Stuart Bell

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Sir Stuart Bell MP
Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough
Incumbent
Assumed office  9 June 1983
Preceded by	Arthur Bottomley
Majority	12,567 (39.1%)
Born	16 May 1938 (1938-05-16) (age 71) High Spen, County Durham
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	(1) Margaret Bruce (div.) (2) Margaret Allan
Religion	Church of England

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Sir Stuart Bell (born 16 May 1938) is a British Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough.

Early life

Bell was born in County Durham in 1938, the son of a miner. He attended the Hookergate Grammar School (now known as Hookergate School) on School Lane in High Spen near Rowlands Gill, Gateshead. He went to the Durham Pitmans College. He joined the Labour Party in 1964, and was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1970. He worked as an international lawyer in Paris until 1977, representing large multi-national companies such as GM and HP. He contested Hexham at the 1979 General Election, but was easily defeated by the Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister Geoffrey Rippon.

Parliamentary career

He was elected to the City Council in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1980. In 1982, the veteran Labour MP for Middlesbrough, Arthur Bottomley announced that he would step down at the next General Election, and Bell subsequently won the selection process to fight the seat at the 1983 General Election. Bell held Middlesbrough comfortably and was elected with a majority just short of 10,000 votes.

In Parliament Bell became the Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1983 to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition Roy Hattersley. He was promoted to the frontbench in 1984 by Neil Kinnock as a spokesman on Northern Ireland. However, he chose to resign his post after the outbreak of the Cleveland child abuse scandal which occupied two years of his life, fighting social services in the battle for Cleveland's children 1987 General Election.

After the 1992 General Election and the election of John Smith as the Leader of the Labour Party, Bell returned to the frontbench as a spokesman on Trade and Industry. In the Commons vote on the abolition of the County of Cleveland, Bell did not vote, Bell's unwillingness to support his fellow Cleveland Labour MPs, Mo Mowlam and Frank Cook, and Cleveland County Council assisting the Conservative government in their plans for abolition. After the election of the Labour Government at the 1997 General Election he was appointed by Tony Blair as the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the spokesman for the Church of England in the House of Commons, a position he has held since 1997.

He is currently the Chairman of the Finance and Services Select Committee, which manages the annual budget of the House of Commons and its many employees. He is a founder member of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body and also participates in a number of other parliamentary groups and is Chairman of the Franco-British Parliamentary Relations Committee in the Commons.

Sir Stuart sits on the Members Estimates Committee at Parliament and has been heavily involved representing MPs' interests in the MPs' expenses scandal of 2009.

Other interests

Sir Stuart is a member of the French think tank the Fondation pour l'innovation politique.

He has been a prolific author writing many highly acclaimed short stories and novels in recent years.

He is also a regular newspaper columnist, including in the Mail on Sunday.

Personal life

Bell was married in 1960 to Margaret Bruce and they have a son and a daughter. After his divorce he married Margaret Allan in 1980 and they have a son, Malcolm, born in 1982. He is fluent in French.^{[citation needed]}

Honours

He was knighted in 2004 for his services to Parliament and was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, France's highest honour, by President Chirac in 2006.

Comments on the expenses controversies

On 13 October 2009, he claimed on the BBC Today programme that the investigation by Sir Thomas Legg into the United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal was marked by "retrospectivity", as Sir Thomas had changed the rules on expenses after MPs' claims had been submitted ^[1].

Publications

Bell, Stuart (1973), Paris Sixty-Nine (Consett/Ramsden Williams Publications)(ISBN: 0903692007)

• Bell, Stuart (1988). When Salem Came to the Boro, The True Story of the Cleveland Child Abuse Crisis. 
• Bell, Stuart (2000). Tony Really Loves Me. SpenView Publications. ISBN 0-9538638-1-6. 
• Bell, Stuart (2002). Pathway to the Euro. SpenView Publications. ISBN 0-9538638-2-4. 
• Bell, Stuart (2002). The Honoured Society. SpenView Publications. ISBN 0-9538638-4-0. 
• Bell, Stuart (2002). Binkie's Revolution. SpenView Publications. ISBN 0-9538638-2. 
• Bell, Stuart (2007). An Ever Closer Union. SpenView Publications. ISBN 0-9538638-5-3. 
• Bell, Stuart (2007). The Ice Cream Man And Other Stories. SpenView Publications. ISBN 0-9538638-4-6. 

References

External links

• Sir Stuart Bell MP official site
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Stuart Bell MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Stuart Bell MP
• The Foundation pour l'innovation politique site (in French)
• BBC Politics page