annual report said the 2001 objectives would not be met until after the next general election: the Independent reported 190 women on the candidates' list against a target of 500, women in 22 per cent of the most winnable seats against a 40 per cent target, and six Liberal Democrat women MPs. Gidley favoured positive discrimination and said the strategy would not produce a single extra woman MP at that election. Writing in [the Guardian](/organizations/the-guardian) in April 2004, she cited an Electoral Commission study finding greater political engagement where the MP was a woman, said she supported all-women shortlists although her party did not, and wrote that under her chairmanship the task force had extended its work from training and mentoring to barriers to participation.

At the September 2004 conference she said more than two million pensioners lived below the poverty line, that council tax took a larger income share from poorer households, and that 1.8 million pensioners were not claiming council tax benefit. She backed a local income tax and state-funded personal care, contrasting the government's rejection of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care with free personal care in Scotland, where Liberal Democrats shared power. The Daily Echo reported that, as women's spokeswoman, she sponsored an early day motion on women's pensions, arguing that years caring for children were ignored in the calculation, with 87 MPs from more than one party signing.

On 20 November 2002 she welcomed proposed sex-offender measures, including a grooming offence, and, after a World Vision visit to Cambodia, cited an official estimate of 30,000 prostitutes under 18 and urged ratification of the UN optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, plus embassy police and checks on expatriate workers.

In January 2006, as MPs moved against Kennedy over his drinking, the Independent quoted her, as spokeswoman for older people, asking whether he could fight "the triple demons" of the Conservatives, Labour and the drink problem. The same report said [Vince Cable](/people/vince-cable) was to deliver a pre-Christmas letter from 11 frontbenchers calling on Kennedy to resign, and that 25 of 62 MPs would not serve under him past that weekend.

### Health spokesperson and the Health Committee

Parliamentary records list two spells on the committee now called the Health and Social Care Committee, from 16 July 2001 to 23 June 2003 and from 24 April 2006 to 6 May 2010; in her time it was the Health Committee. The 2002 BBC profile already described her as a member and as a vice-chairwoman of the all-party group on men's health.

On 8 March 2006 the BBC set out the front bench of the new leader, [Menzies Campbell](/people/menzies-campbell): [Steve Webb](/people/steve-webb) stayed as health spokesman, and Gidley was among those leaving the shadow cabinet to join the health team and to be nominated for the Health Select Committee. TheyWorkForYou recorded her as Shadow Minister, Health, from 21 March 2006 to 8 January 2009, and as Shadow Health Minister from 8 January 2009 to 11 May 2010. Reports also called her the party's health spokesperson and shadow health minister.

In September 2007 the committee reported on the electronic patient record within the NHS IT programme run by Connecting for Health. It found a "worrying lack of progress", poor communication and security problems, while saying electronic records could improve care; the BBC described the wider scheme as costing £6.8 billion and the record system as a database of about 50 million people. Gidley said the project had "suffered from a lack of consistent direction" and that the government's record on large IT projects would not build confidence.

In February 2008, as shadow health minister and chair of the all-party group on eye health, she said Hampshire was behind on diabetic retinopathy screening: of 44,625 people with diabetes, 58.2 per cent had been offered a scan and 41 per cent had received one. The primary care trust said it was missing the target and expected those who needed screening to be offered it by autumn 2008. With the Royal National Institute of Blind People she criticised limits on new drugs for wet age-related macular degeneration before final guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Hampshire PCT said it funded treatment recommended by ophthalmologists, including about 250 patients since February 2007, and was not applying unfair restrictions.

## Expenses and public controversy

### The Dolphin Square payment

In May 2009, during the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, the *Daily Telegraph* reported that MPs had taken payments from the new owners of Dolphin Square to give up cheap-rent tenancies after Westminster City Council sold the head lease in 2005. Offers included “Cash and Go”, “Cash and Stay” at a higher rent, and, for some, £5,000 to surrender succession rights. Six Liberal Democrat MPs—John Barrett, Sir [Alan Beith](/people/alan-beith), Sir Menzies Campbell, Sandra Gidley, Paul Holmes and Richard Younger-Ross—asked the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to investigate. The Additional Costs Allowance had met their rents wholly or partly, except during dissolutions. None asked the Department of Finance and Administration for written advice, although it had prepared guidance, which it did not circulate, that members claiming the full rent should pass any payment to the House of Commons.

Gidley rented in the Square from July 2000 and moved to a larger flat in October 2002. In her final year the rent was £1,542 a month, claimed in full from the allowance except during dissolutions. Unable to take a smaller flat there on the old terms, she accepted £18,751 to leave and moved nearby at £1,517 a month. After capital gains tax, she told the Committee on Standards and Privileges, the balance paid unclaimed moving costs, overtime and equipment. She said public cost did not rise, and compared the payment with profit on an allowance-funded mortgage.

Commissioner John Lyon and the committee rejected that analogy: a buyer normally puts in capital and must repay the loan, while a tenant does not. The allowance had paid the rent behind the offer, so they said the House should have shared it, although her claims did not rise. Keeping it was a “serious misjudgement” and a breach of the Code of Conduct. She was required to repay a quarter of £18,751 after capital gains tax and to apologise in writing within seven days.

Barrett, whose rent later rose, was to repay half of £11,234, Younger-Ross half of £8,031 and Holmes a quarter of £9,440, each after tax. Beith and Campbell, who declined larger buy-outs and took £5,000 only for succession rights, were held to have made a lesser misjudgement, with no repayment recommended. Nick Clegg said the six had referred themselves promptly and urged Labour and Conservative MPs who had accepted payments to do the same.

Gidley apologised in the letter the committee published. She said she had acted in good faith, accepted an error of judgement in not seeking advice and in treating the payment like a mortgage profit, and added that some members had been told the offer was permissible. After tax and moving costs, she said, the rest went on staffing and other parliamentary expenses, and she would pay the share required.

### Political disputes

In the 2010 campaign Caroline Nokes, the Conservative candidate, called Gidley Hampshire’s “most expensive MP”, putting her claims at about £15,000 a month after a rise Nokes said was 13 per cent. Gidley had refused a £971 increase on a £64,766 salary, saying other public-sector pay was frozen. After losing the new Romsey and Southampton North seat, she called the Conservative campaign “negative and personal”.

In February 2013, after Channel 4 News reported allegations—which he denied—of inappropriate behaviour by former chief executive Lord Rennard, Gidley said she had spoken to Clegg face to face soon after he became leader in 2007 and hoped to jog his memory. A party statement in her name said she had raised only “general concerns” and knew of no specific incidents; Clegg’s spokesman said Danny Alexander, then his chief of staff, had acted on them.

## The 2010 general election

### Boundary review

The [Boundary Commission for England](/organizations/boundary-commission-for-england)’s fifth periodical report, dated 31 October 2006 and published as Cm 7032, reviewed Hampshire and Southampton together. It added a sixteenth seat, Meon Valley, and redrew Romsey. Provisional recommendations removed Romsey’s Eastleigh borough wards and placed the divided Southampton wards of Bassett and Swaythling wholly in the seat. Part of each ward was already in Romsey, and the inquiry did not challenge the Southampton link. Because more than 30 per cent of the electorate would live in the city, the Commission renamed the seat Romsey and Southampton North. The county constituency took Bassett, Swaythling and 14 Test Valley wards, with 65,461 electors in 2000 and 66,216 in 2006. The Parliamentary Constituencies (England) Order 2007 implemented the report unchanged, and under the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 the new boundaries applied only at the dissolution before the 2010 election.

Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of the University of Exeter estimated the May 2005 result on those boundaries as a Liberal Democrat majority of 204 (0.5 per cent): 19,217 votes (43.6 per cent) to 19,013 (43.1 per cent) for the Conservatives, with Labour on 4,816 (10.9 per cent) and the UK Independence Party on 1,025 (2.3 per cent). Turnout was 66.4 per cent from an electorate of 66,353.

### Contest against Caroline Nokes

At the general election on 6 May 2010, Caroline Nokes gained the seat for the Conservatives with 24,345 votes (49.7 per cent) to Sandra Gidley’s 20,189 (41.3 per cent). Aktar Beg (Labour) polled 3,116 (6.4 per cent) and John Meropoulos (UKIP) 1,289 (2.6 per cent). The majority was 4,156 (8.5 per cent) on a turnout of 71.8 per cent from 68,157 electors (48,939 valid votes), and the result was declared at 03:46 on 7 May. From the notional 2005 baseline, the Conservative share rose 6.6 points and the Liberal Democrat share fell 2.4; Labour fell 4.6 and UKIP rose 0.3.

Nokes had lost the old Romsey seat to Gidley by 125 votes in 2005. The *Daily Echo* reported that the Conservatives ranked the new seat fourth on their national target list and that [David Cameron](/people/david-cameron) visited Romsey. Gidley campaigned from a farmhouse near Ampfield with the party’s former elections organiser, Chris Rennard, and said voters valued her local record above national polls. Nokes called the contest crucial and described the Liberal Democrats there as “Gordon Brown’s last hope”.

Nokes also made the parliamentary expenses scandal part of her campaign and pledged to be “totally transparent” about claims. In March 2010 the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee found that Gidley and three other Liberal Democrat tenants at Dolphin Square had shown “serious misjudgment” by keeping payments from the block’s new owners for giving up protected tenancies on taxpayer-funded flats. She was ordered to repay a quarter of the £18,751 she received, less capital gains tax, and to apologise; she had referred herself after a *Daily Telegraph* report. She denied any personal benefit and said that after taking the money in 2005 she moved to a smaller, cheaper flat, reducing the public cost.

Both campaigns reported vandalism and missing posters to the police, and the count was at Mountbatten School. Nokes, a Test Valley borough councillor who had opposed fluoridation of local water and regional housebuilding targets, called the result vindication of five years’ work. Gidley said: “I really don’t think it’s anything I’ve done. It’s a bit frustrating and being respected doesn’t seem to be enough.” She told the BBC the Conservative campaign had been “negative and personal” and showed that “the Tory party, at heart, has not changed at all”.

## Royal Pharmaceutical Society

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) is the professional leadership body for pharmacists in England, Scotland and Wales. In 2010 regulation passed from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain to the General Pharmaceutical Council under the Pharmacy Order 2010, and the RPS continued as a membership body. Its national boards send members to an Assembly, which elects the president. In October 2010 the Assembly chose community pharmacist Martin Astbury as the first president of that leadership body.

### English Pharmacy Board

After leaving the House of Commons, Gidley returned to locum work and became more involved with the Society. She later told *The Pharmaceutical Journal* that she stood for the English Pharmacy Board because she thought the RPS response to the Health Bill had been “wishy-washy and weak”. The Journal reported that she was elected in 2012. She had been vice-chair when, in June 2015, the board elected her chair and the academic Claire Anderson vice-chair. David Branford, the previous chair, had lost his seat. Gidley said she would make the profession’s case to commissioners and build links with community pharmacy.

The board affirmed her for a second term on 22 June 2016, with Anderson again vice-chair. On 21 and 22 June 2017, meeting in London, it elected her for two further years and chose Sharon “Sibby” Buckle as vice-chair; both then sat on the Assembly. Gidley said graduates should have “rewarding (and rewarded!) careers” using their clinical skills, and that the board should hear from community, hospital, general-practice, academic and industry pharmacy.

In October 2015 the Society called for read and write access to patient records in every setting, only for a clinical need and with consent. Gidley said that would let pharmacists add information as well as read it. From autumn 2015, community pharmacists in England were due to see the summary care record — medicines, adverse reactions and allergies — while most still lacked full GP or hospital records. Nigel Mathers, honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said access could help joined-up care if patients consented and confidentiality was protected.

On 14 November 2017 ministers laid the Pharmacy (Preparation and Dispensing Errors – Registered Pharmacies) Order 2018, a defence for inadvertent errors by pharmacists, technicians and supervised staff in registered community pharmacies. Pharmacy minister [Steve Brine](/people/steve-brine) said it should improve reporting; the rebalancing programme board’s chair, Ken Jarrold, said hospitals and other settings still needed similar protection. Made on 8 February 2018, the Order amended the Medicines Act 1968, and the defence was commenced on 16 April 2018 for retail pharmacy premises. It limited prosecution for defined errors rather than abolishing criminal liability, and it took effect while Gidley was English board chair, not president.

At the UK Health Show on 27 September 2017 she called it a “scandal” that pharmacists were used mainly to check prescriptions, said pharmacy-school intake had not been cut, and argued there was a workforce available for GP-practice and urgent-care roles. She said politicians expected the profession to “paper over cracks” without read and write access to records.

In April 2019 she announced she would step down as chair, a post she had held since June 2015. On 19 June the board elected Anderson — professor of social pharmacy at the University of Nottingham, a member since 2012 and vice-chair from 2015 to 2017 — ahead of Hemant Patel, and affirmed former president Martin Astbury as vice-chair. It also elected Gidley, David Carter and Buckle to the Assembly.

### Presidency, 2019–2021

On 16 July 2019 the Assembly elected Gidley president by what chief executive Paul Bennett called a “clear majority” over Buckle. She succeeded Ash Soni, elected on 18 July 2017, who had also served from July 2015 to July 2016; Astbury’s terms were 2010–2014 and July 2016–July 2017. Bennett said this was the first woman president since the RPS was formed as a leadership body, a limit the Journal then made explicit in its report. Gidley asked for closer working than three meetings a year, “polite and constructive” challenge, and clearer communication with members, and called Soni’s tenure “excellent”.

During the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) the Society, on 16 March 2020, paused non-essential work, and on 27 March the Assembly cancelled that year’s national board elections. Gidley said lack of personal protective equipment was unacceptable, and that guidance assumed symptomatic people were not entering pharmacies. A survey of 445 pharmacists, taken from 14 to 20 April 2020, found 34 per cent could not get continuous PPE, 94 per cent could not keep two metres from colleagues and 40 per cent could not do so from patients. Public Health England had advised masks mainly for contact with possible or confirmed cases. Gidley said anyone who could not keep two metres from patients or colleagues should wear a fluid-resistant surgical mask.

On 7 April 2021 she said she would not stand again for the English board. She could “think of so many reasons to continue”, but backed a maximum number of terms for elected board members and said standing aside would demonstrate that and leave room for new candidates. *Chemist and Druggist* reported that the presidency would end on 22 June 2021, with treasurer Andre Yeung as interim president until 13 July. She said COVID-19 had asked “far too much” of the profession and that she would continue as a locum.

On 13 July 2021 the Assembly elected Anderson, English board chair from 19 June 2019 to 22 June 2021. Buckle and Yeung had also been nominated. Anderson thanked Gidley “particularly for leading our response to the pandemic”.

## Later local politics

### Return to Test Valley

Gidley returned to Test Valley Borough Council at the 2019 Test Valley Borough Council election on 2 May 2019, when the whole council was contested on new ward boundaries. She had not been a candidate in the borough's Abbey ward in 2011 or 2015. For the Liberal Democrats in the two-member Romsey Abbey ward she was elected with 1,372 votes, and her running mate Nik Daas (Nikhil Malcolm Daas) took the other seat with 1,148. Conservative Party candidates Mark Bramley and Simon Hayes received 749 and 682 votes, and Labour Party candidate Stuart Bannerman 184; turnout was 45.68 per cent on an electorate of 4,834, with 31 papers rejected.

At the 2023 Test Valley Borough Council election on 4 May 2023 she and Daas were re-elected, with 1,132 and 1,017 votes. Nicholas Michell and Joseph Dwyer, on the ballot as Local Conservatives, received 704 and 642; Labour's Bernard Van Den Berg received 167 and Heritage Party candidate Andrew Drummond Peterson 71. Turnout was 41.79 per cent on an electorate of 4,776, with 11 papers rejected. The council records terms from 2 May 2019 to 5 September 2023 and from 9 May 2023, and lists her on the council and the Southern Area Planning Committee.

The same day she was returned unopposed to Romsey Town Council for Tadburn ward, with Mark Geoffrey Cooper, John Stephen Parker and Jacqueline Elizabeth Urquhart, all Liberal Democrats. The town council lists her on the full council and on its planning and buildings and community committees.

### Hampshire County Council

She had already stood for Hampshire County Council. At the 2013 Hampshire County Council election on 2 May 2013 she contested Romsey Extra for the Liberal Democrats and finished 143 votes behind Roy Perry, the Conservative incumbent, described by the *Daily Echo* as the county's education chief. Perry received 1,897 votes (37.5 per cent) and Gidley 1,754 (34.7 per cent); UK Independence Party candidate Iain Bell took 1,198 (23.7 per cent) and Labour's Peter Sowerby 208 (4.1 per cent). That division was abolished or redrawn in 2017, and her county term of office is recorded only from 2026, although her profile also lists the 2013 contest on pre-2017 boundaries.

On 7 May 2026 she was elected for the Romsey Town division, succeeding Mark Cooper and holding the seat for the Liberal Democrats. She received 3,241 votes. Tim Mayer (Conservative and Unionist Party, described as Local Conservatives) received 1,638; Christina Pointer ([Reform UK](/organizations/reform-uk)) 1,322; Neil Antony Judd (the [Green Party of England and Wales](/organizations/green-party-of-england-and-wales)) 548; and James Lindley Owen (Labour) 138. Democracy Club, citing the county results, recorded 6,903 ballot papers from an electorate of 13,367, 15 spoilt ballots and turnout of 51.64 per cent. She told the *Hampshire Chronicle* it was a "brilliant feeling" to have won, and that Test Valley electors had backed local candidates they knew. Her term runs from 11 May 2026. She sits on the Health and Adult Social Care Select Committee and the Regulatory Committee, is a Liberal Democrat deputy on the Children and Young People and Universal Services select committees, and is appointed to outside bodies including the council of University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

## Personal life

Sandra Gidley married William Arthur Gidley in 1979. The *Dictionary of Women Worldwide* gives her birth name as Sandra Rawson. Around her election, reports called her husband Bill or William, and *The Independent* described him as an electronics engineer. A BBC candidate profile for 2001 recorded one daughter and one son. An Alamy caption of a photograph of the May 2000 by-election victory names the children Gemma and Nick, with their father Bill. In October 2002 the BBC said that both, then teenagers, had been educated in the local area.

By May 2000 she had lived for more than 14 years in Romsey, the Hampshire town she had just been elected to represent. *The Independent* said she was already known there through ordinary contacts, including a former badminton opponent, one of her children’s teachers and a residents’ committee. In 2015 she recalled that her family had urged her to contest Romsey rather than a nearby seat, because they would see more of her. Writing in the *Hampshire Chronicle* in May 2025, she said that when she first moved to the town she had been struck by the number of local groups, and she noted the fiftieth year of the Romsey branch of the Women’s Institute.

She told *The Pharmaceutical Journal* that an unplanned pregnancy changed her working pattern. She believed parents should spend time with their children, so she took locum work one day a week “partly to keep my hand in,” and “used to say I went to work for a rest.” Long locum days sat awkwardly with small children. In that period she became involved with the National Childbirth Trust, and she said its lobbying, including over changes to education, drew her toward politics. The *Hampshire Chronicle* described her in June 2006 as a voluntary antenatal teacher for the trust when she criticised the lack of free NHS classes in and around Romsey, where she said parents were being asked to find more than £100. In March 2007 the *Daily Echo* reported her response to trust findings that such classes had been cut or suspended in at least ten areas, including Romsey; she said they could make birth more comfortable and less medical.

In the same 2015 interview she said that preferring interesting work to higher pay was “much to my husband’s disgust,” because he thought a better-paid job might have them “living the life of Riley.” A curriculum vitae quoted by *The Independent* in 2000 listed reading, cookery, the theatre and “a tough game of badminton” among her pastimes.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/sandra-gidley