European Parliament
Harbour became an active member of the Conservative Party in 1972. [3] He first stood for the European Parliament in 1989 in the constituency of Birmingham East but failed to win election. [3] He missed out again in 1994,before finally,in 1999,being placed high on the Conservative list for the new multi-member West Midlands region constituency,ensuring his election in the 1999 European Parliament election. [3] He was re-elected in June 2004 and 2009. He is one of three Conservative members representing the West Midlands Region of the UK. He is chairman of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection and is a Member of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group. He is vice-chairman of the Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA) and a Member of the Inter-Parliamentary Delegation to Japan. Harbour takes a special interest in the EU Single Market,industry,science and technology policy. He is chairman of the European Manufacturing Forum,the Ceramics Industry Forum and the Conservative Technology Forum. He is a governor of the European Internet Foundation. He has been the lead MEP (rapporteur) for major legislation on Telecoms,the Single Market and Motor Vehicle standards. Since 2005,he has served on the CARS 21 High Level Group,a Europe-wide initiative to boost the automotive industry. He was named as a top 50 European of 2006 for his key role in broking agreement on the Services Directive. In May 2006,he was named the UK's most Small Business Friendly UK Parliamentarian by members of the Forum of Private Business. In September 2010,he was voted Internal Market MEP of the Year.
Harbour was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to the British economy. [4] [5]
The automotive industry in the United Kingdom is now best known for premium and sports car marques including Aston Martin, Bentley, Caterham Cars, Daimler, Jaguar, Lagonda, Land Rover, Lister Cars, Lotus, McLaren, MG, Mini, Morgan and Rolls-Royce. Volume car manufacturers with a major presence in the UK include Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Vauxhall Motors. Commercial vehicle manufacturers active in the UK include Alexander Dennis, Ford, IBC Vehicles, Leyland Trucks and London Electric Vehicle Company.
Lewis William Killcross Booth CBE is a British accountant and business executive. He is currently on the board of directors for Rolls Royce, for Mondelez International, Inc, and Gentherm Inc. He previously had a 34-year career at Ford Motor Company where he rose to the rank of Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, responsible for Ford's financial operations, including the Controller's Office, Treasury and Investor Relations, a position he held from November 2008 until April 2012.
Martin John Callanan, Baron Callanan is a British Conservative Party politician and UK government minister. 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.
Neena Gill, is a British Labour Party politician. She served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands first from 1999 to 2009, and then from 2014 to 2020.
Brigadier Geoffrey Charles Van Orden is a British politician and former British Army officer who served as Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament from 2019 to 2020. He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East of England region from 1999 to 2020.
Philip Charles Bradbourn, was a British Conservative Party politician. He served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands from 1999 to 2014.
John Robert Purvis, CBE is a former Conservative MEP for Mid Scotland and Fife (1979-1984) and from 1999 to 2009 was one of Scotland's seven MEPs.
Ulrich Helmut Bez is a German businessman and was, until the end of 2013, CEO of Aston Martin motorcars when he stepped down to serve as non-executive chairman.
Jan Zahradil is a Czech politician for the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) who has been Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since the Czech Republic entered the European Union in 2004. Zahradil also served as Member of the Chamber of Deputies (MP) from 1998 to 2004.
Longbridge is an area of Northfield, West Midlands. It is located near the border of Worcestershire in the south-west of Birmingham, England.
Sushanta Kumar Bhattacharyya, Baron Bhattacharyya, was a British-Indian engineer, educator and government advisor. In 1980, he became Professor of Manufacturing Systems at the University of Warwick and founded the Warwick Manufacturing Group. In 2004 he was made a Life Peer and became a member of the House of Lords.
Ravi Kant is the former vice chairman and a former managing director of Tata Motors.
The Conservative Science & Technology Forum is a United Kingdom think tank and policy advisory body that consults industry, academia and other key figures on important technological and societal issues and puts these into mainstream political context.
Lajos András Bokros is a Hungarian economist, who served as Minister of Finance from 1995 to 1996. He was a Member of the European Parliament for Hungary in the 2009–2014 session. He was the leader of the Movement for a Modern Hungary, which he founded in April 2013, and sat in the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament. The Bokros package was named after him.
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) is a Eurosceptic, anti-federalist political group of the European Parliament. The ECR is the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party European political party (formerly known as the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe or Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, but also includes MEPs from four other European parties and thirteen MEPs without European party affiliation.
Andrew Charles Palmer is an English automotive executive and engineer. He has been described as the 'Godfather of EVs' due to his work launching the Nissan Leaf in 2010 whilst COO at the Japanese company. Palmer is also known for launching Aston Martin's first SUV, the DBX, and first mid-engined sports car, Valkyrie, during his tenure as CEO from 2014 to 2020. Palmer is currently CEO and Executive Vice-Chairman of electric bus and van company, Switch. In addition, Palmer is founder and CEO of Palmer Automotive Ltd, chairman of Optare plc, a non-executive director of Ashok Leyland Ltd, and non-executive vice chairman of InoBat, a Slovakian developer of electric vehicle 'intelligent' batteries.
The European Conservatives and Reformists Party, formerly known as Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) (2009–2016) and Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) (2016–2019), is a conservative Eurosceptic European political party with a main focus on reforming the European Union (EU) on the basis of Eurorealism, as opposed to total rejection of the EU (anti-EU-ism). It currently has twenty-four member parties and three further independent members from twenty-one countries, in addition to seven regional partners worldwide.
The Enterprise Forum is an independent, British, not-for-profit organisation that was founded in 1997 to facilitate discussions on policy between the Business Community and the Conservative Party. In 2010 the organisation began engagement with the Liberal Democrats in light of the formation of the Coalition Government
Andrew Iain Lewer is a British Conservative Party politician. Elected as the Member of Parliament for Northampton South in the 2017 general election, he previously served as Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands from 2014 to 2017.
Nosheena Shaheen Mobarik, Baroness Mobarik, is a British Conservative politician and Life Peer. She served as a Member of European Parliament for Scotland from 2017 to 2020.
