Gary Streeter
Sir Gary Nicholas Streeter (born 2 October 1955) is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. Since 1997 he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Devon, previously holding the nearby seat of Plymouth Sutton between 1992 and 1997. Since the convening of the Fifty-fifth Parliament, Streeter has been the longest currently serving MP representing a constituency in the county of Devon. Early life. Streeter attended Tiverton Grammar School, Tiverton, Devon, where he was head boy from 1972 to 1973, then King's College London, where he gained a first class honours law  degree. From 1984 to 1998, he was a solicitor and partner at Foot and Bowden (now called Foot Anstey) in Plymouth, where he specialised in company and employment law. In 1998 Streeter was fined £1,000 by the Law Society for conduct unbecoming a solicitor due to a conflict of interest when dealing with a business merger in 1991 while with Foot Bowden Limited. He was a councillor, initially for the Social Democratic Party (SDP), on Plymouth City Council from 1986 to 1992. Parliamentary career. Streeter served as a junior minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department under Prime Minister  John Major from 1996 until the defeat of the Major Government in 1997, and was Shadow Secretary of State for International Development in the Shadow Cabinet of William Hague from 1998 until the new Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith returned him to the backbenches in 2001. He is currently a member of the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission and is the member of the committee responsible for answering oral questions in Parliament on behalf of the Electoral Commission. He assumed the role after Sir Peter Viggers stepped down during the MPs' expenses scandal. His own expenses for 2008/09  were £162,719, ranking 158th out of 647 MPs. In March 2012, Streeter was one of three MPs who signed a letter to the Advertising Standards Authority asking it to reverse its decision to stop the Christian group "Healing on the Streets of Bath" from making explicit claims that prayer can heal. The letter called for the ASA to provide "indisputable scientific evidence" that faith healing did not work. Another signer, Tim Farron of the Liberal Democrats, later wrote that the letter was not "well-worded" and that he should not have signed it "as it was written". In 2013 , Streeter referred to the "familiar glint in the swivelled eyes of the purists" within his own party in an article attacking the divisions caused by those activists who were calling for a referendum on EU membership. The remark followed allegations that senior members of the government had characterised Eurosceptic activists as "swivel-eyed loons". Streeter argued that the result of party infighting over the issue would be "a Labour-led government bend[ing] the knee to Brussels". Streeter was opposed to Brexit prior to the 2016 referendum. In November 2018, Streeter announced his support for Theresa May's Brexit agreement. In  December 2018, it was announced that Streeter would receive a knighthood in the 2019 New Year Honours List. Streeter told the Press Association that he hoped his honour reflected, in part, his work over the past decade as chairman of the all-party group on Christians in Parliament and supporting new MPs once they had arrived at Westminster. Streeter was a supporter of Esther McVey during the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election and one of the proposers of her nomination. McVey was eliminated in the first round of voting. In later rounds he backed Sajid Javid, who was appointed Chancellor  of the Exchequer by eventual victor Boris Johnson later that year. Streeter was reelected at the 2019 general election with an increased majority. He briefly acted as Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means at the start of the 58th Parliament. On 2 February 2022, Streeter announced that he had submitted a letter to the chairman of the 1922 committee, seeking a motion of no confidence in the prime minister, Boris Johnson, stating that ""I cannot reconcile the pain and sacrifice of the vast majority of the British Public during lockdown with the attitude and activities of those working  in Downing Street"". Personal life. Streeter married Janet Stevens in 1978 in Barnstaple; the couple have a son and daughter, and the family live near Plympton in Devon. He is a committed Christian who believes in faith healing. In the 2015 general election his son Gareth was selected as Conservative candidate for Rother Valley in South Yorkshire and polled third behind incumbent Sir Kevin Barron and Cowles of UKIP.