Daphne Barbara Follett (née Hubbard; born 25 December 1942) is a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Stevenage from 1997 to 2010. During this time she held several parliamentary and ministerial positions.
In the decade before entering Parliament she played a major part in transforming of the Labour Party, both by making members more aware of their visual impact on voters and also by co-founding and running two organisations, Labour Women's Network and Emily's List UK, which spearheaded reforms that helped Labour to return a record 101 women to Parliament in 1997.
Following the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, she repaid more than £42,000 that she had claimed in expenses; hers was the largest repayment made by any MP. She stood down from Parliament in 2010 in order to take over running the business of her husband, author Ken Follett.
Follett was born Daphne Barbara Hubbard in Kingston, Jamaica, where her father (originally from Manchester, UK) was an insurance executive. In 1946 the family returned to Britain, first to Jersey then in 1947 to Billericay, Essex. In 1952 the family moved to Ethiopia where her father set up the country's first insurance company in partnership with Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1957 after an unfortunate incident involving her alcoholic father, a toast and a drinks trolley, the family were asked to leave the country and went to Cape Town in South Africa. She began a university degree in art, but in 1962 had to give it up and started work with Barclays Bank.
She married Richard Turner in 1963 and they moved to Paris, where Turner studied for his doctorate and she taught at the Berlitz School of Languages (1963–64). In 1964 her first daughter, Jann, was born. They returned to South Africa in 1966 to run his mother's fruit farm in Stellenbosch, where they had their second daughter, Kim. In 1969, after experiencing first-hand the hardships of life for farm workers in rural South Africa, she started working for Kupugani (Zulu for "uplift yourself"), an organisation which bought and processed agricultural surplus and then sold it cheaply to poor families. It also provided basic health and education.
In 1970, on the breakdown of her marriage, Follett moved back to Cape Town and became acting Regional Secretary at the Institute of Race Relations. She worked again for Kupugani from 1971 to 1978, first as Regional Manager for the Cape and South-West Africa (now Namibia) – then as National Health Education Director (1975–78).
After a brief marriage to Gerald Stonestreet, she married architect Les Broer in 1974. Their son Adam was born in 1975. In January 1978, her ex-husband Richard Turner, a prominent anti-apartheid activist, was assassinated.
Three months later, Follett, who was then running the Women's Movement for Peace was told that she too was about to be "banned". She and her children fled to England and lived in Farnham, Surrey. Follett found work as Assistant Course Organiser and lecturer on Africa for the Farnham-based Centre for International Briefing (1980–84) and joined the local Labour Party.
Follett stood as Labour candidate for Woking in the 1983 general election, but was not elected. In 1985 she married author Ken Follett. From 1984 to 1992 she was a freelance lecturer and consultant, contesting Epsom and Ewell for Labour in 1987, again unsuccessfully. Unhappy with the inequalities that women faced in public life, she joined the Fawcett Society and the National Alliance of Women's Organisations and jointly founded the Labour Women's Network in 1987, on whose Steering Committee she has served ever since.
Inspired by women in the US, Follett imported the idea of EMILYs List, a fundraiser for women Democrat candidates, into Britain for the Labour Party. She became the Director of EMILY's List UK in 1993. The organisation has since backed more than 80 women seeking selection. During this period she obtained a BSc (Econ) in Economic History from the London School of Economics. She was selected as the candidate in Stevenage (1995) before her postgraduate course could get under way. She concentrated instead on work as visiting fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research (1993–97).
Follett is also an alumna of the Open University and she has since become a patron of Action on Pre-Eclampsia.
The 1997 general election saw Follett elected as MP for Stevenage. In Parliament she went on the Select Committee on International Development, as well as becoming Chair of the All Party Retail Industry Group; Chair of the Eastern Group of Labour MPs; Chair of the Eastern Region of Labour Movement in Europe; Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Film Industries Group; a member of Labour's backbench Treasury Committee; Joint Secretary of the Population, Development and Reproductive Health Group; and Treasurer of the Sex Equality Group. She is also a member of the Fabian Society.
In May 1999, Follett became a member of the Britain in Europe Council, and served on the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons. In June 2005, she was elected as Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) Women's Committee. In November 2005, she became Parliamentary private secretary to Tessa Jowell.
In June 2007 she was appointed to become Minister for the East of England, and, in October 2007, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Equality, supporting the Minister for Women and Equalities, Harriet Harman, with a particular role in drafting the government's equality legislation. She then went on to serve as Minister for Culture, Tourism and the Creative Industries between October 2008 and September 2009, before finally serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government until May 2010.
Following the controversy generated by the public disclosure of her expenses Follett announced her decision to stand down at the 2010 general election on 1 October 2009. She cited a desire to spend more time with her family as her motivation for standing down.
Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party Women's Committee (June 2005)
Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Women, Rt Hon Tessa Jowell (June 2005 - May 2006)
Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Rt Hon Tessa Jowell (May 2006 - June 2007)