David Ashby

David Glynn Ashby (born 14 May 1940) was the Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for North West Leicestershire from 1983 until he stood down in 1997.

Ashby was both a criminal barrister (1963-2001) and a British politician. His political career spanned over twenty years, starting in 1968 as a local Conservative councillor for Hammersmith (Greater London) where he was Chairman for Housing and then progressing as a Conservative Councillor for the Greater London Council (GLC) representing Eltham from 1977-1981. While at the GLC (subsequently dissolved under Margaret Thatcher's government in 1986), he was Chairman of Housing and Management and campaigned fervently for a fairer system of council house distribution by moving power to the boroughs and decentralising. In 1983 he was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Leicestershire NW, seen as a marginal seat. He was a back-bench MP under both the Thatcher and the Major governments and sat on many committees including the Home Affairs and Freedom of Information committees.

During the "Back to Basics" campaign run by the Major government which resulted in many MPs having their private lives scrutinised and hacked by the press, he resigned in 1994 after Ashby's dustbins were raided by the Sunday Times and evidence was found that during a trip he had shared a hotel bed with another man supposedly due to the unavailability of a twin bedded room.^[1]

Ashby refused to name the other man concerned, but later Dr Ciaran Kilduff said that he would issue proceedings for libel saying "I find it quite appalling that the press should feel able to publish such unfounded rumour and gossip, in some cases making direct allegations against me and in other cases using insinuation and gossip. I have never had a homosexual relationship with Mr Ashby." Ashby also said about the stories of his homosexuality "I totally refute that. I have been married 28 years. So far as I am concerned I spent a holiday with a close friend. We went to two hotels. In the first one we managed to find twin beds and at the second one we didn't. It doesn't make any bloody difference." and that he was seeking legal advice about newspaper articles that reported his wife as saying that Ashby had left her for another man, citing his marriage breakdown instead to the long hours in Parliament and to a growing rift between them.^[2]

References

Patrick Wintour " 9/10/93 " Guardian"

• Times Guide to the House of Commons, Times Newspapers Limited, 1992 and 1997 editions.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by David Ashby