James Gray

James Whiteside Gray (born 7 November 1954) is a British politician. He is the Conservative Member of Parliament for North Wiltshire.

Early life and career

Born in Scotland, the son of a doctor mother and a Minister father (John Gray, minister at Dunblane Cathedral, and later Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1977.) He was educated at the Hillhead Primary School, Glasgow and the High School of Glasgow, before studying history at the University of Glasgow where he was awarded a master's degree in 1975. He continued his academic career at Christ Church, Oxford, where he completed his history thesis in 1977.

He worked as a graduate management trainee with P&O for a year until 1978, when he was appointed as a ship broker with Anderson Hughes. He remained there until his appointment as the managing director of GNI Freight Futures in 1984, in which capacity he served until 1992. He was a member of the Baltic Exchange from 1978, becoming a director of the futures exchange from 1989 to 1991. In 1977 he joined the Honourable Artillery Company, a unit of the Territorial Army based in Islington, serving for seven years. In 1978 he became a Freeman of the City of London, and in 1987 was awarded the Lloyd's of London Book Prize. ^[1]

From 1991 to 1993, before his election to Parliament, Gray acted as a special advisor to the Secretary of State for the Environment Michael Howard and to his successor John Gummer. In 1995 he was a director of the lobbying firm Westminster Strategy, where he remained until his election to parliament. He also served as governor of two schools, one in Balham and the other in the London Borough of Wandsworth.

Military Service

Gray's military service includes seven years (1977-1984) in the Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest regiment of the Territorial Army. He is a graduate of the Royal College of Defence Studies and a member of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme.

1992 General Election

He unsuccessfully contested the Scottish Highlands seat of Ross, Cromarty and Skye at the 1992 General Election and was defeated by 7,630 votes by the sitting Liberal Democrat member Charles Kennedy.

In 1994, he was elected as vice chairman of the Tooting Conservative Association for two years.

1997 General Election

At the next election, 1997 General Election, Gray was elected to the House of Commons as Member for the North Wiltshire constituency, following the retirement of the former Conservative Member Richard Needham. Gray won the seat with a majority of 3,475 and has represented the constituency since then. He made his maiden speech on 11 June 1997, in which he spoke of his constituency's largest town of Chippenham, and of his sadness at the massacre in his childhood home town of Dunblane.^[2]

Parliamentary career

James Gray was appointed as a frontbench spokesman on education and employment by William Hague in 1999, becoming an Opposition Whip in 2000. Following the 2001 General Election he was appointed as a spokesman on defence by the new party leader Iain Duncan Smith. He was moved in 2003 by Michael Howard as the spokesman on transport and the Environment. After the 2005 General Election he entered the Shadow Cabinet as the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, however his role was short lived when he was forced to resign on 19 May 2005 after calling for Members of the Scottish Parliament to be abolished.^[3] He is Chairman of the All Party Groups on multiple sclerosis and the army. He currently sits on the DEFRA Select Committee.

2009 Afghanistan photo incident

In March 2009, Gray was a member of a cross-party delegation to Afghanistan to find information on British Armed Forces operations there. During their visit, the politicians visited an airbase as a critically injured soldier was put into a Hercules transport aircraft to be taken to a military hospital. To the horror of his colleagues, as the delegation gave the soldier more space, Gray took out his camera and began to take photographs. The brigadier in command of the base fiercely rebuked the delegation, telling them that taking pictures on such an occasion was unacceptable and ordering whoever was responsible to delete the photographs. Initially, Gray failed to own up, and it is not known whether he complied with the order.^[4]

Family life

Gray married Sarah Ann Beale in 1980, and they have two sons and a daughter. The marriage broke up in 2006, after it emerged that Gray was conducting an affair with a married woman, Phillipa Mayo, while his wife was fighting breast cancer.^[5] This was brought to public attention by BBC TV's Have I Got News for You programme, broadcast on 25 May 2009, when the studio audience showed their opinion by booing Gray. He had met Mrs Mayo, then Director of the Countryside Alliance's pro-hunting campaign, while organising Conservative opposition to the anti-hunting bill. The affair attracted national press attention^[6] when Mrs Mayo's husband, the barrister Rupert Mayo,^[7] wrote to a local newspaper, the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, "The irony is that I will not reap the benefits of Mr Cameron's excellent family-based policy proposals because one of his own MPs has ripped my own family apart."^[8] The local Conservative association subsequently considered deselecting Gray as their parliamentary candidate,^[9] but in January 2007, after a secret ballot of all local party members, decided to confirm him as the Conservative candidate for North Wiltshire.^[10]

Publications

• Financial Risk Management in the Shipping Industry by James Gray, 1986 Fairplay Publications ISBN 0-905045-89-0
• Futures and Options for Shipping by James Gray, 1987, LLP Professional Publishing ISBN 1-85044-136-7
• Shipping Futures by James Gray, 1990, LLP Professional Publishing ISBN 1-85044-322-X

References

External links

• James Gray MP official site
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: James Gray MP
• They Work For You - James Gray MP