Veronica Mary Hardstaff is a British politician, who has served as a City councillor in Sheffield and in the.
Education
Hardstaff went to the University of Manchester where she obtained a degree in German, and then studied at the University of Cologne. At the 1992 United Kingdom general election she was the Labour Party candidate for the Sheffield Hallam constituency, but finished third.
Career
Hardstaff worked as a teacher of German and French, first at High Storrs Girls" Grammar School in Sheffield, then at Street Peter"s Secondary Modern School. In 1971 she was elected as a Labour Party candidate to Sheffield City Council in Walkley ward, becoming a full-time councillor. She served for seven years.
In 1977 she went back to work at Knottingley High School, moving in 1979 to the Frecheville School in Sheffield, and from 1986 to the Birley School.
At the 1994 election, Hardstaff was the Labour Party candidate in Lincolnshire and Humberside South. This constituency was made up of seven constituencies for the United Kingdom Parliament, of which six were held by the Conservative Party.
The Labour Party considered winning this election would be taking "a prize Tory scalp". She was chosen by her colleagues as Chairwoman of the ary Labour Party.
In January 1995, she abstained from signing a declaration against a change in Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution, despite 36 Labour MEPs doing southern
With an agricultural constituency she took up farming issues, calling for a new approach to food quality after the Biosystems Engineering scandal including stricter regulation of intensive farming. When Lincolnshire was described as a prosperous area, she wrote to object based on the low wages paid to some farmworkers. She was also Vice-Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee between the and Poland from 1995.
Foreign the 1999 election, the electoral system was changed to list-based proportional representation.
Hardstaff was placed at sixth out of seven on the regional list for Yorkshire and the Humber, a place which made it practically impossible for her to be re-elected. This low placing was attributed to her alliance with the left.
In 2002, Hardstaff was elected to Sheffield City Council for a second term, from Walkley ward. In May 2005 she was appointed to the cabinet of Sheffield as member for Children"s Services, responsible both for education and for social services to children.
She left the Sheffield cabinet in May 2006 and in May 2007 was defeated in her re-election bid in Walkley.
She stood again in Walkley ward in 2008, but was defeated.
Politics
At the same election Hardstaff"s brother, Chris Tutt, was re-elected to Sheffield City Council, in Mosborough ward, for the Liberal Democrats.
Views
She supported plans to bring in a City Academy to replace an existing secondary school, sponsored by a Christian educational charity. She also defended the use of the Private Finance Initiative as a pragmatic way of supporting investment.
Membership
A member of the Labour Party, she is on the left of the party. In the end, Hardstaff was elected as Member of the with a majority of 13,745.