James Gray (British politician)

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James Gray MP
Member of Parliament for North Wiltshire
Incumbent
Assumed office  1 May 1997
Preceded by	Richard Needham
Majority	5,303 (9.5%)
Born	7 November 1954 (1954-11-07) (age 54) Scotland
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Alma mater	University of Glasgow Christ Church, Oxford

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

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Military Service 3 1992 General Election 4 1997 General Election 5 Parliamentary career 6 2009 Afghanistan photo incident 7 Family life 8 Publications 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Born in Scotland, the son of a doctor mother and a Minister of religion 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 Glasgow High School, before studying history at the University of Glasgow where he was awarded a master's degree in 1975. He furthered his studies 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 where he remained 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 1989-91. From 1977 he served in the Honourable Artillery Company within the Territorial Army based in Islington for seven years. In 1978 he became a Freeman of the City of London, and was awarded the Lloyd's of London Book Prize in 1987. ^[1]

Prior to his election to Parliament he acted as a special advisor to the Secretary of State for the Environment Michael Howard and his successor John Gummer 1991-3, and in 1995 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 in Balham in the London Borough of Wandsworth.

[edit] Military Service

Mr Gray's military service includes seven years in the Honourable Artillery Company the oldest regiment of the Territorial Army (1977-84). He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme and a graduate of the Royal College of Defence Studies.

[edit] 1992 General Election

He unsuccessfully contested the Scottish Highlands seat of Ross, Cromarty and Skye at the 1992 General Election and was defeated by the sitting Liberal Democrat MP Charles Kennedy by 7,630 votes. After the election he was elected as the vice chairman of the Tooting Conservative Association for two years in 1994.

[edit] 1997 General Election

At the next election, 1997 General Election, Gray was elected to the House of Commons as MP for the Wiltshire North constituency following the retirement of the Conservative MP Richard Needham. Gray won the seat with a majority of 3,475 and has remained the MP there since. He made his maiden speech on June 11, 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]

[edit] 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 May 19, 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.

During the 2009 budget (on 22nd April 2009) Gray was told by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, to allow the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to speak and to "stop heckling" or face further action.

[edit] 2009 Afghanistan photo incident

In March of 2009, Mr. Gray was part of a cross-party delegation to Afghanistan to find information on British Military operations there. During the visit, the MPs visited an airbase as a critically injured soldier was transferred to a Hercules transport aircraft to be taken to a nearby military hospital. As the delegation gave the soldier more space, Mr. Gray quickly took out his camera and started to take photos, to the horror of his fellow colleagues.

The Brigadier in charge of the base moved the delegation to a side-room and fiercely rebuked them, telling them that taking photos on such an occasion was totally unacceptable, and ordered whoever took the photos to delete them from the camera. Initially, Mr. Gray failed to own up to taking the photos.^[4]

[edit] 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 he was having an affair with a married woman, Phillipa Mayo, while his wife was fighting breast cancer.^[5]. This fact was brought to the attention of the public by the BBC's Have I Got News for You, aired primetime at 9:00PM on Friday (25/05/2009), the audience showed their disgust by booing the disgraced MP. Gray had met Mrs Mayo, then Director of the Campaign for Hunting at the Countryside Alliance, whilst organising Conservative opposition to the hunting bill. The affair became the centre of national press attention^[6] when Mrs Mayo's husband, prominent barrister Rupert Mayo,^[7] wrote to the local paper the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, saying '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 party subsequently considered revoking Gray's reselection as their parliamentary candidate ^[9] but decided based on a secret ballot of all party members in January 2007 to retain him as Conservative candidate for North Wiltshire.^[10] James Gray, a Tory MP who cheated on his wife while she was suffering from cancer, successfully claimed £2,000 for the future redecoration of his “second home” on the day that he moved out. Made as a joke on have i got news for you, her spent this £2,000 on a prostitute. Mr Gray, the MP for North Wiltshire, submitted the claim on June 14, 2007, the day his lease on the property was terminated. He wrote to the fees office to tell them that he was embroiled in a row with the landlord about the cost of the planned renovations that his ex-wife Sarah wanted to carry out on the property. “My ex-wife, who has taken on a new lease on the property, has proposed that she should redecorate to an acceptable standard,” he said. “I have indicated that I would be content to pay half that sum.” A few days later, on June 22, he wrote again to tell them a sum had been finalised: “I have now agreed a figure of £2,000 for the redecoration and restoration... and have sent off a cheque for that amount. I would be most grateful if you would reimburse me for it.” The £2,000 was subsequently paid. Mr Gray simultaneously claimed £5,000 to cover the cost of moving to a new property nearby with Philippa Mayo, his former mistress. He also asked the fees office to reimburse £2,500 a month in rent — a monthly increase of £1,155 — until he had used up his annual additional costs allowance. The fees office told him he would not receive the sum automatically, but agreed to pay if Mr Gray made the claim each month on his allowance. He subsequently received four monthly payments of £2,500, before being paid £2,482.63 in December 2007 when he had reached the limit. In the files seen by The Daily Telegraph, which date back to 2004, Mr Gray claimed for £190 worth of logs and tried to claim £45.37 for a phone bill registered at his main London home, which was rejected. Yesterday, the MP said: “It is true that I claimed £90 per year for logs and this is within the spirit of the allowances. “The submission of a BT bill for my main home of £47 was a genuine error, was picked up in the normal claims process and was never paid. In June 2007 I terminated the lease of [...] and moved to [...]. Under the terms of the lease for (the former home) I paid £2,000 for dilapidation caused by 10 years of occupation directly to the landlord. Since moving, because of the higher rent, I have made no claim at all for council tax or utilities. I am confident that all of my claims against the ACA have been entirely within the rules.” Mr Gray employs Mrs Mayo as his diary secretary, a role which used to be carried out by his former wife. In 2006, he admitted that he had a 19-month affair with Mrs Mayo, 46, who was also married, while his 53-year-old wife was being treated for breast cancer. The news prompted protests in his Wiltshire constituency and party members tried twice to get Mr Gray deselected. Mrs Mayo’s former husband Rupert, a barrister, wrote to a local newspaper saying the MP had “ripped my family apart”. James Gray Job: backbench Labour MP Salary: £64,766 Total second home claims 2004-05: £20,902 2005-06: £21,634 2006-07: £22,090 2007-08: £23,083http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5351035/MPs-expenses-James-Gray-claimed-2000-for-redecoration-the-day-he-moved-out.html

[edit] 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

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Richard Needham	Member of Parliament for North Wiltshire 1997 – present	Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by Peter Duncan	Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland 12-19 May 2005	Succeeded by Eleanor Laing