Janet Anderson

Janet Anderson (6 December 1949 – 6 February 2023) was a British politician from the Labour Party. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Rossendale and Darwen from 1992 until 2010, when she lost her seat. She was the Minister for Tourism from 1998 to 2001, a period which included the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak. In the 2009 United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, she was found to have claimed costs for journeys she had not made.

Anderson was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1949. Her father, Tom Anderson, was an agent for the Labour Party; her mother was an organist in their local Methodist church. She was educated at Trowbridge Girls' High School (now The John of Gaunt School) and the Kingswood Grammar School in Kingswood, South Gloucestershire. She attended the Polytechnic of Central London and the Université de Nantes, and studied languages and business studies.

In 1971, Anderson joined the offices of The Scotsman and The Sunday Times as a secretary. In 1974, she became the personal assistant to the MP for Blackburn, Barbara Castle, and to her successor Jack Straw until the 1987 General Election, when she unsuccessfully fought the marginal seat of Rossendale and Darwen, losing to David Trippier by 4,982 votes.

Anderson became a campaigns organiser for the Parliamentary Labour Party, and then the northern regional organiser for the Shopping Hours Reform Council, campaigning to extend the Sunday trading laws. She also ran her own public relations company, with clients such as the Royal College of Nursing and Safeway plc.

Anderson fought Rossendale and Darwen successfully at the 1992 General Election, winning by just 120 votes. She became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Beckett, which she held for a year before resigning due to Beckett not supporting John Smith's 'One member, one vote' campaign.

She was an opposition whip from 1994 to 1996, before being appointed Shadow Minister for Women. In October 1996, while in this role, she joked in an interview that women would become "more promiscuous" under a Labour Government. Anderson later insisted that she did not mean it literally, and that her comment was intended to convey that women would have the "freedom to stay at home or have a career...it wasn't about sex or promiscuity."

In May 1996, in response to campaigns to deal with the problem of stalking, she presented the Stalking Bill 1996 to Parliament under the Ten Minute Rule, with support from 64 other MPs. The bill failed to get government support, as it was felt that the proposed offence failed to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable conduct.

Following the 1997 General Election, Anderson became a junior whip, and Vice-Chamberlain of the Household in Tony Blair's new government, before being promoted to Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 1998, where she was the Minister for Tourism, Film and Broadcasting, and was responsible for bringing in free television licences for the over 75s and discounted ones for the blind.