Mark Christopher Field (born October 6, 1964), is British Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster.
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Early life and education
Field was born at the British Medical Hospital in Hanover, Germany, the son of a British Army officer father and German mother, was educated at the Reading School before attending St Edmund Hall, Oxford where he obtained a Master's degree in law in 1987 and was chairman of the Oxford University Conservative Association 1985-86. He finished his education at The College of Law in Chester where he qualified as a solicitor in 1988.
Career before parliament
In 1984 he became a personal assistant to the MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, John Patten, before working as a solicitor with Freshfields in 1990. He was a director of his own employment agency, Kellyfield Consulting between 1994 and 2001, when on election to parliament he sold his share of the business to a consortium led by his former business partner. He became the vice chairman of the Islington North Conservative Association for two years from 1989, and was elected as a councillor in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in 1994 before standing down after his election to the House of Commons in 2002. He contested the Conservative held seat of Enfield North at the 1997 general election following the retirement of the sitting MP Tim Eggar. However, 1997 was not a good year for the British Conservatives and he was defeated at the election by Labour's Joan Ryan by some 6,822 votes.
Parliamentary career
In December 1999 he was selected to contest the safe Conservative seat of the Cities of London and Westminster following the retirement of the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Brooke at the 2001 general election. Field was successful at the election and won the seat with a majority of 4,499 and has remained the MP there since. His constituency takes in most of the famous sites of London and is very much the heart of the country, the seat includes St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the Bank of England, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament. He made his maiden speech on June 27, 2001, in which he announced his great political hero was the former prime minister Andrew Bonar Law.[1] In parliament, Mark Field was a member of the Lord Chancellor's Department and the renamed Constitutional Affairs Select Committee for a year from 2003. He was made an Opposition Whip by Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, becoming the Shadow Minister for London later that year. Between May and December 2005 he was Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He became a spokesman on Culture, Media and Sport under the new leadership of David Cameron in 2005. He is opposed to the scheme of congestion charging introduced by the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
Personal life
He is married to celebrity agent, Victoria Elphicke, with whom he lives in Westminster and Mallorca. His first marriage to Michele Acton, a former director of Hong Kong Shanghai Investment Bank ended in divorce in 2006 subsequent to revelations of Fields' adultery with Conservative Party candidate Elizabeth Truss. The couple had no children. He takes an interest in Parkinson's Disease, and has been a keen supporter of Bury F.C. since boyhood.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Peter Brooke |
Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster 2001 – present |
Incumbent |
