Adam Holloway

Early life

Born in Faversham, Kent, the son of the Revd Roger Holloway OBE (died 2010), Holloway was educated at Cranleigh School before going to Magdalene College, Cambridge where he studied social and political sciences, graduating as MA, before postgraduate studies at Imperial College London (MBA).

Prior to his election to Parliament, Holloway was commissioned in the British Army and served with the Grenadier Guards. During his military service he engaged in combat during the Gulf War and elsewhere, being promoted to the rank of Captain. After leaving the Army, he worked as an investigative journalist with ITN, World in Action, Panorama and the Sunday Times. His most well known work was an award-winning documentary series for ITV called "No Fixed Abode" in which Holloway spent three months homeless on the streets of London in 1991, highlighting the plight of the capital's growing homeless population and particularly those with mental health issues.

Parliamentary career

Holloway was elected in the 2005 general election to represent the Kent constituency of Gravesham, defeating a former Labour Minister, Chris Pond, by just 654 votes, but with one of the largest swings from Labour to Conservative in the country at 4.9% at that general election. This was the first time since the Second World War that Gravesham (or its predecessor Gravesend constituency) had not been held by the party of Government.

He delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 28 June 2005. Holloway was also invited to speak (on 15 September 2006) alongside US Congressman John Shimkus to students on the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE).

Holloway was a member of the Defence Select Committee from 2006 to 2010, since when he has served as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council.

In 2009 a report written by Holloway suggested that some of the claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction used to support the UK government's case for war in 2003 originated from an Iraqi taxi driver, and that this may have included the claim about them being ready to launch in 45 minutes". According to Holloway, reservations expressed by MI6 analysts about much of the data were ignored when preparing the case for war under pressure from Downing Street.

Holloway was returned as MP for Gravesham on 6 May 2010 with 22,956 votes (48.5% of the vote) and with an increased majority of 9,312.

In October 2010 he was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to David Lidington, Minister of State for Europe and NATO in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 2011, he resigned this junior governmental post to defy of a three-line (party) whip and vote in favour of an early referendum on membership of the EU.,

In October 2014 he was one of just six Conservative MPs to vote against air strikes targeting Islamic State in Iraq, after visiting a border region held by the Kurdish Peshmerga. He argued the campaign hadn't "been thought through". He actively abstained in the vote for air strikes in Syria in November 2015.

In a September 2015 Parliamentary speech Holloway described giving asylum to refugees from the Middle East as "bonkers", stating than many asylum seekers go on holiday in the countries they had fled from and used his barber as an example. His barber, a Kurdish refugee, subsequently stated that he was holidaying in Great Yarmouth that week, not Iraq.