Annette Brooke, who has died aged 78, was a popular and quietly effective Liberal Democrat MP, both in her constituency and within the parliamentary party.
During her 14 years as the member for Mid Dorset and North Poole – the longest-serving female MP in the party’s history – she held a number of prominent posts, including parliamentary party chairman (2013-15), spokesperson on home affairs (2003-07) under the then leader, Charles Kennedy, and, most notably, spokesperson for children, young people and families (2004–10).
In that role she prioritised childen’s early years, observing that: “We need to value the early years teachers more as they’re the most important teachers in a child’s life.”
As a constituency MP, she had a particular success when, having been approached by the parents of a young blind constituent, she got the final Harry Potter book published in braille at the same time as in print.
Brooke entered the House of Commons after serving for many years on Poole borough council, including a term as the mayor. The town formed a significant part of the highly marginal constituency, newly formed at the 1997 election. Poole also had a Liberal history, the party having controlled its council briefly some years before.
After 15 years on the council Brooke was the natural choice as Lib Dem candidate at the 2001 election. She was one of only five women selected by the party in marginal seats. She won the seat by just 384 votes but increased her majority to 5,482 in 2005; however it fell to just 269 at the 2010 election. Partly prompted by health difficulties, she retired at the 2015 election. The seat was lost to the Conservative Michael Tomlinson until 2024, when it was reclaimed for the Liberal Democrats by Vikki Slade, a protege of Brooke’s.
At national level, one of Brooke’s most telling interventions came when she felt it a great injustice that there were no medals for British service personnel who served in the Suez campaign in the 1950s. Some months after she met service chiefs in November 2002, the government announced that there would be a Suez Canal Zone clasp.
She served on five parliamentary committees: public administration; procedure; public accounts; children, schools, and families; and standards and privileges. In 2005 she became involved with Finca International, a leading provider of microfinance aiming to help the world’s poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty. Her commitment and perseverance were recognised when in 2010 she was named MP of the year in the Dod’s and Scottish Widows’ Women in Public Life awards.
In the 2010 coalition government she did not become a minister, but instead joined the Speaker’s panel of committee chairs. During the coalition years she did not always toe the party line, most significantly when she was one of 21 Lib Dem rebels who opposed an increase in student tuition fees. She was appointed OBE in 2013, made a privy counsellor in 2014 and a dame in 2015.
Born in Essex, Annette was the younger of two daughters of Edna (nee Cass) and Ernest Kelley, a bookbinder. From Romford county technical school she went to the London School of Economics, graduating with a BSc in economics, and on to Hughes Hall, Cambridge, to take the certificate of education.
While at Cambridge she met Mike Brooke, who became a geology teacher. They married in 1969 and later set up a shop selling minerals and rocks in Poole. She taught at a number of schools and colleges, and for 20 years at the Open University, before becoming involved in politics in the early 1980s.
Mike joined Annette on the local council two years before she was elected as an MP; he became leader of the Lib Dem group before retiring in 2023. In 2022 the Brookes hosted a refugee family from Ukraine and campaigned for a change in the rules to enable such refugees to use cars from abroad.
Her elder sister, Patricia, predeceased her. She is survived by Mike, her two daughters, Caroline and Eleanor, and a granddaughter.
• Annette Brooke,politician, born 7 June 1947; died 20 August 2025
