James Gray (UK politician)

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

Born in Scotland, the son of a Church of Scotland minister father and doctor mother, 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 shipping 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. 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 unsuccessfully contested the Scottish Highlands seat of Ross, Cromarty and Skye at the 1992 General Election but was defeated by the sitting Liberal Democrat MP Charles Kennedy by 7,630 votes. He was elected as the vice chairman of the Tooting Conservative Association for two years in 1994. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election for the Wiltshire North seat 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.[link]

He 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. [link] He is the chairman of the all party group on multiple sclerosis.

He has been married to Sarah Ann Beale since 1980 and they have two sons and a daughter. His father was the Very Reverend John Gray the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1977 who was the minister at Dunblane Cathedral. He is a member of Conservative Way Forward Group. Before his election he acted as a governor in two schools in Balham in the London Borough of Wandsworth. He has been an assiduous Wiltshire MP and fought hard to save the ill-fated RAF Lyneham in his constituency. [link] In 2005 he had to be rescued by air ambulance from a cliff after falling and injuring his leg near Tintagel, Cornwall. [link]

Publications

Financial Risk Management in the Shipping Industry by James Gray, 1986 Fairplay Publications ISBN 0905045890
Futures and Options for Shipping by James Gray, 1987, LLP Professional Publishing ISBN 1850441367
Shipping Futures by James Gray, 1990, LLP Professional Publishing ISBN 185044322X

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