Peter Tapsell (UK politician)

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For other persons of the same name, see Peter Tapsell.

Sir Peter Hannay Bailey Tapsell (born 1 February 1930, Hove) is a politician in the United Kingdom. He is Conservative Member of Parliament for Louth and Horncastle.

Tapsell was educated at Tonbridge School and Merton College, Oxford, during which time he was also Librarian of the Oxford Union (a senior office). Tapsell contested the Wednesbury by-election in 1957, losing to the Labour victor John Stonehouse.

He first entered Parliament in the 1959 general election, representing Nottingham West, and is the Conservatives' longest-serving MP albeit with a break in service (1964 to 1966). He is the only current MP of any party first elected in the 1950s, but the gap in his parliamentary service prevents him from being Father of the House until and if his continuous service from 1966 qualifies him to be.

After being losing his seat at the 1964 general election, he was able to be selected for Horncastle, representing that seat from 1966 to 1983. In 1983, boundary changes moved Tapsell to East Lindsey, which he represented until 1997 when boundary changes moved him to his present constituency. Tapsell was knighted in 1985.

Tapsell is known for his forthright views and no stranger to controversy. In May 2001, he made headlines during the UK general election campaign when comparing the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's vision of Europe to Adolf Hitler's: "We may not have studied Hitler's Mein Kampf in time but, by heaven, there is no excuse for us not studying the Schroder plan now".[1]

On November 9, 2005 he was the only Conservative MP, and one of only two non-Labour MPs, to vote in favour of a proposal to allow police to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

In July 2006 he said that Israeli action in Lebanon was "gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw". [2]. He is opposed to the war in Afghanistan.