Michael Ellis (British politician)


Michael Tyrone Ellis is a British Conservative Party politician serving as Solicitor General for England and Wales since 2019, and has served as Member of Parliament for Northampton North since 2010.
Ellis served in the May Government as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons from 2016 to 2018, as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Arts, Heritage and Tourism at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from 2018 to 2019, and briefly as Minister of State for Transport in 2019. In September 2019, he was appointed to the Privy Council.

Early life and career

Michael Ellis was born in Northampton on the 13 October 1967 to a British Jewish family. He was privately educated at two independent schools: Spratton Hall Preparatory School, in the village of Spratton and Wellingborough School, in the town of Wellingborough. He went on to study at the independent University of Buckingham, where he obtained an LLB degree in 1993, including first-class honours in Public Law and won the Aylesbury Vale District Council Chairman's Prize for the Best Performance in Public Law that year. At university, he was also a student editor of the Denning Law Journal. Whilst at university, Ellis undertook an exchange programme in the United States at the College of William and Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law in Williamsburg, Virginia. After attending the Inns of Court School of Law in London, he was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1993. His legal practice as a barrister was based in Northampton, and his chambers' head office was in London.

Political career

Ellis stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate in the Park ward of Northampton Borough Council in 1995. However, he was elected in 1997 as a Conservative Councillor on Northamptonshire County Council, representing the Northampton Park Ward, winning the seat from his Labour Party rival by just 44 votes. He served until the next election in May 2001, when he did not stand again. At the time of his election he was the youngest County Councillor in Northamptonshire, at the age of 29.
Ellis became the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Northampton North in December 2006. This followed a public vote in an open primary, which was a relatively unusual selection mechanism at the time. Ellis was elected to Parliament in the 6 May 2010 general election gaining the seat with a majority of 1,936 and 34.1% of the vote, defeating the sitting Labour MP, Sally Keeble.
In November 2010, Ellis established an All Party Group on the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, which he chaired for the following three years. In this role, Ellis was responsible for organising a gift of a stained glass window of the Queen's coat of arms for the Queen from both Houses of Parliament. Ellis was also responsible for organising the planting of a Red Windsor apple tree on Speaker's Green at the Houses of Parliament as part of the Woodland Trust's Jubilee Woods project.
In July 2010, he was first elected onto the Statutory Instruments and worked on the Draft Communications Data Bill during the 2012–13 Parliamentary session. Ellis was interviewed about this Bill with Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, on the Daily Politics programme on 11 December 2012. In February 2011, Ellis was first elected onto the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. Writing in The Independent newspaper, Ian Burrell described Ellis as asking questions in one case with "all the gravitas of a prosecuting counsel".
On 25 September 2012, Ellis was appointed Parliamentary Adviser to Lord Feldman of Elstree, the Conservative Party Co-Chairman.
On 11 September 2013, Ellis introduced the Medical Innovation Bill, a private members bill to the House of Commons. The bill was designed to allow doctors more scope to innovate when treating cancer patients, but was heavily criticised by a range of medical and legal bodies, patient groups and charities. The bill was withdrawn after its first reading, following an indication from the government that they would support it. Although the Conservative MP Dan Poulter MP, who was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health, suggested in July 2014 that the Government was keen to support it, it failed to progress through the House of Commons after the Liberal Democrats declined to support it.
In March 2014, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne announced in the House of Commons during the Budget Speech that a campaign Ellis had been conducting to secure extra funds to reduce potholes had succeeded and that a £200 million fund was being created to be distributed nationwide. In June 2014, it was announced that £3.3 million of this fund would be allocated to Northamptonshire by the Department for Transport, with various repairs in Northampton.
In July 2014 Ellis was successful in calling for the Parliamentary authorities to officially mark the assassination of a former Member of Parliament for Northampton, Spencer Perceval, who had become Prime Minister, and who was shot and killed in the House of Commons in 1812. The Parliamentary authorities agreed to install a brass plaque in St Stephen's Hall commemorating the notable assassination and Ellis called this a "fitting tribute" to the former Prime Minister and historic Northampton figure.
In October 2014, the Northampton Chronicle & Echo newspaper reported that Ellis had been canvassing in Northampton when he came across a medical emergency and performed Cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a constituent.
Ellis was re-elected at the 2015 general election. He beat Sally Keeble by 3,245 votes to secure his seat in the House of Commons.
In July 2016, Ellis was made an Assistant Whip and became Deputy Leader of the House of Commons.
Ellis was opposed to Brexit prior to the 2016 referendum. However, following the vote, he would go on to support Theresa May's Brexit deal, and voted against ruling out a no-deal Brexit.
Ellis was re-elected again at the 2017 general election. However, his majority was reduced to 807 votes.
In February 2018, following the announcement that Northamptonshire County Council had brought in a "section 114" notice, putting it in special measures following a crises in its finances, Ellis was one of seven local MPs who released a statement arguing that the problems with the authority were down to mismanagement from the Conservative councillors who led it rather than funding cuts from the Conservative Government. They further argued that government commissioners should take over the running of the Council.
In October 2018, Ellis wrote to the chief executive of NCP, which manages car parks in Northampton, after some 50 blue badge owners received penalties for using disabled bays unaware that they were no longer entitled to them for free.
As Arts Minister in April 2019, Ellis placed an export bar on a 500-year-old drawing by Lucas van Leyden worth £11.4 million in a bid to keep the work of art in the United Kingdom. He also placed an export bar on a 17th-century baroque cabinet by Roman maker Giacomo Herman and a unique 18th century harpsichord by Joseph Mahoon.
In the House of Commons he has sat on the Statutory Instruments and the Home Affairs Committee. He is a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel group, and has participated in delegations to raise concerns about an agreement relating to Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Controversies

In May 2016, it emerged that Ellis was one of a number of Conservative MPs being investigated by police in the United Kingdom general election, 2015 party spending investigation, for allegedly spending more than the legal limit on constituency election campaign expenses. However, in May 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service said that while there was evidence of inaccurate spending returns, it did not "meet the test" for further action.
In July 2017, Ellis was called as a witness in the trial of Adam Simmonds, the former Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Northamptonshire, who faced charges of leaking information relating to fraud allegations against Peter Bone, the Conservative MP for Wellingborough. Ellis admitted a 'hazy recollection' of 'discussing a criminal investigation into Peter Bone and the damage it might do to the Conservative Party with Adam Simmonds over coffee'. Neither Simmonds or Bone were ultimately found guilty of the separate charges brought against them.
In March 2018, Ellis was criticised by local campaigners over the cuts to library services in Northampton, given his role as the Government minister for libraries. Criticism followed the announcement that 21 book-lending services were at risk of closure in Northamptonshire, after the Conservative run County Council cut £40 million from its budget. Ellis responded that the 'Northamptonshire Libraries Friends Groups and Supporters' were "attempting to bring party politics into this issue and that he had been a long-standing critic of the leadership of the Council.