Karen Whitefield Politician

Karen Whitefield (born 8 January 1970, Bellshill) is a Scottish politician and former Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Airdrie and Shotts constituency.Prior to her election as MSP she worked as a personal assistant to Rachel Squire, Member of Parliament.As an MSP she chaired the Parliament's Education Committee where she used her casting vote to reject the student graduate endowment bill, a Scottish National Party (SNP) flagship policy. It had the backing of the Liberal Democrats and SNP members, however not the Labour or Conservative members of the committee The bill was eventually passed through the Scottish Parliament by a vote of 67 to 61.Whitefield was Scottish Labour's shadow Minister for Children in the Scottish Parliament and Convener of the Cross-Party Group on Diabetes under Iain Gray.At the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, she lost her seat to the SNP's Alex Neil. She was one of nine Labour MSP's to lose their constituency seats after holding them since the first elections to the Scottish Parliament in 1999.On 8 December 2013, she was selected to contest the Falkirk constituency at the 2015 UK general election.