Teresa Gorman

Died: August 28 2015

Teresa Gorman, who has died aged 83, was an outspoken Conservative MP for Billericay, who frequently defied her party over the Maastricht Treaty; her other great cause was the provision of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for women.

Her political stance was firmly Thatcherite, and her enthusiasm for self-reliance, entrepreneurialism, "rolling back the State" and an In/Out referendum on the EU went down well with her Essex constituents.

But she was equally uncompromising on women's rights, speaking up for equal pay, condemning sexual harassment and vigorously opposing the Liberal Democrat MP David Alton's bill to limit abortion, as well as advocating HRT. Apart from opposing the EU, her chief campaign was for tax relief on working mothers' childcare costs. In 1992, in the unlikely company of Tony Benn, she backed an amendment to the Representation of the People Act which would have given every constituency two MPs, one male and one female.

But, though the tabloids had noticed her for her colourful clothes and forthright opinions, it was the Maastricht Treaty that catapulted her to public attention. Despite the fact that all parties (bar the Ulster Unionists) supported the treaty, which involved the substantial transfer of powers from the Westminster parliament to Brussels, there was significant opposition from a sizeable number of Tory backbenchers – as well as a few others, such as Labour's Tony Benn and Dennis Skinner and the crossbench peer Lord Harris of High Cross, who through the Institute of Economic Affairs had influenced many of the ideas and policies of Thatcherism.

During the progress of the bill to ratify the treaty, no fewer than 50 Tories voted at one time or another against their own leadership. This became an acute problem for John Major after the General Election of April 1992. Though he won – to some observers' surprise – the party's majority was slashed from around 100 to 20. With the Tories' internal divisions over Europe, this slim margin produced a fertile atmosphere for rebellion.

But while some were eventually won over by Major's apparent concessions and amendments, such as the opt-out from the Social Chapter, Teresa Gorman belonged firmly to the hardcore Eurosceptics. She was one of the group that the Prime Minister (unaware that his microphone was still on, during an ITN interview) was to describe as "the bastards out there". Indeed, Gorman entitled her account of the progress of the Maastricht Bill, published in 1993, The Bastards. In it, she pointed out that until the Treaty, the Dutch town of Maastricht was chiefly notable as the place where Guy Fawkes hatched the Gunpowder Plot, and Hitler began writing Mein Kampf.

She was one of eight MPs, including Sir Teddy Taylor, Tony Marlow, and Nick Budgen, who had the Conservative whip withdrawn from them in November 1994, after they voted against the EC Finance Bill; another, Sir Richard Body, resigned in solidarity with them. Though threatened with deselection, they were eventually reinstated; most went on to back John Redwood's bid for the leadership of the party.

Teresa Gorman narrowly held her seat in Labour's 1997 landslide victory. In opposition she had frequently to deny claims she was likely to defect to Ukip; in 2000, she was suspended from the Commons for a month for failing to declare an interest when promoting a bill to repeal the Rents Act. Her husband owned a number of rental properties.

She was born Teresa Ellen Moore in Putney, south-west London, on September 30 1931, the daughter of a demolition contractor and a waitress. She was educated at Fulham County School, which she left at 16 to start work. She subsequently trained as a teacher in Brighton, then took a degree in zoology and biology at University College London, from which she graduated with a double first.

She married, in 1952, Jim Gorman, a former major in the Royal Marines who became a teacher and later a businessman. Teresa Gorman taught for 10 years in London, latterly as head of the science department. She also had a year on an exchange programme, teaching in New York.

Impressed by the "can-do" attitude there, on her return she set up a business with her husband selling educational resources for biology teachers and nurses; it became a thriving concern, with a turnover of £30 million by the 1980s. In 1974, frustrated by red tape and government restrictions on business, she set up the Alliance of Small Firms and Self-Employed People Ltd, and also stood as an independent in Streatham, south London, standing against the Conservative's policies under Ted Heath's leadership. She set up the Amarant Trust to promote HRT treatment, and wrote a book extolling its benefits.

After Mrs Thatcher won the 1979 General Election, she joined the Conservatives and was elected to Westminster Council in 1982. She was selected for Billericay in 1987, after the MP, Harvey Proctor, stood down over a "rent-boy" scandal. She won the seat with a majority of almost 18,000; when she clung on in 1997, it was reduced to 1,356. She stood down as an MP in 2001, in part to care for her husband, who had cancer. That year, she wrote an autobiography, No, Prime Minister!

Jim Gorman died in 2007. After his death, she placed an advertisement in Private Eye which read: "Old trout seeks old goats. No golfers. Must have own balls." She got 128 replies. She married, secondly, in 2010, Peter Clarke, who survives her. She had no children.

ANDREW MCKIE