David Davis (British politician)

Early life

Born to a single mother, Betty Brown, in York on 23 December 1948, Davis was initially brought up by his grandparents there. His maternal grandfather, Walter Harrison, was the son of a wealthy trawlerman but was disinherited after joining the Communist Party; he led a 'hunger march' to London shortly after the more famous Jarrow March, which did not allow Communists to participate. His father, whom he met once after his mother's death, is Welsh. When his mother married a Polish-Jewish printworker, Ronald Davis, the family moved to London, where they lived initially in a flat in a "slum" in Wandsworth, before moving to a council estate in Earlsfield, London.

On leaving Bec Grammar School in Tooting, his A Level results were not good enough to secure a university place, so Davis worked as an insurance clerk and became a member of the Territorial Army's 21 SAS Regiment in order to earn the money to retake his examinations. After doing so, he was able to win a place at the University of Warwick (BSc Joint Hons Molecular Science/Computer Science 1968–71). Whilst at Warwick, he was one of the founding members of the student radio station, University Radio Warwick and he founded a men's choir. He went straight on from there to London Business School, where he got a master's degree in Business (1971–73), and, later, Harvard University (Advanced Management Program 1984–85).

Davis worked for Tate & Lyle for 17 years, rising to become a senior executive, including restructuring its troubled Canadian subsidiary, Redpath Sugar. He wrote about his business experiences in the 1988 book How to Turn Round a Company.

He met his wife, Doreen, at Warwick. They married on 28 July 1973 and have three children.

Political career

Whilst a student, Davis was active in the Federation of Conservative Students, becoming national chairman in 1973. Davis was first elected to Parliament in the 1987 general election as the MP for Boothferry which, in 1997, became the constituency of Haltemprice and Howden. He was a government whip when parliament voted on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, angering many of the Maastricht Rebels on his own right-wing of the party. Davis's progression through the Conservative ranks eventually led to him becoming a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1994–97).

He rejected a shadow ministerial position under William Hague, opting instead to chair the Public Accounts Committee. In 1999, Davis presented the Parliamentary Control of the Executive Bill to the House of Commons, in which he proposed to transfer ministerial exercise of the Royal Prerogative to the Commons in the following areas: the signing of treaties, the diplomatic recognition of foreign governments; European Union legislation; the appointment of ministers, peers and ambassadors; the establishment of Royal Commissions; the proclamation of Orders in Council unless subject to resolutions of the Commons; the exercise of the powers of the executive not made by statute; the declarations of states of emergency; the dissolution of Parliament.

Davis used his first interview as Shadow Home Secretary in November 2003 to reveal his personal support for a reintroduction of the death penalty for people convicted of multiple murder "where there is clear evidence and no doubt" surrounding the offender's guilt, citing "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe and Moors Murderer Ian Brady as examples of offenders who would fall into this category. This interview came almost 40 years after the abolition of the death penalty for murder. As Shadow Home Secretary, Davis turned the Conservatives away from the Labour Party's plan to reintroduce identity cards, citing spiralling costs and libertarian issues. He turned initial Conservative support into one of concern and abstention, making the final change to one of opposition much easier. Davis believed that once the true cost and unreliability of the ID card scheme was explained to the general public, they would turn against it. He was also credited, by some commentators, with "claiming the scalps" of two Labour ministers, David Blunkett and Beverley Hughes after both were forced to resign.

2005 leadership contest

At the time of the 2005 Conservative leadership contest, David Davis was Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department. His Campaign Manager in the leadership contest was Conservative MP and Davis's deputy as Shadow Home Secretary, Andrew Mitchell (who in 2010 became Secretary of State for International Development in Prime Minister David Cameron's Cabinet).

Davis was initially the front runner in the contest, but after a poorly received speech at that year's Conservative Party Conference his campaign was seen to lose momentum. However, referring to a Conference speech by the party's former leader, Campaign Manager Andrew Mitchell said: "William Hague made a great speech which many people will judge to be better than all the other leadership candidates put together. What that tells you is that being absolutely brilliant at being able to make a speech at conference is not the be-all-and-end-all of leadership. There are other things as well."

In the first ballot of Conservative MPs on 18 October 2005, Davis came top with 62 votes. As this was less than the number of his declared supporters, it became clear that the Davis bid was losing momentum. The elimination of former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke left the bookmakers' favourite, David Cameron, without a rival on the centre of the party. In the second ballot, held two days later on 20 October 2005, Cameron polled 90 votes, Davis 57 votes and Liam Fox was eliminated with 51 votes so Davis went through to the next stage with David Cameron.

In spite of a strong performance in a BBC Question Time head-to-head debate in the final stage of the leadership contest, Davis could not match his rival's general popularity. Conservative party members voted to elect Cameron the new Conservative leader, Davis losing with 64,398 votes against Cameron's 134,446 votes. Cameron chose to re-appoint his rival as Shadow Home Secretary following his victory.

Civil liberties

On 12 June 2008, Davis resigned from the Shadow Cabinet and announced his resignation as an MP, in order to force a by-election, and cause a wider debate on the single issue of what he believed to be the erosion of civil liberties. On 18 June 2008, he resigned from the House of Commons. He stood as the Conservative Party candidate for his current seat in the subsequent by-election. The announcement came a day after the narrow passing of a parliamentary vote on the Counter-Terrorism Bill, which would extend the limit on the period of detention of terror suspects without charge in England and Wales, from 28 to 42 days.

He won re-election with 72% of the vote, breaking several voting records in the UK, but neither the Labour Party nor the Liberal Democrats put up a candidate. As is common at by-elections, voter turnout declined significantly from the previous general election to 34%.

At the time of his resignation the Labour MP Andy Burnham made a speech which was widely interpreted as falsely implying an inappropriate relationship between Davis and the then Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti. Burnham was forced to issue a public apology under threat of legal action.

As a backbench MP, Davis continued campaigning for civil liberties. He participated in the Convention on Modern Liberty, where he gave the keynote speech on the convention's final day. He also spoke at the 2009 Guardian Hay Festival, where he criticised Labour's "illusory pursuit of an unobtainable security", and was well received by an overwhelmingly non-Conservative audience. On 15 June 2009, Davis gave the 2009 Magna Carta Lecture at Royal Holloway, University of London, in association with the Magna Carta Trust.

Davis has also supported civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch and in January 2010 he spoke with Tony Benn at the official launch. In 2012 he helped lead the opposition to Coalition plans to allow police and security services to extend their monitoring of the public's email and social media communications. He expressed concern with the findings of a VICE News investigation into the deployment of IMSI-catchers in London.

In 2014, along with Labour MP Tom Watson he challenged the government's introduction of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 in the courts. Although Davis is a staunch Eurosceptic and has criticised the record of the European Court of Human Rights, he has also argued against withdrawal from the court's jurisdiction, on the basis it might encourage countries with far worse civil liberties to do likewise.

Davis has taken more conservative stances on some other civil liberties issues, having repeatedly voted to restrict abortion, fertility treatment, embryo research and LGBT rights.

Torture

During a House of Commons debate on 7 July 2009, Davis accused the UK government of outsourcing torture, by allowing Rangzieb Ahmed to leave the country (even though the government had evidence against Ahmed, upon which Ahmed was later convicted for terrorism) to Pakistan, where it is said the Inter-Services Intelligence was given the go ahead by the British intelligence agencies to torture Ahmed. Davis further accused the government of trying to gag Ahmed, stopping him coming forward with his accusations, after he had been imprisoned back in the UK.

He said, there was "an alleged request to drop his allegations of torture: if he did that, they could get his sentence cut and possibly give him some money. If this request to drop the torture case is true, it is frankly monstrous. It would at the very least be a criminal misuse of the powers and funds under the Government's Contest strategy, and at worst a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice."

Davis was amongst the signatories of a letter to The Guardian condemning the Coalition's efforts to hide the UK's involvement in rendition and torture behind secret trials.

2010 Coalition government (2010–2015)

In May 2010, after the 2010 general election which resulted in a hung parliament, it was revealed that David Cameron wanted to invite Davis and other right-wingers such as Michael Howard and Iain Duncan Smith into his Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition cabinet. However, Davis refused and remained a critic of the government on its stance on tuition fees. He offered critical commentary on the coalition in a BBC interview in March 2012. Following George Osborne's budget in 2014, Davis wrote for The Conservative Woman, calling on him to make the personal allowance fully transferable for single-earner families.

Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (2016–present)

Following Theresa May's appointment as Prime Minister, Davis was appointed Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union on 13 July 2016. He published in ConservativeHome his initial thoughts on the way Brexit might proceed. In his role as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Davis announced that Parliament will take action on translating EU laws into British laws as part of the process of Withdrawal from the European Union. On 7 September 2017, the European commission has published the minutes of a meeting in July at which Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, briefed the commission on the outcome of his first round of talks with Davis. Barnier expressed concern about Davis’s commitment to the talks (he has been going to Brussels for the start and end of each round of talks, but has not been staying there for the duration).