Bob Blackman

A member of the Conservative Party, he has served as the Joint Executive Secretary of the backbench 1922 Committee since 2012.

Robert John Blackman (born 26 April 1956 ) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Harrow East since 2010.

Blackman unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative candidate in the Tokyngton ward of Brent London Borough Council in 1986.

In 1990, he stood in the Preston Ward and was elected; he retained the seat until 2010, when he did not stand.

He was the leader of the Conservative group on Brent council from 1990 to 2010, having been council leader between 1991 and 1996, when his party lost control of the council.

He unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Brent South at the 1992 election, for Bedford at the 1997 election, and for Brent North at the 2005 election.

He stood as the Conservative Party candidate for the London Assembly constituency of Brent and Harrow at the 2000 elections, losing to the Labour candidate Toby Harris.

Blackman was the Member of the London Assembly (MLA) for Brent and Harrow between 2004 and 2008.

After three maths A-levels Blackman studied maths and physics at the University of Liverpool and left with a Bachelor of Science degree.

While at Liverpool, he was president of the students' union.

He joined the sales team of Burroughs Machines (later Unisys) on graduation.

He worked in various sales and management positions for BT and worked at their training school in Milton Keynes as a tutor and later as a regulatory compliance manager for BT until his election to Parliament.

He defeated Harris at the 2004 assembly elections and was elected as the Conservative group's whip on the London Assembly.

From June 2006 to May 2010, he was deputy leader of Brent Council, the Conservatives having formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

In the 2008 Assembly election, Blackman lost his seat to the Labour candidate Navin Shah by 1,649 votes.

In the 2010 general election, Blackman gained the Harrow East constituency from Labour's Tony McNulty.

In 2013, The Guardian published an article "Plush hotels and caviar diplomacy: how Azerbaijan's elite wooed MPs", criticising, among other British MPs, Blackman's five-day visit to Azerbaijan, paid for by The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS).

The National highlighted in 2022 that several of his trips to Azerbaijan were paid for by the Azerbaijani parliament or its London embassy.

He was re-elected in 2015 and 2017.

In 2015, the compliance officer for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) made a judgement that Blackman had submitted 732 inaccurate mileage claims.

According to IPSA he claimed up to 10 miles for a two-mile journey, making him the highest-mileage MP, claiming almost twice the mileage as the 10 next-highest MPs.

Blackman supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum.

He subsequently joined the European Research Group, a Eurosceptic group within Parliament.

Blackman is an officer of the Conservative Friends of Israel group.

He has been part of several delegations to Israel, including during the Operation Defensive Shield conflict when he visited for an Israeli military briefing on the Iron Dome defence system.

In 2017, Blackman drew criticism from Tom Peck of The Independent for hosting Tapan Ghosh, an anti-Islam extremist from India, at a House of Commons event in October 2017.

Blackman also shared anti-Islam posts on Twitter by far-right activist Tommy Robinson and was a member of various anti-Islam groups on Facebook.

These comments and others by some Conservative candidates and representatives led the Muslim Council of Britain to call for an independent inquiry into alleged Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.

In March 2019, Blackman was among a group of MPs who argued for a number of measures to encourage people to quit smoking and prevent young people from taking it up, including raising the legal smoking age to 21 and introducing a levy on large tobacco companies.

In August 2019, Blackman expressed his support for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoking Article 370 of the Constitution of India, calling the article an "anomaly", adding that "Kashmiri Pandits must be guaranteed right of return after they were the victims of ethnic cleansing".

Blackman is the chair of the Azerbaijan All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG).

In 2010 he was elected a member of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee and was elected secretary of the 1922 Committee in 2015 (serving jointly with Nigel Evans until 8 January 2020 when Evans became second deputy chairman of Ways and Means).

In Parliament, Blackman serves on the Procedure Committee, the Backbench Business Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

Blackman received a series of briefings from high-level Azerbaijani figures, including in 2020 and 2021 from Azerbaijani MP Javanshir Feyziyev, who was investigated by the National Crime Agency, followed by a court case where £5.6m of laundered cash was ordered to be seized from his family’s accounts.

OpenDemocracy reported in February 2022 that Blackman tabled four pro-regime motions in the House and had written to two foreign secretaries, urging them to strengthen ties with Azerbaijan and condemn its opponent Armenia.

Blackman told the Eye To Eye podcast in July 2020 that he "put down positions on behalf of good friends in Azerbaijan" on a regular basis, that [referring to July 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes] "in these types of conflicts ... whoever gets the best propaganda tends to grab the attention of the listeners and the viewers", adding that in this regard he has been "fed the information through the Azerbaijan embassy in the UK", praising the latter for being "very very helpful and proactive".

Blackman urged the then foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to take Azerbaijan’s side in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.

On Blackman's Azerbaijan lobbying, Steve Goodrich from anti-corruption group Transparency International UK commented "It's pretty shocking if you've got MPs essentially being briefed by foreign embassies and then making contributions in the House based on what they've been advised to say."

Blackman attended a Diwali event held in October 2022 at the Houses of Parliament as a guest of the Hindu Forum of Britain.

Nithya Atmadayananda, a prominent supporter of Nithyananda, was photographed with Blackman and the President of the Hindu Forum of Britain, Trupti Patel.