Julian Lewis

Before joining the Front Bench, he was a Member of the Defence Select Committee and the Welsh Select Committee, and had also been elected to the Executive of the Conservative Party's 1922 Committee.

He studied as a postgraduate at St Antony's College, Oxford, being awarded the DPhil in Strategic Studies for his thesis on "British Military Planning for Post War Strategic Defence, 1942-1947" in 1981.

Sir Julian Murray Lewis (born 26 September 1951) is a British Conservative Party politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP), representing New Forest East since 1997.

From 1976 until early 1978, with secret funding from The Freedom Association, he posed as a Labour Party moderate and briefly won control of Newham North East Constituency Labour Party, in an eventually unsuccessful attempt to reverse the deselection of the sitting MP, Reg Prentice, and in order to highlight Militant tendency entryism in the Labour Party.

Prentice himself later joined the Conservatives.

At the end of the Newham campaign, in 1978, Lewis returned to his DPhil studies and joined the London Division of the Royal Naval Reserve, at HMS President, serving as a Seaman on the Southampton-based Ton-class minesweeper, HMS Glasserton (M1141).

Lewis was a leading opponent of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and other Left-wing organisations, throughout the 1980s.

From the mid-1980s, Lewis was also Director of Policy Research Associates, working with Conservative and Crossbench members of the House of Lords to initiate changes to legislation (1) requiring postal ballots for trade union elections (incorporated in the 1984 Trade Union Act and 1988 Employment Act); (2) outlawing political indoctrination in schools (incorporated in the 1986 Education Act and carried forward in the 1996 Education Act); (3) prohibiting local councils from publishing material which "promotes or opposes a point of view on a question of political controversy which is identifiable as the view of one political party and not of another" (incorporated in Section 27 of the 1988 Local Government Act); and (4) more strictly defining the concept of 'due impartiality' in the coverage of politically contentious issues on television and radio (incorporated in the 1990 Broadcasting Act).

With fellow Conservative John Bercow – later elected Speaker of the House of Commons – Lewis ran an Advanced Speaking and Campaigning course for more than ten years, which trained more than 600 Conservatives (including several current MPs) in campaigning and communication techniques.

From 1981 to 1985, he was Research Director and then a Director of the Coalition for Peace through Security, set up to support the replacement of Polaris by Trident and the deployment of NATO cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common and RAF Molesworth, to counter the Soviet SS-20 missiles.

This helped the achievement of President Reagan's 1981 Zero Option proposal in the form of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Lewis unsuccessfully contested Swansea West at the 1983 general election.

From 1990 until 1996, Lewis was a deputy director of the Conservative Research Department at Conservative Central Office (CCO).

In the run-up to the 1992 general election, CCO published detailed directories compiled by Lewis listing Labour MPs' and candidates' support for Left-wing causes.

He continued in this role after his selection in February 1996 as prospective parliamentary candidate for the new constituency of New Forest East, but in December of that year he resigned from CCO to campaign against Britain joining the single European currency.

Only later did opposition to adopting the Euro become official Conservative policy.

He was elected as the MP for New Forest East in 1997.

In this role, he successfully opposed the development of a large container port at Dibden Bay, between Marchwood and Hythe, and waged other high-profile local campaigns.

In Parliament, he was a Shadow Defence Minister from 2002 to 2004 and from 2005 to 2010, also serving as Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office from 2004 to 2005, and as an Opposition Whip from 2001 to 2002.

From May to July 2008, Lewis initiated and organised the successful campaign to change the Freedom of Information Act in order that a High Court ruling, obtained by a journalist on The Sunday Telegraph, that 14 MPs' home addresses should be published, could never be repeated in respect of any other Parliamentarians.

He was one of the Frontbenchers and Backbenchers of the Year chosen by commentators on the ConservativeHome website, in December 2009 and December 2010 respectively.

With the creation of the Liberal-Conservative Coalition as a result of the election of a hung parliament in 2010, the post which he had shadowed (Minister for the Armed Forces) was allocated to the Liberal Democrat Defence spokesman, Nick Harvey MP.

Lewis was appointed as a member of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee in September 2010.

He has also been a vice-chairman of the Conservative Friends of Poland.

Lewis has been described by The Daily Telegraph as "one of the most vigorous rightwingers in the Commons" and by The Guardian as the Conservative Party's "front bench terrier".

In May 2014, he was one of eight candidates for the chairmanship of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, coming second with 212 votes to the eventual winner's 226.

Lewis had been in the lead in four of the seven stages of this Alternative Vote election.

He was elected as a member of the Defence Select Committee at a by-election in October 2014, whilst remaining on the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.

Lewis previously served as Chair of the Defence Select Committee (HCDC), from 2015-17 and from 2017-19, and is the first Parliamentarian to have chaired both the ISC and the HCDC.

In March 2015, he was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and therefore granted the style The Right Honourable.

In June 2015, he was elected to the Chair of the Commons Defence Select Committee by 314 votes to 242, and in July 2017 he was re-elected to this position, in the new Parliament, by 305 votes to 265.

Having supervised more than 30 inquiries, during the 2015–17 and 2017–19 Parliaments, Lewis made it known in January 2020 that he would not seek re-election to chair the Defence Committee for a third time, as "It is better to stop while people wish you to carry on, than to carry on until people wish you to stop!"

He actively pursues the retention and renewal of the British strategic nuclear deterrent, the UK Trident programme – confirmed in 2016 – and campaigns for Defence expenditure to be restored to 3% of GDP.

In a lecture to former Dynevor School pupils in May 2017, Lewis set out details of his background, his path into politics and his overall conclusions about Parliamentary life.

Lewis has served as Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) since 2020, succeeding Dominic Grieve.

Lewis had the Conservative Party whip removed after successfully standing against Boris Johnson's preferred candidate for the chairmanship of the Intelligence and Security Committee, former Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling, on 15 July 2020.

The whip was restored on 30 December 2020.

A Eurosceptic, Lewis is a supporter of the pro-Brexit groups Leave Means Leave and the European Research Group (ERG).

He was one of just 28 Conservative MPs (the 'Spartans') who voted all three times against Theresa May's EU Withdrawal Agreement, regarding it as "Brexit in Name Only".

Born in Swansea, into a Jewish family and son of a tailor and designer, Lewis was educated at Dynevor Grammar School and then at Balliol College, Oxford, receiving a BA, later promoted to MA, in Philosophy and Politics.