Karen Bradley

Karen Anne Bradley (née Howarth, born 12 March 1970) is a British Conservative Party politician who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2018 to 2019, and has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Staffordshire Moorlands since 2010.

Bradley was appointed to the Cameron Government in 2014 as Minister of State for the Home Department. During the formation of the May Government in July 2016, she was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, where she remained until being appointed Northern Ireland Secretary in January 2018.

Bradley was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Her family moved to Buxton, Derbyshire and she was educated at the local comprehensive and Imperial College London, graduating with a BSc in Mathematics.

In 1991, Bradley joined Deloitte & Touche and became a tax manager, and after seven years she became a senior tax manager with KPMG. In 2004 she set up business as a fiscal and economic consultant before rejoining KPMG in 2007, where she remained until her election to the House of Commons.

Bradley unsuccessfully contested Manchester Withington at the 2005 general election, coming third to the Liberal Democrats' John Leech.

Bradley was a member of the Conservative Party's A-List and was selected for Staffordshire Moorlands in July 2006. She was elected as the constituency's member of parliament at the 2010 general election.

Following her election to Parliament in 2010, Bradley was a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee from 2010 and the Procedure Committee from 2011, and in May 2012 was elected co-secretary of the backbench 1922 Committee.

In September 2012, Bradley was appointed as a junior Government whip. In February 2014, Bradley joined the Home Office as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime.

In July 2016, Bradley was appointed to the position of Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport by Prime Minister Theresa May.

In January 2018, Bradley was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland after the resignation of James Brokenshire due to ill health. In July 2018 she came under criticism in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for failing to take action on British government discrimination against former soldiers and police. Andrew Murrison challenged her on her account of what she had done, and she said she would write to him. Sylvia Hermon commented: "I wait and wait for letters."

Bradley was reelected at the 2019 general election.

Bradley was elected as Chair of the Procedure Committee on 29 January 2020, defeating Bob Blackman to the post. Bradley had been a member of the Committee between October 2011 and November 2012.

In late November 2016, she was criticised for denying appointment of black female candidate Althea Efunshile, a former deputy chief of Arts Council England as a non-executive director on the board of the state-owned broadcaster, Channel 4, while confirming the appointment or re-appointment of the other four candidates, all white men. This action led to a letter of complaint being sent to her by a cross-party group of MPs. On 12 December 2017 the government announced the appointment which her successor ratified.

In September 2018 she was criticised for admitting in an interview for House magazine, a weekly publication for the Houses of Parliament, that she had not understood Northern Irish politics before being appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. "I didn't understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa," she said.

In March 2019 she was criticised by all sides in Northern Ireland and faced calls to resign for invoking the Nuremberg defence when defending the actions of UK forces during the Troubles, saying: "The fewer than 10% [of killings] that were at the hands of the military and police were not crimes, they were people acting under orders and fulfilling their duties in a dignified and appropriate way." A "clarification" on her remarks was made by Bradley later that day in the House of Commons, and the following day she issued an apology. The families of victims raised concerns that Bradley was attempting to influence a UK government decision on whether or not to prosecute British soldiers involved in killing 14 civilians on Bloody Sunday in January 1972.

Bradley is married to Neil Bradley. They have two sons. She is a fan of Manchester City Football Club.