Brandon Lewis Biography, Age, Education, Local government, Parliamentary career, Expenses

Brandon Lewis (Politician) Biography

Brandon Lewis Age

Brandon Lewis was born on 20 June 1971 in Harold Wood, Romford, United Kingdom.

Brandon Lewis Education

Brandon Lewis attended the Forest School in Walthamstow. He then attended the University of Buckingham where he received a degree in Economics.

He then received the LLM in Commercial Law from King’s College London. He was a director of Woodlands Schools Limited, a provider of private primary schools based in Hutton, Essex until September 2012 when he resigned his position.

Brandon Lewis Net Worth

Brandon Lewis earns his income from his businesses and other related organizations. He also earns his income from his work as a Conservative Party politician. He has an estimated net worth of £ 4 million euros.

Brandon Lewis Local government

In May 1998 Brandon Lewis was first elected as a representative of the Conservative Party when he became a Borough Councillor for Hutton South on Brentwood Borough Council. He was re-elected in 2002 and 2006 with an increased vote share.

He later became Conservative Group leader in 2002 and leader of the council in 2004, after his party took control of the local authority. He remained in this position until 2009, when he resigned as a councilor in Essex to focus on seeking election as an MP in Norfolk.

During his time as leader of the council, he co-hosted The Eric and Brandon Show with local MP Eric Pickles on Phoenix FM, a local radio station in Brentwood.

Under Lewis’s leadership, the council refused to identify land for additional traveler sites when required to by the government, citing greenbelt classification. Lewis claimed that the council was being “victimized”, but campaigners argued the Council was just being asked to meet their proportion of national requirements.

Brandon Lewis Parliamentary career

Brandon Lewis Lewis stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative Party candidate for election in the Sherwood constituency in the 2001 general election, losing to Paddy Tipping the Labour party candidate with a 34% share of the vote.

He was selected to represent the Conservative party in the Great Yarmouth in 2006 and was elected at the 2010 general election, defeating sitting Labour MP Tony Wright with a majority of just over 4000 – a swing to the Conservatives of 8.7% in the seat which was number 66 on their list of target seats.

Lewis served on the Work and Pensions Select Committee and the Regulatory Reform Select Committee from his election until 2012. He has been a member of a number of All Party Parliamentary Groups, including time as the chair of the Local Growth group and co-chair of a group discussing coastal erosion.

A report by the Local Growth group in September 2012, when it was chaired by Lewis, criticized the government for an “uncoordinated” approach to its Local Enterprise Partnership policy which, according to Lewis, left “gaps and weaknesses”.

In January 2013, Lewis was criticized for comments he had made about local councilors’ allowances by Clive Betts, the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

Later in 2013, Lewis was critical of local councils, including many Conservative-run councils, planning council tax rises in 2013 against the wishes of the government, saying that there was “still massive scope” for councils to cut “waste and inefficiency”.

He has also criticized the Local Government Association for producing proposals to give local councils more freedom over their levels of council tax in the future.

Brandon Lewis Ministerial career

Brandon Lewis In September 2012 Lewis, was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government, working under Eric Pickles.

In July 2014, Lewis was promoted to Minister of State for Housing and Planning, when the Prime Minister brought the portfolios of Housing and Planning together for the first time under his premiership. He claimed that there had been a “dramatic swing” in public opinion – with almost half of people now in favor of new housing in their area.

This related to the new National Planning Policy Framework, the primary framework for town planning in the country, which some argued made it substantially easier for developers to build on greenfield land.

In January 2016, the Labour Party unsuccessfully proposed an amendment in Parliament that would have required private landlords to make their homes “fit for human habitation”. According to Parliament’s register of interests, Lewis was one of 72 Conservative MPs who voted against the amendment who personally derived an income from renting out property.

The Conservative Government had responded to the amendment that they believed homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass the new law that would explicitly require it. In July 2016, Lewis was promoted to be the Minister of State for the Home Office with a portfolio including Police and Fire services, as well as Europol and Interpol:

On 29 September 2016, he was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and may, therefore, use the title “The Right Honourable”. Following the Grenfell Disaster, Lewis was criticized for having rejected calls to increase fire safety regulations in his former role as housing minister.

He had argued adding extra safety requirements, such as sprinklers in high rise buildings, should not be taken forward as the extra costs could discourage house building. In a January 2018 cabinet reshuffle, Lewis was promoted to Chairman of the Conservative Party succeeding long-time cabinet member Patrick McLoughlin.

Lewis was also appointed Minister without portfolio. In the House of Commons, he has previously sat on the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, the Work and Pensions Committee and the Regulatory Reform Committee.

Brandon Lewis Campaigns

Brandon Lewis has run a variety of campaigns as Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth. Campaigns have included opposing the removal of free bus passes for school children in Belton & Burgh Castle, cutting fuel duty, protecting Norfolk bus services, and improving Great Yarmouth railway station.

As the local MP, Lewis declined initially to support local campaigners who were fighting against the Conservative-run County Council’s controversial plans for the proposed King’s Lynn Incinerator.

By 2012 he had joined all fellow local MPs in expressing concern with the proposal and, after a change in leadership of the County Council, the plans for the incinerator were dropped in 2014.

Brandon Lewis Expenses

Brandon Lewis stood for Parliament in 2010 on a “clean expenses pledge”, pledging to be “completely open about my expenses”. In 2010-2011 Lewis claimed just over £15,000 in accommodation expenses and in 2011-12 and 2012-13 he claimed just under £21,500 for accommodation.

Labour MPs called upon IPSA to investigate whether Lewis was using taxpayer funds for inappropriate political purposes after it was revealed that he had claimed £37,000 for “research briefing and other parliamentary associated assistance” to a political campaign consultancy.

In August 2015, it was revealed that Lewis, claimed £31,000 of hotel expenses following stays at the Park Plaza hotel in London despite owning two homes both less than an hour from Westminster by train.

Aside from his constituency home, Lewis owns two additional homes, one in Shenfield, and the other in Chelmsford, both less than an hour by train from Westminster. Between them, they were worth at least £3.5m in 2015, according to The Sunday Times.

Brandon Lewis Breaking of pairing agreement

On 17 July 2018, Lewis was paired with Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson (who was on maternity leave) during “key House of Commons votes” on the Trade Bill. Despite this, Lewis voted with the government on two votes.

Lewis initially claimed that this had been an honest mistake, but it was revealed that while Lewis had in fact abstained on some votes during the day’s proceedings, he had broken the agreement to vote on these two “crunch” issues.

In response to suggestions that this was just a mistake, fellow Conservative Andrew Bridgen said that the careful selection of the important votes allowed people to deduce what was happening. Michael Heseltine said that breaking House of Commons voting conventions has “appalling consequences for the management of government.”

Brandon Lewis BBC NEWS

When asked on BBC Breakfast whether he could recycle yogurt pots in Great Yarmouth where he lives, Brandon Lewis said: “yes, we can absolutely”. But he later admitted making a mistake. “Wife already corrected me,” he tweeted, adding that his “mixed memory re yogurt vs plastic bottles which are ok confirms point re #keepitsimple”.

Mr. Lewis, Conservative MP for Great Yarmouth, is a former council leader himself and now a junior minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Great Yarmouth Borough Council’s website makes it clear that no plastic other than bottles can be recycled, stating that yogurt pots, food containers, and bags need to be deposited in a separate rubbish bin.

Mr. Lewis made the yogurt pot error during an interview on BBC Breakfast responding to viewers’ concerns that recycling procedures were too complicated and confusing. Mr. Lewis acknowledged there were different rules in different parts of the country but he had said that “to be fair, my council, Great Yarmouth, are pretty good at educating people and making people very clear about what they can and cannot recycle”.

“This is a variation across the country. We would all like to see more recycling but it has to be in the right way,” he said. “Different councils will have different ways of doing things in some places because they have different access to market and a different way of working with their residents.”

‘Clarity’

While incentives and education had a role to play in encouraging good habits, he said the best way to increase recycling rates was to make it “really easy” for people to separate out their rubbish. “We should not be penalizing people for getting the wrong thing in the wrong bin because the council has got some complicated system. We want to see it made really simple and as accessible as possible.”

Recycling rates in England had soared in the past 15 years, he said and were now above 40%. While councils were being encouraged to share best practice with other authorities and to learn from each other, he acknowledged that more needed to be done to help residents.

Before his spouse’s intervention, a number of other Twitter users pointed out Mr. Lewis’ error. In a subsequent message on the site, he posted a link to the council’s recycling guidelines “for clarity”. Mr. Lewis became a minister in the Department for Local Government and Communities in 2012. Before becoming an MP, he was the leader of Brentwood Borough Council between 2002 and 2009.

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