Peter Bruinvels

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Peter Bruinvels is a British Conservative Party politician, born March 30, 1950.

He was educated at St. John's School, Leatherhead, a public school in Surrey. Bruinvels held various voluntary offices in the Conservative Party in Dorking and at regional level in South East England.

Never having held elected office, Bruinvels was elected for the constituency of Leicester East previously considered a safe seat for Labour at the 1983 general election, by the narrow margin of 933 votes, at the height of Labour's unpopularity.

A contorversial figure on the farther fringe of the Conservative right, Bruinvels volunteered on the floor of parliament to become the public hangman if the government restored capital punishment, and was scathing of what he regarded as the left-wing bias of the BBC, which he referred to as the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation". [1] Bruinvels was also a fierce critic of sex education in schools which he regarded as libertine propaganda. [2]

With a slight recovery in Labour's national position at the 1987 general election, Bruinvels was defeated by Keith Vaz of Labour by 1,924 votes after a swing of 6.3%, with the collapsing SDP vote favouring Vaz rather than Bruinvels. He did, however, increase his number of votes from 19,117 to 22,150 despite being defeated.

Bruinvels attempted a return to parliament at the 1997 general election in the Shropshire constituency of The Wrekin, which radical boundary changes had changed from a Labour held marginal seat into a notionally Tory held marginal. However, in the Labour surge of that year Labour's Peter Bradley took the seat on a swing of 11.3%.

Bruinvels is a member of the General Synod of the Church of England, a Director of the Church Army and is a lay-Canon of Guildford Cathedral. He carries out voluntary work for the Royal British Legion. Having trained as a lawyer, he now runs his own public relations and media management company.