Lia Nici

After failing to be selected in Grimsby[6] and Scunthorpe,[2] Nici stood as the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Kingston upon Hull North in 2017, losing to sitting Labour MP Diana Johnson by 14,322 votes.[7]

In May 2018, she was elected as a councillor for the Scartho ward of North East Lincolnshire Council.[5]

In August 2019, Nici was selected as the Conservative candidate for Great Grimsby for the 2019 snap general election.[8] She won the seat with 54.9% of the vote and a margin of 7,331 votes over Labour, who had held the seat for 74 years; defeating the sitting Labour MP Melanie Onn, who had represented Great Grimsby since Austin Mitchell's retirement in 2015.[3]

Nici was for several years the Executive Producer of Estuary TV, a local television channel incorporated as a ‘Community Interest Company’, a registered entity intended to be run for community benefit.[9] The channel was criticised for receiving £300,000 from the BBC under a scheme to meet quotas of local news content in return for subsidies. Data from 2014 showed that its programmes were seen by fewer than 200 people, some having no viewers at all. The BBC refused to reveal how many of Estuary TV's programmes it actually broadcast.[10]

Following Estuary TV CIC's dissolution by owners the Grimsby Institute, Nici continued as executive producer of "Estuary TV", now a department of the Institute, and on 8 May 2018 confirmed herself in the register of NE Lincolnshire Councillors' interests as being the "CEO" of Estuary TV. Just under five years after becoming a figurehead for the government's new local television programme,[11] the channel's licence was transferred to local television network That's TV,[12] finally being replaced by That's Humber in October 2018.[13]

Nici voted to remain in the European Union in 2016,[14] She subsequently became a supporter of leaving the EU and supported her party's approach to the exit process.[15] In December 2019, she stated that the reason the UK had not left the EU was "a failure of people who live in northern towns like Grimsby who have Labour MPs who have consistently voted against the democratic vote in their constituencies."[16]

In March 2020, she became a member of the Backbench Business Committee in the House of Commons.[17]

In May 2020, Nici supported Prime Minister Boris Johnson's refusal to take action against his chief adviser Dominic Cummings after the latter breached COVID-19 lockdown regulations, maintaining only that it was possible "he may have committed a minor breach", and should have apologised.[18]

In August 2020, Nici was one of 25 Conservative MPs and peers to sign a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel urging "stronger enforcement" against people crossing the English Channel in small boats, considering it to be "strikingly clear that, rather than a 'hostile environment', invading migrants have been welcomed".[19]

In October 2020, Nici was appointed a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, making her part of the payroll vote. Later that month, however, after being absent from voting on a Labour motion calling for the extension of free school meals into the school holidays, Nici said that she would have voted against the government had she been present.[20]

During the United Kingdom's second national lockdown in November 2020, Nici self-isolated after attending a meeting in 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister and several other Conservative MPs including Lee Anderson, who subsequently tested positive for COVID-19.[21] Despite being pictured in close proximity with the Prime Minister, indoors and without a mask, Nici maintained that "we did everything we can" to remain safe.[22]