Sam Gyimah

Parliamentary career

Following his name being added to the Conservatives' A-List, he was selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for East Surrey and elected at the 2010 general election,^[2] making his maiden speech on 29 July 2010.^[13] Gyimah became a member of the International Development Select Committee, and stated an interest in harnessing the private sector towards achieving international development goals.^[14] He also began to take an active part in debates on education and employment and in some local campaigns to protect the green belt in Surrey.^[14]

In 2011, Gyimah produced a report with the think-tank NESTA, "Beyond the Banks: the case for a British Industry and Enterprise Bond",^[15] in support of non-bank alternatives for businesses seeking finance. He was the first member of parliament to call for credit-easing as a means of accelerating Britain's economic recovery.^[16]

Gyimah was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Prime Minister at the 2012 reshuffle, then became a Government Whip in October 2013.^[2]

Gyimah supported the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union in the EU referendum of 2016.^[17]

On 20 November 2015, Gyimah contributed to the filibustering of the opposition-proposed Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-Funded Secondary Schools) Bill to make the teaching of first aid in secondary schools compulsory. He spoke until the end of the debate, despite requests from the deputy speaker.^[18]

On 21 October 2016, Gyimah filibustered the Sexual Offences (Pardons) bill (nicknamed the "Turing Bill" after Alan Turing), a private member's bill presented by the Scottish National Party MP John Nicolson that sought to pardon all men convicted of abolished offences under the sodomy laws^[19] Supporters of the bill disputed this, as they proposed conditions for a pardon which included the act being consensual and that it would not be contrary to present-day British law.^[20][21][22] He instead supported an amendment proposed by the government to existing legislation, in which only dead men convicted of such offences were automatically pardoned, while those who were living would have to apply to the Home Office through a "disregard" process.^[22][23] Gyimah has consistently voted in favour of LGBT equality,^[24] including the right of same-sex couples to marry.

As Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, Gyimah has warned that “there’s a culture of censorship in some of our universities" and that threats to freedom of speech were not "some right-wing conspiracy theory that had been made up". Some of the examples he has mentioned included a professor at King’s College London who was allegedly reported for hate speech after teaching a history class, and a university's safe-space policy that took 20 minutes to read. In both cases, the universities in question reported that these things did not happen, and the Department for Education clarified later that Gyimah had merely relayed students' anecdotes.^[25]