Nick Gibb

Early life

Nick Gibb was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire and was educated at Bedford Modern School, Maidstone Grammar School, Roundhay School in Leeds, and Thornes House School in Wakefield. He then attended the College of St Hild and St Bede at the University of Durham where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Law in 1981. Gibb was a member of the Federation of Conservative Students. at a time when they were influenced by radical libertarian ideas.

In an interview regarding his education, Gibb spoke of how he believed Maidstone to be the best. "What was good about it was that it was rigorous" he told Teachers TV in 2006. "Every lesson was rigorous, even things like music: it was taught in the same way as chemistry." Wakefield, by contrast, was "terrible" due to its lack of rigour.

Upon leaving school he took a job as a handyman in a London hotel, spending his evenings in the House of Commons watching late-night debates from the public gallery.

In 1982, Gibb joined NatWest as a trainee accountant, before working on Kibbutz Merom Golan in 1983. In 1984 he joined KPMG as a chartered accountant until his election to parliament. He is Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (FCA).

Political career

Gibb worked as an election agent to Cecil Parkinson at the 1987 General Election, and was the secretary of the Bethnal Green and Stepney Conservative Association in 1988, becoming its chairman the following year.

Gibb contested Stoke-on-Trent Central at the 1992 General Election but was defeated into second place some 13,420 votes behind the sitting Labour MP Mark Fisher. In 1994, Gibb was selected to contest the 1994 Rotherham by-election, caused by the death of James Boyce, held on 5 May 1994. He finished in third place, 12,263 votes behind the winner Denis MacShane.

Gibb was selected to stand as the Conservative candidate for the newly created West Sussex seat of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton at the 1997 General Election. Gibb won the seat with a majority of 7,321 and has remained the MP there since. He made his maiden speech on 4 July 1997, in which he spoke of the visit of King George V in 1929 to Bognor Regis to take in the sea air, hence the suffix of Regis on the town's name. He recalled also the town of Felpham which was the home of poet William Blake.

Opposition

Shortly after his election, Gibb joined the opposition frontbench of William Hague when he was appointed as the spokesman on trade and industry in 1997, before joining the social security select committee later in the year. The following year, in 1998 he rejoined the frontbench as a spokesman on the treasury, moving back to trade and industry in 1999.

Gibb was reportedly involved in the faction-fight between supporters of William Hague and Michael Portillo, the then Shadow Chancellor, as a supporter of Portillo

He was briefly a spokesman on environment, transport and the regions following the 2001 General Election but resigned under the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith, reportedly because he was unhappy at his new role. Michael Howard brought him back to the frontbench following the Conservative Party's defeat in the 2005 General Election as a spokesman for Education and Young People. Shortly afterwards, the newly elected Conservative Party Leader, David Cameron, promoted Nick Gibb from within the Education team to shadow Minister for Schools.

Government

In the wake of the 2010 General Election and the formation of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, Gibb was appointed Minister of State for Schools in the new Department for Education. He left the Government at a ministerial reshuffle in September 2012, but returned to the same Department, again as a Minister of State, in July 2014. He was appointed to the Privy Council on 4 November 2016.

Views and controversy

Gibb is a longstanding advocate of synthetic phonics as a method of teaching children to read, and is also a supporter of the motor neurone disease cause, currently being vice-chair of the All Party Motor Neurone Disease Group in parliament.

Just days after being appointed as Minister for Schools in 2010, Gibb was criticised after leaked information suggested he had told officials at the Department of Education that he "would rather have a physics graduate from Oxbridge without a PGCE teaching in a school than a physics graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE".

Personal life

Nick Gibb is the brother of Robbie Gibb, a former PR consultant and ex-editor of the BBC's political programmes, The Daily Politics and (in an executive capacity) This Week, who was announced as Director of Communications for Prime Minister Theresa May in July 2017.

In May 2015, Gibb came out as gay and announced his engagement to Michael Simmonds, the chief executive of the Populus polling organisation. They have been together for 31 years and married in 2015.

Publications