This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Sir Ashley Fox | |
---|---|
Member of Parliament for Bridgwater | |
Assumed office 4 July 2024 | |
Preceded by | Constituency re-established |
Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament | |
In office 25 November 2014 –11 June 2019 [ citation needed ] | |
Preceded by | Syed Kamall |
Succeeded by | Geoffrey Van Orden |
Member of the European Parliament for South West England | |
In office 14 July 2009 –1 July 2019 | |
Preceded by | Caroline Jackson |
Succeeded by | Caroline Voaden |
Bristol City Council Councillor for Westbury on Trym | |
In office 2 May 2002 –6 May 2010 | |
Preceded by | David Poole |
Personal details | |
Born | Sutton Coldfield,Warwickshire,England | 15 November 1969
Political party | Conservative |
Spouse(s) | Julia,Lady Fox |
Children | 2 |
Residence(s) | Bristol,United Kingdom |
Alma mater | Bristol Polytechnic |
Occupation | Politician,formerly Solicitor |
Website | Official website |
Sir Ashley Peter Fox [1] (born 15 November 1969) [2] [3] is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Bridgwater since July 2024. He was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South West England and Gibraltar,and was leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament from 2014 to 2019.
Educated at The King's School,Worcester,Fox studied law at Bristol Polytechnic before working for a year as an English assistant in France. He took his solicitors finals at Chester College of Law. After completing his articles,he qualified as a solicitor in 1994.[ citation needed ]
Before being elected as an MEP,Fox worked for 15 years as a solicitor in Bristol,specialising in insurance litigation. He was a partner at Badhams Thompson and an associate at Morgan Cole.[ citation needed ]
From 1998 to 2000,Fox was chairman of Bristol West Conservative Association. He stood as the Conservative candidate for Bath at the General Election in 2001,finishing second with 29.1% of the vote. [4] In 2002,he was elected as councillor for Westbury-on-Trym on Bristol City Council,a position he held for 8 years.[ citation needed ]
He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in Theresa May's resignation honours on 10 September 2019. [5]
Fox lives in Bristol with his wife and two children. [3] [6]
This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(January 2023) |
Fox was first elected to the European Parliament in 2009 and was re-elected in 2014 before losing his seat in 2019. Fox served as Chief Whip of the European Conservative &Reformists Group (ECR) 2010–2014 before being elected Leader of the British Conservative Delegation in November 2014 –a position he held until the end of his term.
In his first mandate (2009–14),Fox served on the Economic &Monetary Affairs,Internal Market and Constitutional Affairs Committees. In his second mandate (2014–19) he served on the Industry,Research &Energy,Economic &Monetary Affairs,and the Constitutional Affairs Committees.
He was the leading British campaigner in the "One Seat Campaign". [7] This was a crossparty effort to scrap the expensive practice of the European Parliament moving from Brussels to Strasbourg every month. [8]
As part of this campaign,he co-authored the Fox-Hafner report which received widespread support and changed the official position of the Parliament in favour of having a single seat in Brussels. [9] This will require a change to the European Treaties the next time they are up for review. In 2011–12,Fox was rapporteur on Corporate Governance in Financial Institutions. [10]
In 2016,he was the shadow rapporteur for Energy Efficiency Labeling. [11]
In 2018,Fox was the rapporteur on the Crowdfunding Report. [12]
His final report in January 2019 was on the need for a Comprehensive European Industrial Policy on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. [13]
During his time in Parliament Fox campaigned on numerous issues and helped steer legislation through the Parliament.
He was Chairman of the European Parliament Innovation Group 2017–19.
This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(January 2023) |
Fox was active across the South West on a wide range of issues –from farming and environmental to industrial and business.
He supported the region's cider makers against attempts by the European Union to levy additional taxes on small scale cider producers. [20]
Similarly he supported residents in North Somerset against plans by the Environment Agency to move the sea defences a mile inland to create salt marshes and mudflats between Clevedon and Kewstoke. This would have led to the deliberate flooding of prime agricultural land.
He opposed plans to build an offshore wind farm off the Jurassic Coast in Dorset on the grounds that it would have damaged the local tourist industry. The proposal was finally rejected by the UK Government. Fox was one of the most vocal opponents. [21]
He pushed for reform of the Common Fisheries Policy and supported efforts to help the region's fishing industry. [22]
Fox regularly visited Gibraltar to meet with representatives of the Government,business community and the public. [23]
Fox resigned as chair of the Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens' Rights Agreements on the 11 September 2023. [24] The same month he was selected as the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Bridgwater at the 2024 general election. [25] He has been endorsed by former Bridgwater MP and cabinet minister Tom,Lord King. [26]
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the three legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union,it adopts European legislation,following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 720 members (MEPs),after the June 2024 European elections,from a previous 705 MEPs. It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world,with an electorate of around 375 million eligible voters in 2024.
Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN) was a national-conservative,Eurosceptic political group that operated in the European Parliament between 1999 and 2009. At its height in February 2008,it had 44 MEPs. UEN was affiliated with the Alliance for Europe of the Nations political party.
Martin John Callanan,Baron Callanan is a British Conservative Party politician. He was Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North East England from 1999 to 2014 and Chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists group from 2011 to 2014. Callanan failed his bid to win re-election in the 2014 European Parliament elections,becoming the first sitting chairman of a European parliamentary group to lose his seat. On 8 August 2014,it was announced that he would be made a Conservative life peer in the House of Lords.
Diana Paulette Wallis,is a British former Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber. Wallis was first elected in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and in 2009. She resigned her seat in January 2012 and went on to pursue academic,legal and mediation-related activities.
Sajjad Haider Karim is a British politician. He served as a Member of the European Parliament for the North West England between 2004 and 2019. Sajjad is one of 10 members of the executive of European Movement UK and Chair of Conservative European Forum Trade.
David Martin is a Scottish politician who has served as co-convener of the Citizens' Assembly of Scotland since 2019. A member of the Scottish Labour Party,he was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1984 to 2019,having first represented the Lothians constituency until 1999 and then for the Scotland constituency. He was the United Kingdom's longest serving MEP and the second longest serving MEP in the whole European Parliament.
Anders Gunnar Hökmark is a Swedish politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 until 2019. He is member of the Moderate Party,part of the European People's Party. He previously served as Secretary of the Moderate Party from 1991 to 1999 and Member of the Riksdag (MP) for Stockholm County from 1982 to 2004.
East of England was a constituency of the European Parliament that was coterminous with the East of England region. It returned 7 MEPs using the D'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation,until the UK exit from the European Union on 31 January 2020.
Charlie Andreas Weimers is Swedish politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Sweden since 2019. He was re-elected in the 2024 European Parliament election in Sweden. He is a member of the Sweden Democrats,part of European Conservatives and Reformists.
Tonino Picula is a Croatian politician currently serving his fourth term as a Member of the European Parliament for Croatia,having successfully run in 2013,2014,2019 and 2024 European elections.. He got involved in politics in the early 1990s and had served four consecutive terms as a member of the Croatian Parliament,having been elected in 2000,2003,2007,and 2011 parliamentary elections as a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP). He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2003 under prime minister Ivica Račan,and as mayor of Velika Gorica from 2005 to 2009.
Roberta Metsola is a Maltese politician. A member of Malta's Nationalist Party (PN) and the European People's Party (EPP),she has been serving as president of the European Parliament since January 2022.
Catherine Zena Bearder is a British Liberal Democrat politician who served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament between 2 July 2014 and 12 November 2019. She was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 4 June 2009 to 31 January 2020.
Victoria Grace Ford is a British politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chelmsford from 2017 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party,she briefly served as Minister of State for Development from 6 September to 25 October 2022.
Edward McMillan-Scott is a British politician. He was a pro-EU Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber constituency from 1984 until 2014. He was the last and one of the longest-serving UK Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament 2004–2014,holding its Human Rights and Democracy portfolio throughout. After losing his seat as an MEP he became active in campaigning against Brexit and coordinates the largest pro EU forum in the UK.
Axel Voss is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2009 and became coordinator of the European People's Party group in the Committee on Legal Affairs in 2017. His parliamentary work focuses on digital and legal topics.
The 2014 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2014 European Parliament election,held on Thursday 22 May 2014,coinciding with the 2014 local elections in England and Northern Ireland. In total,73 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation. England,Scotland and Wales use a closed-list party list system of PR,while Northern Ireland used the single transferable vote (STV).
Ian James Duncan,Baron Duncan of Springbank is a Scottish politician serving as a deputy speaker in the House of Lords. A member of the Conservative Party,he was formerly Minister for Climate Change in the Department for Business,Energy and Industrial Strategy and minister in the Northern Ireland Office. He initially joined the UK Government as a Scotland Office minister following the 2017 UK general election. Duncan was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Scotland from 2014 to 2017. He is the only minister to have served in each of the UK Government's territorial offices.
Siegfried Mureșan is a Romanian economist and politician,vice-president of the European People's Party (EPP) since November 2019,vice-president of the European People's Party Group in the European Parliament and member of the National Liberal Party (PNL). He was elected as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Romania in 2014 and 2019. Previously,he was a member of the People's Movement Party (PMP) between 2014 and 2018 and the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) before 2014.
Christophe Hansen is a Luxembourgish politician belonging to the Christian Social People's Party (CSV),of which he is Secretary-General.