Adam Holloway

Adam James Harold Holloway (born 29 July 1965) is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gravesham since 2005.

He served as Government Whip from September to October 2022, and as Assistant Government Whip from July to September 2022.

He currently serves on the Home Affairs Select Committee and European Scrutiny Committee.

He was a vocal supporter of pro-Brexit lobby group Leave Means Leave.

Before he was a Member of Parliament, he served in the British Army's Grenadier Guards for five years, serving in the Gulf War and in Germany.

After graduating from university, Holloway attended the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, from which he was commissioned into the British Army's Grenadier Guards in 1987.

He served as an Armoured Infantry officer in the British Army on the Rhine.

Holloway served in the Gulf War as a Captain in 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards.

The Grenadier Guards fought in the Battle of Norfolk as part of the 1st Armoured Division.

After serving in the army he was a reporter for ITN and ITV where he produced the award-winning programme "No Fixed Abode" (1991), in which he spent three months homeless on the streets of London.

After leaving the Army in 1991, Holloway worked as an investigative journalist and reporter with ITN and ITV.

With ITV, he produced an award-winning documentary series for the ITV programme World in Action, called "No Fixed Abode" (1991).

In this series he locked access to his bank account and "slept rough" on the streets of London, for three months, in order to shed light on the difficulties experienced by the city's homeless, particularly those who are mentally ill.

Holloway was elected in the 2005 general election to represent the Kent constituency of Gravesham, defeating a former Labour minister, Chris Pond, by just 654 votes, but with one of the largest swings from Labour to Conservative in the country at 4.9% at that general election.

This was the first time since the Second World War that Gravesham (or its predecessor Gravesend constituency) had not been held by the party of Government.

He delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 28 June 2005, praising his constituency's multicultural community and raising issues of local crime.

In a 2009 report written by Holloway, he described how some of the claims about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, used to support the UK government's case for war in 2003, originated from an Iraqi taxi driver.

Particularly the claim about their ability to be "ready to launch in 45 minutes," which was one of the "central planks" of the government's case.

According to Holloway, the unreliability of some sources was not expressed by MI6 while preparing the case for war because of pressure from Downing Street.

While in Parliament, Holloway has taken a close interest in the War in Afghanistan and has visited, at his own expense, about a dozen times.

In 2009 he wrote a paper for the Centre for Policy Studies titled "In Blood Stepp'd in too Far" which outlined the policies that he thought should be implemented during the War in Afghanistan: establishing an "honest government," ensuring that "tribal structures are supported, and "maintaining low levels of allied troops."

In the wake of the Westminster parliamentary expenses scandal in 2009, Holloway was ordered by Sir Thomas Legg, the head of a committee examining abuse of expenses by Members of Parliament, to repay £1,000 to the Exchequer which he had mistakenly claimed in 2007.

Holloway was born in Faversham, Kent, the son of the Revd Roger Holloway OBE (died 2010).

He was privately educated at Cranleigh School in Surrey.

He then spent his gap year with the Afghan Resistance during the Soviet-Afghan War.

He attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he studied social and political sciences, with his degree promoted by tradition to an MA.

He returned to Afghanistan, visited Nicaragua during the Nicaraguan Revolution and taught in Soweto and South Africa during his university summer holidays.

He later completed an MBA at Imperial College London.

Holloway was returned as MP for Gravesham at the general election of 6 May 2010 with 22,956 votes (48.5% of the vote) and with an increased majority of 9,312.

In October 2010 he was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to David Lidington, Minister of State for Europe and NATO in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In 2011, Holloway undertook a fact-finding mission to Libya during the Overthrow of Muanmar Gaddafi.

In October 2011, he resigned from the government when he was asked to vote against a non-binding Backbench Motion offering the British people a referendum on Europe.

When speaking about his decision he said: "I'm not now prepared to go back on my words to my constituents and I'm really staggered that loyal people like me have actually been put in this position," considering that he had "never voted against the party line."

For this decision he received 'Backbencher of the Year' in The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards in 2011 as an MP who "in a choice between career and principle, chose principle."

Whilst a Member of Parliament in 2018, he rough slept for seven days to experience how homelessness has changed in the past three decades.

In the ITV serie's Disguises, Adam was trained by two clinical pyschiatrists and posed as a schizrophrenic in various English cities.

He also went undercover as a Bosnian Muslim fleeing ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and experienced people smuggling firsthand.

With ITN, Holloway was their Bosnian correspondent during the Siege of Sarajevo.

Holloway was also with ITV's News at 10, where, as the lead investigator, he exposed a Filipino child prostitution ring by posing as a paedophile.

His other journalistic work includes living in the Sangatte refugee camp in Calais while pretending to be an economic migrant and being a war reporter in Iraq alongside Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times.