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About Patrick Nicholls
- Patrick Charles Martyn Nicholls (born 14 December 1948) was the Conservative MP for Teignbridge between 1983 and 2001. A solicitor by profession and formally an East Devon District Councillor, Nicholls was first elected to the House of Commons in 1983 at the age of 34 winning a comfortable majority over the nationally known Liberal Party candidate, John Alderson who had resigned as Chief Constable of Devon & Cornwall specifically to fight the seat. Within a year of entering the House of Commons, Nicholls was made a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Office Minister David Mellor, and subsequently to the Minister of Agriculture John Selwyn Gummer.
- He was also made a Steward of The British Boxing Board of Control. After the 1987 General Election, Nicholls entered the government as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Employment.
- Still not yet 40, he was given a key role in piloting the second tranche of Conservative Trades Union reforms through Standing Committee.
- His upward advance was checked, however, when he was arrested for drink driving in 1990, as a result of which he resigned from the government. Nicholls’ career was, however, only temporarily stalled.
- He was appointed to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy at its inception in 1992 and served on The North Atlantic Assembly and the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs.
- In 1994, he was made a Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party and in 1997 was appointed the Shadow Fisheries Minister by the then Leader of the Opposition, William Hague.
- A leading Eurosceptic, Nicholls was credited with having single-handedly turned Conservative Party policy around in favour of leaving the EU Common Fisheries Policy. After losing his seat in 2001, Nicholls became Chairman of The Young Britons Foundation, a research think-tank established in July 2003 to "help train tomorrow's centre-right leaders and activists today".
- Currently, Nicholls is a freelance political journalist and lectures on British and American politics in Europe and America as well as the UK. Nicholls is married with three children.
- His wife, Bridget, is also a solicitor.
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