Nicola Blackwood

Parliamentary career

Blackwood was chosen as the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon at an open primary on 13 November 2006. Boundary changes which came into effect in 2010 were thought to have favoured the Conservatives, with some 8,000 urban voters (including many students) being moved into the Oxford East constituency and more rural voters added.

Blackwood won the seat at the 2010 general election by 176 votes on a 6.9% swing to the Conservatives from the Liberal Democrats. In late 2010, she was elected to serve on the Home Affairs Select Committee and was secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development. She was a member of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, as well as holding a position on the Council of Advisors for ZANE, a charity which seeks to support pensioners in Zimbabwe.

Blackwood voted against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in 2013 after indicating to many students and constituents that she would support the measure, for which she was criticised by Oxford University Student Union. Blackwood said she had voted against the final draft of the Bill because she was not satisfied with the protections of religious freedoms.

At the 2015 general election, Blackwood retained her seat with a majority of 9,582 which was in part due to the national swing of voters against the Liberal Democrats that saw them lose 27 seats at the 2015 General Election.

Blackwood's biggest donor in the lead up to the 2015 election was a Housing Company called Countrywide Developments Limited, controlled by AC Gallagher who was also Director of Gallagher Estates No1 Limited. Countrywide Developments made two donations of £10,000 to Blackwood, one in July 2014 and the other in March 2015.

In 2015, student activists criticised Blackwood for her support of fox hunting and she later confirmed pro-hunting group Vote-OK assisted with her election campaign during the 2015 General Election.

In June 2015, Blackwood was elected to the chairmanship of the Science & Technology Select Committee. She was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (PUSS) at the Department of Health from July 2016 - May 2017.

In the 2017 general election she lost her seat to the Liberal Democrat candidate Layla Moran who won with a majority of 816.

Personal life

Blackwood has been a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship since 2005 and is a regular worshipper at the Church of England's St Aldate's in Oxford.

In March 2015, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with the genetic condition Ehlers–Danlos syndrome in 2013 and had later been diagnosed with the associated secondary condition of postural tachycardia syndrome, which causes chronic migraines for which she is treated by having 32 injections in the head every 10–12 weeks. She also stated that her medical conditions had not affected her performance as a member of parliament.

Blackwood married Paul Bate, Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Portfolio Manager at Matterhorn Investment Management LLP, in September 2016 at Merton College, Oxford. Bate, member of Oxford's Vincent Club, studied physics at Merton College (class of 1977) before engineering and business MBA at Stanford (class of 1995). Blackwood studied music at St Anne's College, (class of 2000). The two now live near Wootton, Oxfordshire.