Theresa Villiers: former Conservative cabinet minister proud of her record as respected constituency MP for Chipping Barnet

Unlike other veteran Conservative MPs and former ministers who opted to stand down, Theresa Villiers had no wish to join the Tory exodus from the House of Commons but like so many of her colleagues she was swept aside in the Labour landslide.

Against the odds, she made a determined, often passionate attempt to persuade voters in Chipping Barnet to re-elect her for a sixth time, to give her the opportunity to continue her two-decade long career at Westminster.

There was almost a hint of desperation in her plea to the electorate when she appeared at a constituency husting at Barnet parish church.

She was braced for the Conservative Party’s defeat and the election of a Labour government.

Therefore, she said, it was all the more important why Chipping Barnet needed to return a Conservative MP to the House of Commons to fulfil the task of holding a new Labour government to account.

Rather than highlighting her ministerial roles during 14 years of Conservative government, her pitch was that since first being elected in 2005 she had demonstrated time and again her dedication to the interests of her constituents.

Ms Villiers lived in the constituency; cared about the issues that mattered locally; and, echoing the line being pushed by the Tory leadership, she was ready to be a strong voice standing up against both Keir Starmer, if he became Labour Prime Minister, and Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London.

Her defeat by Labour candidate Dan Tomlinson was widely predicted. Chipping Barnet attracted few mentions in pre-election national news coverage because political commentators judged the result an almost foregone conclusion.

Politically Ms Villiers had been living on borrowed time. Chipping Barnet, for so long a Conservative stronghold, had become increasingly marginal in recent general elections with a wafer-thin Conservative majority of 353 in 2017 and an equally shaky majority of 1,212 in 2019.

Finally losing Chipping Barnet to Labour marked the end of an era, the loss of a true-blue Tory seat which, had been held by the Conservatives since 1950 and which, perhaps remarkably, has been served by only three Conservative MPs for a period of well over seven decades.

Ms Villiers’ longevity in the constituency was well below that of her two predecessors: her 19 years were easily surpassed by the late Sir Sydney Chapman’s 26 years’ service as Chipping Barnet MP and the 29-years clocked up by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling.

During her two decades at Westminster – after previously serving for six years as a Member of the European Parliament – Ms Villiers was frequently in the national news, in her roles as a cabinet minister, including nearly four years as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; as a leading and much-quoted supporter of Brexit; and latterly, amid constant infighting, as one of those senior Conservatives whose voices were canvassed on the future direction and leadership of their party.

Whatever was happening at Westminster – and despite the London Borough of Barnet having voted heavily in favour of Remain in the 2016 EU Referendum — she was proud of her record as a committed constituency MP.

She was assiduous in attending local events and civic occasions and appeared frequently — and often spoke — at meetings and discussions organised by community groups and societies.

Whenever an opportunity arose, she was keen to put in appearance, giving her support at a mass lobby – see above — urging the rescue of the Prince of Wales, the one and only pub in East Barnet village, when it closed earlier this year (and has still not re-opened).

With a parliamentary staff at Westminster and a constituency office in Barnet High Street, she dealt with numerous requests for advice and assistance from residents and businesses.

She was aided by Claire Chapman, her senior parliamentary assistant, who had been secretary to her late husband Sydney Chapman when he was the MP.

Their combined knowledge of the constituency, and their expertise over many years in dealing with council departments, agencies and authorities, was frequently of great value to organisations and voluntary groups who found themselves struggling with officialdom.

Ms Villiers’ weekend diary was usually packed with appointments, running through from meetings in her constituency office on Fridays to a wide array of engagements on Saturdays and Sundays.

 A regular outing was to deliver a speech when she joined the Mayor of Barnet at the annual opening of Barnet Christmas Fayre. Another familiar fixture was to join the official welcoming party for the arrival of military re-enactors at the annual Barnet Medieval Festival.

As a long-term resident of Arkley, she was well acquainted with the locality and seemed to like nothing more than a chance to talk to neighbours and residents, as at this year’s revival of Arkley Village Fayre (seen here with Reverend Cindy Kent, right, team vicar for Arkley parish).

She built up a reputation for being a doughty defender of the green belt and was at the forefront of a prolonged but eventually unsuccessful campaign to prevent the approval of planning permission for 115 new homes in fields in the Whalebones conservation area, off Wood Street.

Trying to save Whalebones from future development was a cause that she said defined her green credentials and was central to a mission to ensure this was the first generation to hand on the natural environment in a better state than it was found.

She fought doggedly alongside New Barnet Residents Association in their attempt to secure reductions in the scale and density of the Victoria Quarter development at the site of the former gas works.

She was at the forefront of opposition in Brunswick Park to overdevelopment of the former North London business park and the lack all-important infrastructure in the neighbourhood.

Two other campaigns which she backed were the challenge to Transport for London’s plan to build tower blocks on the car park at High Barnet tube station and the much-criticised idea of building high-rise flats at site of The Spires shopping centre – two schemes that are currently in abeyance.

Inevitably party politics played a part in her local campaigning.  Uncertainty about the future of Barnet Police Station became a political football between the Conservatives and Labour.

Ms Villiers attacked Sadiq Khan for the loss of a front counter service for the public in Barnet High Street and the centralisation of the borough’s police response at Colindale – a policy that Labour said resulted from funding cuts on the Metropolitan Police which were imposed by Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London.

In seeking re-election, Ms Villiers gave her full endorsement to the Conservatives’ pledge to abandon last year’s extension of the ultra-low emissions zone to outer London – an issue of particular concern in High Barnet.

Until recently enforcement cameras along the outer edge of the borough boundary – at Arkley, St Albans Road, Hadley Green and New Barnet – were regularly being vandalised; some of those knocked over have yet to be replaced.

Ms Villiers contended that extending ULEZ to outer London was “the wrong scheme at the wrong time” and she accused Mayor Khan of punishing thousands of motorists with older vehicles, many of whom were on low incomes.

Another of her ongoing campaigns that was interrupted by the general election was opposition to the installation of what she said were “unwanted bus lanes” on several main roads within the constituency.

Transport for London’s target it to create 25km of new bus lanes by March 2025 – including a bus lane on the A1000 Barnet High Street from the Wood Street junction to Meadway, and on the A1000 High Road between Whetstone and North Finchley.

Ms Villiers argued that they would create significant traffic congestion and harm local businesses by the removal of on-street parking.

Despite criticism that her opposition to traffic measures such as ULEZ and speedier bus services was misplaced because the aim was to reduce pollution, she insisted that the impact of these two schemes would be negligible, and she stood by the Conservatives’ record on tackling climate change.

Her final ministerial role was a six-month stint as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs during Boris Johnson’s Premiership.

She introduced the 2021 Environment Act which created a framework for legally binding targets to clean up the country’s air, restore natural habitats, increase biodiversity, reduce waste and make a better use of resources.

She voted in Parliament to entrench the 2050 carbon neutrality target in law and said at the time she fully recognised the need to transition away from fossil fuels to meet climate change targets.

When Ms Villiers was elected MP for Chipping Barnet in 2005, she resigned her seat in the European Parliament where she served for a year as deputy leader of the Conservative group.

Shortly after becoming an MP, she was appointed shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. For the three years leading up the 2010 general election, she was the shadow Secretary of State for Transport.

Her first post in David Cameron’s government was Minister of State for Rail and Aviation and he promoted her to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2012, a post she held until 2016.