Background
Barlow was born in Cardiff, Wales, and attended King Edward High School for Girls in Birmingham.
Barlow was born in Cardiff, Wales, and attended King Edward High School for Girls in Birmingham.
She completed an Master of Arts in Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge then studying for a postgraduate diploma in journalism at Cardiff University.
She also worked as home news editor at the British Broadcasting Corporation. She began her career as a reporter on the Bradford Telegraph and Argus in 1979. She was appointed assistant editor at Asia Television in Hong Kong in 1982. She returned to Britain in 1983 to become home news editor at the British Broadcasting Corporation. She left the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1995.
She became a freelance video producer in 1998 before lecturing in video production at the Chichester College of Art and Design from 2000.
She was elected secretary of the Chelsea Constituency Labour Party in 1993, and became the chair of the Chichester Constituency Labour Party in 1998. In November 2004 Ivor Caplin, the Labour Member of Parliament for the very marginal Hove constituency, announced his retirement at the next election and Celia Barlow was chosen to fight the seat through a controversial All-Women Shortlist.
lieutenant was widely assumed that she would be defeated by Nicholas Boles, considered a rising star of the Conservative Party, but she was elected at the 2005 General Election with a majority of just 420 votes. She became the first of the new MPs elected in 2005 to make their maiden speech in the House of Commons.
After May 2006 she served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ian Pearson, Economic Secretary in Her Majesty Treasury and Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
Barlow was defeated at the 2010 General Election by Conservative candidate Mike Weatherley. She was one of many United Kingdom MPs to be implicated in the 2009 Expenses Scandal, claiming more than £28,000 in expenses on her second home, then "flipping" it and using it as her main residence. The expense claims included the cost of a whirlpool bath and a high lustre silver shower screen Barlow later made political capital out of the fact she failed to claim for a second home in London.
She was also forced to repay £635 for a mortgage valuation on her main home.
A breach of the expenses rules. She later offered to apologise for her expense claims.
54th United Kingdom Parliament]
Barlow was a member of the Procedure Committee and previously served on the Environmental Audit Select Committee. She is a member of parliamentary group EURIM.