Rehman Chishti

Early life and career

Chishti was born in Muzaffarabad, capital of Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, on 4 October 1978. His father Abdul Rehman Chishti had been appointed Federal Adviser on religious affairs to the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir in 1976 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan. He left Pakistan in 1978 to take up a post as an Imam in the UK, soon after Bhutto was overthrown by a military coup by General Zia-ul-Haq, who later executed Bhutto. Rehman Chishti did not see his father for the first six years of his life. He along with his mother and elder sister joined his father in 1984 in the UK at the age of six, and since then has lived in Gillingham and Rainham.

Chishti attended Richmond Infant School (now Burnt Oak Primary school), Napier Primary School, Fort Luton High School for Boys (now Victory Academy), Rainham Mark Grammar School Sixth Form, and Chatham Grammar School for Girls (mixed boys and girls sixth form). He was Head Boy at Fort Luton High School, and captain of the school cricket team. He also captained Hempstead Colts Cricket Club in Gillingham, in which he took his best bowling figures of 5 wickets for 7 runs against Lordswood Colts, which led him to play for Medway District and Kent Schools in the Pawson trophy. He also played football with Royal Princes Park youth team where he was given the award for player of the year.

Chishti read law at University of Wales Aberystwyth, followed by Inns of Court School of Law where he did his Barristers vocational course. He had to supplement his studies by working at Tesco main store in Gillingham, and the Link Mobile phone shop in Hempstead Valley shopping centre in Gillingham.

Chishti was called to the Bar of England and Wales by Lincoln's Inn in 2001. He undertook pupillage at Goldsmith Chambers and was taken on as a tenant. Chishti prosecuted and defended cases in the Magistrates' and Crown courts. He has appeared in the Court of Appeal: R v R [2007] EWCA Crim 3312; Attorney General's Reference (No. 20 of 2005), R v May [2005] All ER (D) 359 (Jun). He is an Honorary Door Tenant at Red Lion Chambers.

Adviser to Benazir Bhutto

Chishti served as a Political Adviser from 1999–2007 to Benazir Bhutto, after she had ceased being the Prime Minister of Pakistan. In September 2004 in a meeting in Islamabad with Mark Lyall Grant, the then High Commissioner to Pakistan, Chishti, acting on behalf of Benazir Bhutto, committed Bhutto to talks with the Government of Pakistan for the transition to Democracy with the United Kingdom acting as the facilitators. Chishti followed this up by attending every meeting Bhutto had with British diplomats, both in Dubai and London, including the British Foreign Office in London accompanying Ms Bhutto and acting on her behalf. This included meetings with the then British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in 2005, and David Miliband in 2007. In 2001, in a note to Rehman Chishti in her biography, she described him as her most brilliant assistant.

Parliamentary candidate and councillor

At the 2005 General Election, Chishti stood as the Labour Party candidate for the Horsham constituency. He later joined the Conservative Party, and was selected as the candidate for the marginal seat of Gillingham and Rainham, whose predecessor seat of Gillingham had been held by Labour by less than 300 votes in 2005. On 28 August 2007, Benazir Bhutto visited the constituency for a dinner in support of Chishti's campaign, where she told the audience, "Rehman being the Parliamentary candidate for Gillingham is my loss and Gillingham's gain".

Chishti represented the Gillingham North Ward from 2003–2007 and the Rainham Central Ward since 2007 on Medway Council. He was appointed to the Medway Council's Cabinet in 2007 as the Member for Community Safety and Enforcement, becoming the youngest Cabinet Member in Medway's history. He also served as an Adviser to Francis Maude (against whom Chishti had stood in Horsham in 2005) on diversity when Maude was Chairman of the Conservative Party in 2006.

Member of Parliament

Chishti was elected Member of Parliament for Gillingham and Rainham in 2010 at the age of 31. The New Statesman listed Chishti as among the 20 MPs under 40 who are the best of their generation, and who have the potential to be the next Prime Minister. The Telegraph newspaper described him as a rising star of the party. In 2011, Chishti was listed by the BBC as one of the most frequent speakers in Parliament from the intake of 2010.

In 2013, Chishti was named parliamentarian of the year by the road safety charity Brake for his work in Parliament championing road safety issues, including persuading the government to adopt his private members bill to increase the sentence for those who cause death by driving, when then the motorist had been banned from driving at the time of the offence. The government agreed to increase the maximum custodial sentence to 10 years from the previous two.

Chishti has campaigned for the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five who has been accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. In October 2014, Chishti authored a letter, signed by 54 MPs from across Parliament, sent to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, and the Chief Justice, Nasir-ul-Mulk, calling for an urgent review of her case.

In June 2015, Rehman authored letters signed by more than 120 MPs to the Prime Minister and to the BBC asking them to refer to the so-called "Islamic State", ISIS/ISIL as "Daesh", a phrase adopted by many countries around the World, including France and Turkey, an issue which made front page news. In December 2015, the Prime Minister announced in Parliament that, after the strong representations made by Chishti, the Government would be officially using the terminology Daesh, rather than ISIL.

Chishti has campaigned to improve care for people with mental health problems and has introduced two Private Members Bills in Parliament. In October 2015 he authored a letter, signed by 67 MPs, sent to the Prime Minister asking the Government to support these.

Chishti was a Member of the Justice Select Committee of the House of Commons, having previously been a Member of the Joint Committee of the Human Rights Committee. He is passionate about sports and has served as the parliamentary fellow for Sport England, and is currently the parliamentary fellow for the Football Association.

In 2015, Chishti was awarded the Conservative Party People's Choice MP of the Year Award from the Patchwork Foundation for his community engagement work and was named in second place by readers of the ConservativeHome blog in their Parliamentarian of the Year 2015.

Chishti was awarded the Grassroots Diplomat Initiative "Policy Driver Award" (MP of the Year 2015). Chishti was awarded the Asian Voice political and public life awards for campaigning MP of the Year (2015). Chishti was listed as the highest contributing Back Bench MP (BBC listing published 2016).

In July 2014, he was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to Nick Gibb, the Minister of State for Education. In May 2015, he took a similar position with Jeremy Wright, the Attorney General.

Chishti was a regular Sky News paper reviewer from 2010 to 2014.

Links to Saudi Arabian government

In March 2016, Chishti became an adviser to the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, a role for which he was paid £200 an hour. The King Faisal Centre is a Saudi Arabian think-tank, named after the Saudi King Faisal. In recent years the organisation has aimed to have more of an international presence and to "affect policy based on public research". The Liberal Democrats criticised him for advancing Saudi Arabia's interests through making speeches in Parliament while at the same time being on the pay-roll of a Saudi think-tank.

The parliamentary standards commissioner said in June 2016 that it would not investigate the complaint made by the Liberal Democrat MP.