Lisa Cameron gives first major interview since defection

In her first major interview, since months on from crossing the floor of the House of Commons, she also denied the Prime Minister promised to give her a seat in the Lords if she defected from the SNP to the Conservatives.

Dr Cameron made history last year when she became the first SNP MP to switch to the Conservatives and at the time there was some speculation that a deal over a peerage had been done.

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But the MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, said no such offer had been made.

"I didn’t discuss anything about the Lords with the PM and I was not offered to go House of Lords to move party," Ms Cameron told The Herald.

Politcal Correspondent Kathleen Nutt interviewing MP Dr Lisa Cameron. Photo: Colin Mearns/The Herald.

The full interview is being published in the Herald on Sunday tomorrow.

Ms Cameron was first elected to the Commons in May 2015 and was re-elected in 2017 and 2019.

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However, she began to become estranged from her party when she voted against extending the right to an abortion to Northern Ireland.

Ms Cameron, a senior psychologist before entering politics, said tensions increased further when she supported a young man who was sexually harassed by the party's former chief whip MP Patrick Grady.

Mr Grady was suspended from the Commons for two days in 2022 for inappropriate conduct towards a junior staffer.

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Ms Cameron described the cordial meeting with Mr Sunak which later led to her defecting to the Conservatives.

The MP insisted no offer of a peerage had been made by Mr Sunak in return for her changing party allegiances.

"That was not part of the discussion I had with the Prime Minister and it is not something I would expect at all," she said.

She said the meeting was arranged by a UK Conservative MP.

"The meeting with the Prime Minister took place in Parliament. It was to have a discussion about where I was at and what I might be thinking. At that point I was thinking of leaving the parliament," she said.

"The Prime Minister said I had done a lot of good work on disability issues. I felt he was very empathic. He was listening. He was interested in my family which no one had been particularly interested in before.

"He asked how my girls were. He has two girls of similar ages to mine. They are all into horse riding. There was just a kind of connection.

"The meeting lasted about 40 minutes. I discussed some of the issues I had [in the SNP]. I discussed that my husband was a councillor and a veteran and that veterans issues are important to me. We are basically an armed forces family.

"I talked about being a Christian in parliament. I spoke about what I hoped to do in parliament which was really not to focus on constitutional issues which divide families and divide the country."

Ms Cameron also talked to the Prime Minister about work she was doing to support people with disabilities into employment and said Mr Sunak was supportive.

"He said he really valued that and would want me to continue working on it," she said.

"And that was the first time I had felt valued for work I had done. We just kind of gelled because we both have daughters."

The Herald asked about how she would feel standing down as an MP at the general election and about her career as a parliamentarian coming to an end.

She said: "I am not a career politician. I am happy enough to continue my health work. I have a profession which I came from which I can go back to.

"So I am not someone who thinks 'woe is me, I can't be an MP'. I have other things that I am trained to do, where I can help people.

"It was very fulfilling for me before. I don't see why it wouldn't be again."

She said after the general election, which is expected later this year, she expected to return to the NHS where she worked as a senior clinical psychologist before her career in politics.

"I am an NHS worker from Scotland, that's where my heart lies, and that is my expectation," she said.

The Herald on Sunday asked what Ms Cameron would do if she was offered a seat in the Lords and if she hoped for one.

She said: "I don't think I would expect to be offered that to be quite frank. My move [to the Conservatives] is more about finding a settled politics for the final year in the parliament. I can do something of use and not focus on all the fractiousness with the SNP."

Pressed if she has been given any "nudges or winks" about a seat in the Lords she said: "No. From my background, I just couldn't imagine that."

Read the full interview with Lisa Cameron in the Herald on Sunday tomorrow.