First elected as a Conservative,Burt had the Conservative whip removed on 3 September 2019. On 29 October he was one of ten Conservative MPs to have the whip restored.[2] He retired at the 2019 general election.[3]
Burt was elected as a councillor on Haringey Borough Council in 1982 and left the council in 1984.[1] He contested the new seat of Bury North at the 1983 general election at which he was elected as the Conservative MP with a majority of 2,792 votes. He represented the seat until 1997 and returned to parliament again in 2001.[1]
Alistair Burt re-entered parliament at the 2001 general election for the very safe Conservative seat of Bedfordshire North East,previously represented in parliament by the former Attorney GeneralNicholas Lyell who had retired. Burt was elected with a majority of 8,577;he was made an opposition spokesman on Education and Skills under William Hague in 2001,before becoming PPS to the Leader of the OppositionIain Duncan Smith in 2002. The following year,Burt carried on as PPS to the new leader Michael Howard.[1]
Following the 2005 general election,he rejoined the front bench and was a spokesman on Local Government Affairs and Communities.[1] However,in January 2008,Burt was promoted to Assistant Chief Whip and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for Internal Development.
Burt is a former officer of the Conservative Friends of Israel,a position which he resigned upon entering government as a Minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In December 2008,he led an all-Party group meeting with the Red Cross to campaign for visiting rights for the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit.[8] 2013-14 He was a member of the Political Council of the Henry Jackson Society.[9] He is also joint founder and first Chairman of The Enterprise Forum,an organisation set up in 1997 to facilitate discussions on policy between the Business Community and the Conservative Party.[10] He is a vice-president of the Tory Reform Group.[11]
As a former minister, he was freed to argue that the parliamentary vote against taking military action in Syria was a bad precedent, and it would be better if the government made decisions such as this in future by "executive action".[13] In June 2014 Burt called the lack of intervention in Syria "a disaster".[20]
Cameron ministry
Following the Conservative victory in the 2015 general election on 11 May, Burt returned to Government as Minister of State for Community and Social Care in the Department of Health.
As a Conservative health minister, he blocked a new law to provide cheap and effective drugs for the NHS by championing medicines whose patents have expired. Burt spoke in Parliament for nearly half an hour to filibuster the proposed Off-Patent Drugs Bill, a plan that had cross-party support from backbenchers. He said “It is not always the case that something brought forward by a charity and advocated passionately by colleagues is always the answer. It's not disgraceful – it's the right answer.”[21] The Bill was subsequently revised and placed into law with agreement from all sides on the issue [22]
As the Minister of State for Community and Social Care, he announced on 17 July 2015 that the implementation of the cap on care costs would be delayed until April 2020.[23] The introduction of the cap had been passed into law as part of the Care Act 2014 during the coalition government, and implementation of that part of the law from 2016 onwards had been accepted by all main political parties during the general election of 2015.
Later parliamentary career
In July 2016, Burt announced that he would be resigning from his Ministerial position, "Twenty-four years and one month ago, I answered my first question as a junior minister in oral questions and I’ve just completed my last oral questions," Burt said. It was made clear that his resignation was not related to Brexit.[24]
Historically Burt had been active in seeking justice for the victims of the Tainted Blood Scandal.[25] In November 2016, following his departure from a ministerial post he made a passionate speech to Parliament in order to layout events stating: "In June 2015, I was re-invited by the then Prime Minister to join the Government in the Department of Health, at which point I went quiet on campaigning as far as the public were concerned. I know that some people misinterpreted that. My position in the Department of Health was not conditional on the fact that I had been involved with contaminated blood, and neither was my position in the Foreign Office or my decision to leave the Department of Health of my own accord earlier this year. However, the ministerial convention is clear: Ministers say only what the Government's position is. We cannot have two colleagues firing away on the same issues, so I did indeed go quiet publicly for a period".[citation needed]
Burt defended the British involvement in the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen against the ShiaHouthis.[27] He said that the United Kingdom "remains committed to supporting Saudi Arabia to address its legitimate security needs."[28]
On 3 September 2019, Burt joined 20 other rebel Conservative MPs to vote against the Conservative government of Boris Johnson.[29] The rebel MPs voted with the Opposition against a Conservative motion which subsequently failed. Effectively, they helped block Johnson's no-deal Brexit plan from proceeding on 31 October.[30] Subsequently, all 21 were advised that they had lost the Conservative whip,[31] expelling them as Conservative MPs and requiring them to sit as independents.[32][33] If they had decided to run for re-election in a future election, the party would have blocked their selection as Conservative candidates.[30] Burt himself, however, decided that he would not seek re-election at the next general election.[3] He was readmitted to the Conservative Party alongside nine other MPs on 29 October, before the general election took place,[34] which he chose not to contest.[35]
Funding and expenses
In 2009, Burt was found to have over-claimed for rent by £1,000, but was not required to return the money as he was not claiming expenses for food.[36]
↑ Patrick Wintour (15 June 2014). "Tony Blair's call for anti-Isis drive criticised". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 June 2014. Alistair Burt, the recent Conservative foreign office minister for the Middle East, also agreed with Blair in part by saying: "In Syria we've now seen an example of non-western intervention, it's a disaster."
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