Rachel Maclean: Tory who suggested Brits work longer had high-flying bank and business career

Rachel Maclean is being branded ‘out of touch’ for her comments about the cost of living crisis – so who is the Conservative minister? We look at her background and career, that’s not quite left her on the poverty line

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Cost of living: Rachel Maclean suggests people get better paid job

The top Tory who has suggested poor Brits could work longer hours had a high-flying banking and business career – and now has generous MPs’ expenses to fund the costs of work.

Rachel Maclean sparked a furious backlash when she told Sky News: “Over the long-term we need to have a plan to grow the economy and make sure that people are able to protect themselves better – whether that is by taking on more hours or moving to a better-paid job.”

Ms Maclean said she was not “suggesting for one moment” that such an option would work for everyone, adding: “It may be right for some people.”

But Labour shadow cabinet minister Ian Murray said the “ludicrous” advice “sounds like the Norman Tebbit ‘get on your bike’ instructions from the 1980s.”

Lib Dem Wendy Chamberlain added: “So the Conservatives’ answer to the cost-of-living emergency is that people should just earn more? This shows just how out of touch they truly are.”

Ms MacLean appears to have followed her own advice – with a string of part-time roles before she became an MP, including voluntary ones. But her career suggests she’s unlikely to have felt the pinch in the same way as families earning minimum wage.

Rachel Maclean said families could be ‘taking on more hours or moving to a better-paid job’ (

Image:

UK Parliament)

Ms MacLean, 56, became Tory MP for Redditch, Worcestershire, in 2017 after Conservative Karen Lumley stepped down due to ill health.

She was educated at a local comprehensive in the Midlands and Oxford University – before joining a fast-track graduate management scheme at HSBC.

She worked in Hong Kong, Sydney and Tokyo with the bank before setting up an IT publishing company, Packt Publishing Ltd, with her husband David in 2005.

The firm posted £1.8m of operating profits in 2020, a 45% rise on the year before.

The highest-paid director received £165,423 in 2020 – a bump from £105,476 the year before. The director was not named but Mr MacLean is chief executive.

Rachel Maclean, as a transport minister, at the trial of a new driverless shuttle in Cambridge (

Image:

Cambridge News)

Ms MacLean is not a director of the firm but her website says they set up the firm together.

It adds: “Over the years she faced the challenges and setbacks that many small business owners experience.

“But the business eventually flourished and now employs people from all over the Midlands area including from Redditch, as well as having an international presence.”

The couple have four children and two rescue dogs, Phoebe and Herbie, and moved to Redditch from the nearby village of Dorridge after her election.

A five-bedroom, four-bathroom detached family home in Dorridge, linked to the couple in Companies House records, sold for £815,000 in January 2018.

Since becoming an MP Ms Maclean has had £1,950-a-month in rent on her London home paid for by the taxpayer.

She also took out a £2,700 loan from standards body IPSA to avoid having to pay the deposit on the London home herself.

Sir Jackie Stewart at Goodwood Revival festival in 2019 (file photo) (

Image:

PA)

And she claimed £1,604.83 of a £10,000 working-from-home allowance that was made available to MPs to buy equipment during Covid.

All the claims are within the rules.

Ms MacLean has had several part-time and voluntary roles in the past including a regional council member of the CBI and a part-time NCT post-natal teacher, Sunday School teacher and Scout Leader.

Last September she accepted two free tickets to the Goodwood Revival motor racing festival from the 11th Duke of Richmond, Charles Henry Gordon-Lennox.

The Duke gave her tickets worth a combined £1,480 that included food and drink on 19 September 2021. She declared this within the rules for MPs.

The Duke is part of the dynasty that has owned the Goodwood estate for more than 300 years and founded the Goodwood Revival in 1998.

Ms Maclean later wrote of a Sky News tweet about her comments: “Highly inaccurate and irresponsible reporting. Sky have misrepresented my comments about a longer term plan and options for some people and suggested I think they are short term answers. They are not, I did not say this and I clearly set out all the immediate help provided.”

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