Career

Grant undertook her articles of clerkship at Cartmell, Mawson & Main solicitors in Carlisle, where she qualified as a solicitor.^[3] She then joined a legal practice in Wimbledon specialising in family law. She established her practice in 1996 which specialised in family law.^[8] She said that as a lawyer she saw a 'huge amount' of domestic violence and that it had a 'huge effect' on her subsequent ministerial role.^[9]

Grant joined the Labour Party in 2004 and was asked by a senior local party figure to consider becoming a local councillor, but she rejected the idea. She joined the Conservatives in 2006, and later said of her membership of Labour: "It was almost looking in the biscuit barrel, not liking the look of the biscuits, and slamming the lid shut".^[8]

Grant was a non-executive director of the Croydon NHS Primary Care Trust from January 2005 to March 2007 before stepping down to concentrate on her political career.^[10] In 2006, Grant worked with Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice in the formation of Conservative policy to deal with family breakdown. Grant was one of the authors of the Social Justice Policy Group Report 'State of the Nation – Fractured Families' published in December 2006, and the follow-up solutions report 'Breakthrough Britain' published in July 2007.^[10]

Expenses controversy 2012

Grant attracted controversy in November 2012 when an edition of the Channel 4 documentary series Dispatches reported that she was according to published records claiming the full £1,666.67/month^[21] under MPs expenses – the maximum allowed within the IPSA rules – for a flat in London, when she has a home in Kingswood, Surrey, near Reigate.^[22] Kingswood is located within a zone around London in which MPs cannot claim expenses for a London rental, but it is allowed in her case because she represents Maidstone and the Weald, which is outside the exclusion zone.^[21] At that time Grant used a base bordering her constituency, where her mother lives and her son also lived while at school in Maidstone until 2013.^[21] IPSA confirmed that Grant was entitled to a second-home allowance on Parliamentary expenses because her constituency was outside London, and her claim was within the rules.^[21] However, Labour MP John Mann, a long-standing campaigner on MPs' expenses, described the minister's actions as "outrageous" and a "farce":^[21]

However, Mann's comments were countered by the Reigate MP Crispin Blunt. He said: "Helen has a substantial ministerial portfolio, constituents, a constituency and family responsibilities to manage. Her arrangements are not analogous to mine"; "These are part of the trade-offs that MPs and ministers have to make all the time to try to meet all the competing demands on them. Frankly, I think this is a pretty cheap shot by Dispatches and I would hope you would be sympathetic to someone who has done a considerable public service, by moving from a successful professional service business into public service at significant expense to herself and her family".^[23]

IPSA controversy

Grant was also involved in controversy after the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority found that the standard employment contract template for the majority of her staff had been amended although her husband, who was also employed by her, remained on an unaltered contract.^[24] A member of staff requiring time off for a medical condition discovered their contract had been amended to offer only two weeks' sick pay rather than the IPSA contract standard of 26 weeks.^[25]

Grant initially refused to comment on the claim^[25] although the Ministry of Justice stated that the changes to contracts were an attempt to provide a "fairer deal" for taxpayers.^[25] IPSA stated that the contract should not have been changed.^[25] Grant's husband resigned from his position after it was revealed he remained on an unaltered contract, and had known about the discrepancy for two months without informing his wife.^[24] It was claimed that this was due to "oversight on his part rather than design" and he had not received any benefits from remaining on the unaltered contract.^[24]