Peter Bone

Peter William Bone (born 19 October 1952) is a British Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament for Wellingborough.

Personal life

Peter Bone was born in 1952 in Billericay and was educated at Westcliff-on-Sea High School for Boys. In 1977 he was elected as a councillor to Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, where he served for eight years until 1986. He was elected as the Vice Chairman of the Southend West Conservative Association. He qualified as a chartered accountant and became the Finance Director of The Essex Electronics and Precision Engineering Group. In 1982, he became press secretary to Paul Channon MP.

Peter plays cricket for Cambridge Methodists Cricket Club in Leeds, West Yorkshire. He bowls left arm around the wicket with varying degrees of success.

Career

Peter Bone became the Chief Executive of The High Tech Electronics Company in 1983 until 1990.

In 1995 Peter Bone was described as Britain's "meanest boss" by the Daily Mirror when he defended paying a 17-year-old trainee 87p an hour [1].

Parliament

He contested the parliamentary seat of Islwyn in the South Wales industrial valleys at the 1992 general election against the Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock. Bone came second, some 24,500 votes behind Kinnock. He subsequently fought the European Parliament election in 1994 for Wales Mid and West.

He was chosen for the seemingly safe Conservative seat of Pudsey following the retirement of the veteran MP Giles Shaw at the 1997 general election. But 1997 was a bad year for the Tories and Labour swept to power nationally, and Bone lost Pudsey to Paul Truswell by over 6,000 votes.

In the 2001 general election he fought the ultra marginal of Wellingborough, where the sitting Labour MP Paul Stinchcombe was holding on with a majority of just 187, having defeated the veteran Tory MP Peter Fry in 1997. It was another close fight in Wellingborough, and Stinchcombe held on to his seat by 2,355. However, four years later, in the 2005 general election, Bone ousted Stinchcombe in Wellingborough with a majority of 687 votes. He made his maiden speech on 7 June 2005. Bone is regularly one of the ten most active MPs in Parliament, in terms of Questions asked and other contributions [2]. He is a member of the Cornerstone Group. In a report he wrote for them in 2007, Peter Bone argued that the NHS "would not be out of place in Stalin's Russia" [3].

Peter Bone has campaigned on a number of issues including road traffic deaths, white slavery and underfunding of the NHS in Northamptonshire.

Peter Bone was officially adopted to the Health Select Committee – one of the most important select committees in Parliament - on Monday 10 December 2007. Upon his adoption to the committee Mr Bone said: "I am delighted that I have been chosen as a Member of the Health Select Committee as I will have a greater opportunity to raise not only national concerns about the NHS but also local issues."

Peter Bone employs his wife, Jennie, as his Executive Secretary [4] and pays her in the top bracket of up to £40,000 per annum [5].

In 2007/2008, Peter Bone was one of 32 MPs who claimed the maximum allowance of £4800 a year for food [6].

External links

• Peter Bone MP biography at the site of the Conservative Party
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Peter Bone MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Peter Bone MP
• Wellingborough Conservatives
• The Public Whip - Peter Bone MP voting record
• BBC Politics page

News items

• Asbos in March 2007