Patricia Ford (politician)

Patricia Ford, Lady Fisher (née Smiles; 5 April 1921 – 23 May 1995), was briefly an Ulster Unionist Party politician in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

Her father was Ulster Unionist MP Sir Walter D. Smiles and her mother, Margaret Heigway.

In her maiden speech to the House she was required to apologise for an article she had written in the Sunday Express in which she mentioned that Bessie Braddock and Edith Summerskill had been snoring whilst asleep in the lady members' room.

[1] Ford was a strong proponent of equal pay between the sexes and rode in a horse-drawn carriage to Parliament to draw attention to the matter.

In 1972 she founded and was co-chairman of the Women Caring Trust, now Hope for Youth Northern Ireland.