Graham Riddick
Encyclopedia
Graham Edward Galloway Riddick (b. 26 August 1955, Long Preston
Long Preston
Long Preston is a village and civil parish in the Craven district of North Yorkshire, England, in the Yorkshire Dales. It lies along the A65 road, and is 12 miles from the larger town of Skipton and four miles from the town of Settle...

, North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan or shire county located in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and a ceremonial county primarily in that region but partly in North East England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972 it covers an area of , making it the largest...

) was the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 (MP) for Colne Valley
Colne Valley (UK Parliament constituency)
Colne Valley is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election. In the post-war period the seat had the distinction of being one of the few Labour/Liberal marginals,...

 in West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 from 1987 to 1997.

Family and early life

His father ran the family's cotton mill in Nelson until its closure in the early 1960s. Riddick's maternal grandfather, Sir Edward Ruggles-Brise
Edward Ruggles-Brise
Lt Col Sir Edward Archibald Ruggles-Brise, 1st Baronet, MC, DL was a British Conservative Party politician.Ruggles-Brise was a landowner and land agent, owner of Spains Hall in Finchingfield in Essex...

 was MP for Maldon, Essex
Maldon, Essex
Maldon is a town on the Blackwater estuary in Essex, England. It is the seat of the Maldon district and starting point of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation.Maldon is twinned with the Dutch town of Cuijk...

 from 1922 - 1942. Graham Riddick was educated at Stowe School
Stowe School
Stowe School is an independent school in Stowe, Buckinghamshire. It was founded on 11 May 1923 by J. F. Roxburgh, initially with 99 male pupils. It is a member of the Rugby Group and Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The school is also a member of the G20 Schools Group...

 and University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

, he is married with three children. He won his seat in Parliament at the 1987 election
United Kingdom general election, 1987
The United Kingdom general election of 1987 was held on 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the British House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive election victory for the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the 2nd...

 becoming the first ever Conservative MP in Colne Valley's 102 year-history. He retained it at the 1992 election
United Kingdom general election, 1992
The United Kingdom general election of 1992 was held on 9 April 1992, and was the fourth consecutive victory for the Conservative Party. This election result was one of the biggest surprises in 20th Century politics, as polling leading up to the day of the election showed Labour under leader Neil...

 increasing his majority from 1,677 in 1987 to 7,224 in 1992.

Sunday Times allegations

In July 1994, a "sting operation" by The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

 implicated Riddick in the "Cash for Questions" affair.

Two reporters from the newspaper posed as people wishing to have questions asked in the House of Commons. Both Riddick and fellow Conservative MP David Tredinnick
David Tredinnick (politician)
David Arthur Stephen Tredinnick is a Conservative politician in the United Kingdom.He is a former officer in the Grenadier Guards and is Member of Parliament for Bosworth first elected in 1987....

 were accused of accepting cash for asking questions. Riddick initially agreed to work for the journalist but on receiving a cheque from the reporter, he returned it immediately, before he knew that the reporter was working for a newspaper.

When The Sunday Times reported the story Riddick immediately apologised to Parliament but was subsequently found to be in breach of Parliamentary rules and was suspended for 10 days. Riddick then lodged a formal complaint with the Press Complaints Commission
Press Complaints Commission
The Press Complaints Commission is a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers. The PCC is funded by the annual levy it charges newspapers and magazines...

 (PCC). Basing its decisions on the information compiled by the House of Commons' Privileges Committee the PCC found in Mr Riddick's favour. The Commission judged that The Sunday Times failed to make clear to its readers that its approach to Riddick had been on the basis of a legitimate consultancy, not on the basis of a one-off payment in return for asking a question and that there was no justification for the newspaper’s resort to subterfuge. This overturned a ruling two years earlier by the PCC in favour of The Sunday Times when Riddick had been unaware that the PCC was investigating the matter.

The PCC apologized to Mr Riddick for ‘this serious breach of our procedures.’

Later career

He contested his seat again at the 1997 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1997
The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...

, but lost to the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

's Kali Mountford
Kali Mountford
Kali Carol Jean Mountford is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Colne Valley from 1997 until she retired from the House of Commons at the 2010 general election.-Early life:...

 who had a majority of 4,840.

Graham Riddick was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Francis Maude
Francis Maude
Francis Anthony Aylmer Maude is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he currently serves as the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, and as a Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Horsham...

, Financial Secretary to the Treasury between 1990-92. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to John MacGregor, Secretary of State for Transport from 1992 until July 1994 when Macgregor left the Cabinet. Riddick served on the Education and Employment Select Committee between 1994-97. He was also a member of the Broadcasting Select Committee and the Deregulation Select Committee between 1995-97.

Following his defeat in 1997 Riddick worked for the French-owned waste management company, Onyx Environmental Group Plc as its Marketing and Communications Director. Since 2000 Riddick has been the Business Development Director for DeHavilland Information Services Plc and its successor company, Adfero Ltd. Before he became an MP, Riddick worked for 10 years in various sales management roles with Procter and Gamble (1977–82) and Coca Cola Schweppes Beverages
The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation and manufacturer, retailer and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups. The company is best known for its flagship product Coca-Cola, invented in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in Columbus, Georgia...

(1982–87).
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