Deidre Brock

Deidre Brock has been the SNP MP for Edinburgh North and Leith since May 2015. Brock took a non-traditional route into politics – born in Western Australia in 1961, she studied English at John Curtin University then Acting at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. She worked as an actor in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most notably appearing in an episode of Australian soap opera ‘Home and Away’. After moving to Scotland in 1996, Brock’s political career began as an SNP councillor on Edinburgh Council for the Leith Walk ward in 2007. In 2010 she became the deputy lord provost of Edinburgh. She was one of 56 SNP MPs elected in the 2015 general election. In November 2020, Brock spoke of the small businesses across the UK facing permanent closure as a result of Covid-19, asking, “will the Prime Minister give a guarantee that this will be treated with the same urgency with which a UK Government treated a threat to the banks a few years ago?”. Brock currently sits on the Scottish affairs committee and is the SNP’s spokesperson for the environment, food and rural affairs.