Peter Bone

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Peter William Bone (born October 19, 1952) is a British Conservative Party politician, and MP for Wellingborough.

Peter Bone was born in 1952 in Billericay and was educated at Westcliffe Grammar School.

1977 was an important year for Peter Bone, he was elected as a councillor to Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, where he served for nine years until 1986. He was elected as the Vice Chairman of the Southend West Conservative Association. He qualified as a chartered accountant and became the Finance Director of The Essex Electronics and Precision Engineering Group. In 1982, he became the press secretary to Paul Channon MP.

Peter Bone became the Chief Executive of The High Tech Electronics Company in 1983. He contested the parliamentary seat of Islwyn in the South Wales industrial valleys at the 1992 general election against the Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock. Bone came a very distant second, some 24,500 votes behind Kinnock. He subsequently fought the European Parliament election in 1994 for Wales Mid and West.

He was chosen for the seemingly safe Conservative seat of Pudsey following the retirement of the veteran MP Giles Shaw at the 1997 general election. But 1997 was a bad year for the Tories and Labour swept to power nationally, and Bone lost Pudsey to Paul Truswell by over 6,000 votes. At the 2001 General Election he fought the ultra marginal of Wellingborough, where the sitting Labour MP, Paul Stinchcombe was holding on with a majority of just 187, having ousted the veteran Tory MP Peter Fry in 1997. It was another close fight in Wellingborough in 2001, and Stinchcombe held on to his seat by 2,355.

Peter Bone again chose to contest Wellingborough against Stinchcombe at the 2005 general election, and this time he came out victorious and was elected as the Conservative MP for Wellingborough by just 687 votes. He made his maiden speech on June 7, 2005. He sits on the Trade and Industry Select Committee.