Nick Herbert

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For the physicist and author of Elemental Mind, see Nick Herbert (physicist).

Nicholas Le Quesne Herbert, known as Nick Herbert, (born April 7, 1963) is a British politician and the Conservative Member of Parliament for Arundel and South Downs.

Nick Herbert was educated at the public school of Haileybury in Hertfordshire and Magdalene College, Cambridge where he read law and land economy. He was appointed as the director of public affairs at the British Field Sports Society in 1990 and remained in that position for six years. He joined Business for Stering in 1998 as their chief executive where he helped launch the campaign against the Euro, before becoming a director of the think tank Reform in 2000 until his election to parliament.

He unsuccessfully contested the Northumberland seat of Berwick-upon-Tweed at the 1997 General Election where he finished in third place some 8,951 votes behind the veteran Liberal Democrat MP Alan Beith. His selection to contest the West Sussex seat of Arundel and South Downs at the 2005 General Election did not come about without incident. The sitting Conservative MP, Howard Flight had been forced to resign as a vice chairman of the party and had the whip removed by Michael Howard in 2005 after he had told a Conservative Way Forward meeting that the Conservatives would have to make more cuts than they were promising.[1] With no whip, he was not considered as an approved candidate and despite protest, and the local association refusing to select a new candidate, he finally resigned just a month before the election.[2] Herbert was selected[3] and elected, and he held the seat with a majority of 11,309 and made his maiden speech on June 6, 2005.[4]

In parliament he was promoted to the frontbench as a spokesman on home affairs by David Cameron on becoming Leader of the Opposition in 2005 , and he has also been a member of the home affairs select committee since 2005.

On his election, he became the first out gay Conservative MP to be open about his homosexuality at the time he was initially elected (he is not the first out gay Tory MP, that distinction goes to Alan Duncan, who voluntarily came out in 2002 and Michael Brown who was 'outed' in 1994).[5] Herbert lives with his partner Jason.