Adam Afriyie
Adam Afriyie (born 4 August 1965) is a British politician and businessman who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Windsor since 2005. He is a member of the Conservative Party. Early life. The son of an English mother and a Ghanaian father, Afriyie was born in Wimbledon, London, and grew up on a council estate in Peckham, attending the local Oliver Goldsmith Primary School. He was educated at Addey and Stanhope School in New Cross and gained a BSc degree in agricultural economics from Wye College in 1987. Afriyie has seven half-siblings and one  brother. He said of his upbringing: "I never knew my father until I was much older and my mother, Gwen, brought us up alone. She was my rock, the gel at the centre of my life, although her tumultuous relationships with different men made for a constant state of flux at the boundaries of our family." Business career. Afriyie is chairman of Connect Support Services, an IT support company he set up in 1993. He owned two thirds of DeHavilland, a political monitoring company, which was sold to publishers Emap in 2005 for £18 million. He was also a  regional finalist in the 2003 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. He was a governor of the Museum of London, a trustee of the Museum in Docklands and a director of Policy Exchange, a centre right policy body. Afriyie is a stakeholder of Axonn Media, a content marketing business which produces content for clients. The company incorporates brands such as Content Plus, NewsReach, DirectNews and ReelContent. Axonn turned over £9.4m in 2011, and made a pre tax profit of £1.3m. Afriyie is the largest shareholder of the firm, and he and his fellow directors  split dividends of £2.2m in 2010 and 2011, and shared directors' pay of £3.6m over the last five years. In November 2021 a petition for bankruptcy was made against Afriyie which could, if successful, affect his political career. Political career. A member of the Conservative Party since 1990, Afriyie in 1999 worked for Jeffrey Archer on his unsuccessful campaign to be the first directly elected Mayor of London. Afriyie was selected as parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Windsor in October 2003. He was first elected at the 2005 general election, with an increased share of  the vote (49.5%) and a swing to the Conservatives of 1.2%. He is the Conservative Party's first mixed-race MP, although he said in an interview with the "Evening Standard" that he considers himself not as black but "post-racial". In the election of 2010, Afriyie was re elected, with an increased share of the vote (60.8%) and a swing to the Conservatives of 11.4%. He made his maiden speech on 23 May 2005. In Parliament, he was a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee from 2005, until its abolition in July 2007, and has since been  a member of the Children, Schools and Families select committee. Since 2010, he has been the President of the Conservative Technology Forum. He was the chair of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology between 2010 and 2017. Afriyie voted against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, citing his fear for religious freedom, and also that he thought that straight civil partnerships should be allowed, but the Bill did not include this. In November 2013, Afriyie proposed an amendment to the European Union (Referendum) Bill 2013–14, to force an early vote for an early referendum on membership of the European  Union, against the express wishes of his party. He continued to advocate an early referendum after his rebel amendment was easily defeated in the House of Commons with just 6% of the vote, citing public support for such a move. In December 2014, Afriyie along with six other Conservative Party MPs voted against the Equal Pay (Transparency) Bill, which would require all companies with more than 250 employees to declare the gap in pay between the average male and average female salaries. He was mooted as a possible candidate for a challenge to David Cameron for leadership of the Conservative  Party, but there was little support within the party for a leadership challenge or Afriyie as a potential candidate. He is a steering committee member of the COVID Recovery Group, a group of Conservative MPs who opposed the UK government's December 2020 lockdown. According to "The Telegraph"'s Christopher Hope the anti-lockdown group would be seen in Westminster as an "echo" of the Brexiteer European Research Group (ERG) of MPs, and a response by backbench Conservatives to Nigel Farage's anti-lockdown Reform UK party. In November 2021, HMRC filed a petition for bankruptcy against Afriyie. In the  past a declaration of bankruptcy would have led to his disqualification as an MP, but that now only happens if a Bankruptcy Restriction Order, imposed in cases of malfeasance or culpability, is issued. Personal life. In May 2004, Adam and Romi Afriyie won a libel case against "The Mail on Sunday" over a published article, "What IDS's Mr Perfect didn't tell Tory bosses". The article was called a "hatchet job" by Darcus Howe in the "New Statesman". In August 2005 he married his second and current wife Tracy-Jane (née Newell), a barrister and the former wife of  Kit Malthouse, then Deputy Leader of the Westminster City Council. In February 2013, Afriyie's wealth was estimated at £13 million to £100 million. Afriyie owns a large house in Westminster, as well as a former seventeenth century monastery in Old Windsor called "The Priory".