Stewart Jackson

Jackson was born in Woolwich and brought up in south-east London. He was educated at the London Nautical School in Lambeth, and Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate, Kent, followed by Royal Holloway, University of London, where he was awarded a BA (Hons) degree in Economics & Public Administration, in 1988.[2] Jackson was elected President of the University of London Union for the 1988–89 academic year. During his tenure as president, he faced a no-confidence motion in January 1989, and resigned before he was required to leave office.[3]

Jackson served on Ealing Borough Council in west London from 1990 to 1998, during which time he was Conservative Party spokesman on planning and housing. He is Vice-President of the Local Government Association.[4]

Jackson unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary constituency of Brent South at the 1997 general election. He was then selected as the Conservative candidate for the Peterborough seat in October 2000, and fought the 2001 general election, where he reduced the Labour Party's majority in the constituency from 7,323 votes to 2,854 votes, but lost to the incumbent Labour MP Helen Brinton. Jackson was re-adopted as the Conservative candidate for Peterborough in August 2002, and defeated Brinton at the 2005 general election to become the MP.

In the 2010 general election, held on 6 May, Jackson increased his majority to 4,861 votes over the Labour candidate, Ed Murphy; he was appointed the following month as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Owen Paterson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but resigned as PPS on 24 October 2011, after voting against a three-line whip on an EU referendum.[5]

After Theresa May's selection as the new Conservative Prime Minister, following David Cameron's resignation, Stewart Jackson was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, in July 2016.[6]

Following the loss of his seat at the 2017 general election, Jackson was appointed Special Advisor and Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union.[7]

In 2014, Jackson, along with six other Conservative Party MPs, voted against the Equal Pay (Transparency) Bill, which would have required all companies with more than 250 employees to declare the gap in pay between the average male and average female salaries.[9]

Jackson opposed the 2013 bill to allow gay marriage. In March 2015, he told a constituent: "The feeling's fully mutual. Please feel free to never bother me again" after she requested to be removed from his campaign mailing list because she disagreed with his position on the act.[10][11]

In March 2015, Jackson attracted media attention for his response to a constituent which was subsequently circulated on social media. Jackson's email told the constituent “The feeling’s fully mutual. Please feel free to never bother me again” after she requested to be removed from his campaign mailing list because she disagreed with his opposition to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.[12]

On 26 June 2016, Rupert Myers, a political correspondent for The Times, tweeted about the outcome of the Referendum of the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union "I can't get over the fact that the winning side lied about a whole bunch of stuff & yet expect us to live cheerfully with the result". Stewart Jackson replied from his verified Twitter account "Suck it up whiner...".[13]

Jackson attracted attention in October 2016, when he used Twitter to state that patriots should not subscribe to The Economist, a liberal, free-market magazine, because of its arguments about the problems leaving the EU would entail.[14]

After losing his seat in 2017, Jackson contacted a former constituent who had been critical of him on Facebook to call him a "thick chav", and also wrote: "If you print any shit about me on Facebook in the future you will regret it."[15]

In October 2018, Jackson, who is known for his pro-Brexit views, was again criticised after tweeting: "What a pathetic cretin" in response to a picture of an ill child with a duvet depicting the European Union flag. The child was recovering from an operation at the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Jackson subsequently said, after deleting the initial tweet, that he was referring to the child's stepfather rather than the child himself.[16] The Science Minister, Sam Gyimah, criticised the tweet, saying: "No one can take credibly or seriously people who use that language."[17] Heidi Allen, another Conservative MP, responded by describing Jackson as "a pathetic, unkind and nasty man."[18]

Articles in the Daily Telegraph reported that Jackson had claimed more than £66,000 in three financial years for housing costs in his constituency: on 11 May 2009 the newspaper reported that he had claimed £11,000 in professional, legal and mortgage fees on buying a new constituency home. However, Jackson argued that there were legitimate 'one-off costs' relating to the purchasing of a home base in the constituency after his election as an MP, and claimed that until the house was purchased, he, his wife and infant daughter were renting one bedroomed accommodation in the constituency.[19]

On 12 May 2009, both BBC Newsnight, and a second article published by The Daily Telegraph reported that Jackson had claimed £55,000 on housing costs for the constituency house, bringing the total sum to over £66,000.[20] When asked about how MPs should be housed in their constituencies, Jackson was quoted in The Daily Telegraph as saying that any ban on the second home allowance would be "draconian and unfair".[21]

In May 2013, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) issued a High Court action in an attempt to recover £54,000 in alleged notional Capital Gains arising from Jackson's Peterborough home.[22] The case was settled when a Tomlin Order was sealed in the High Court in February 2014, permanently staying the civil proceedings which had allegedly cost IPSA over £20,000 in legal fees.

In July 2012, Jackson attempted to tackle a vandal in Peterborough. Jackson, who was shopping with his wife and daughter, tried to perform a citizen's arrest after seeing a bus shelter being vandalised. The vandal got away, but only after kicking the MP. Cambridgeshire Constabulary subsequently arrested a twenty-year-old man in connection with the incident who was later found guilty of assault and criminal damage at Peterborough Magistrates Court.[25][26]

• Stewart Jackson MP official site
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou
• Guardian Unlimited Politics – Ask Aristotle: Stewart Jackson MP
• Peterborough candidate Stewart Jackson criticised over 'stupid' email exchange