Lia Nici

After failing to be selected in Grimsby[6] and Scunthorpe[2], Nici stood as the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Kingston upon Hull North in 2017, losing to sitting Labour MP Diana Johnson by 14,322 votes.[7]

In May 2018, she was elected as a councillor for the Scartho ward of North East Lincolnshire Council.[5]

In August 2019, Nici was selected as the Conservative candidate for Great Grimsby for the 2019 snap general election.[8] She won the seat with 54.9% of the vote and a margin of 7,331 votes over Labour, who had held the seat for 74 years; defeating the sitting Labour MP Melanie Onn, who had represented Great Grimsby since Austin Mitchell's retirement in 2015.[3]

Nici was for several years the Executive Producer of Estuary TV, a local television channel incorporated as a ‘Community Interest Company’, a registered entity intended to be run for community benefit.[9] The channel was criticised for receiving £300,000 from the BBC under a scheme to meet quotas of local news content in return for subsidies. Data from 2014 showed that its programmes were seen by fewer than 200 people, some having no viewers at all. The BBC refused to reveal how many of Estuary TV's programmes it actually broadcast.[10]

Following Estuary TV CIC's dissolution by owners the Grimsby Institute, Nici continued as executive producer of "Estuary TV", now a department of the Institute, and on 8 May 2018 confirmed herself in the register of NE Lincolnshire Councillors' interests as being the "CEO" of Estuary TV. Just under five years after becoming a figurehead for the government's new local television programme,[11] the channel's licence was transferred to local television network That's TV,[12] finally being replaced by That's Humber in October 2018.[13]

Despite voting to remain in the European Union in 2016,[14] Nici subsequently became a supporter of leaving the organisation, and her party's approach to the exit process.[15] In December 2019, she drew criticism for claiming that the government's failure to have yet taken the country out of the EU was "a failure of people who live in northern towns like Grimsby".[16]

In February 2020, Nici voted against proper funding of public services along with robust action against tax avoidance and evasion.[17] Also that month, she voted against the development of a plan to eliminate a substantial majority of transport emissions by 2030.[18]

In March 2020, she became a member of the Backbench Business Committee in the House of Commons.[19]

In May 2020, Nici voted against the prevention of lower food standards as part of future trade deals.[20] Later that month, she supported Prime Minister Boris Johnson's refusal to take action against his chief adviser Dominic Cummings after the latter breached COVID-19 lockdown regulations, maintaining only that it was possible "he may have committed a minor breach", and should have apologised.[21]

In June 2020, Nici voted against the restoration of protections removed from children in care by emergency legislation in April that year.[22] Later that month, she rebelled against her party for the first time, voting against the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland.[23] A week later, Nici was one of a minority of Conservative MPs to vote against the restriction of demonstrations outside abortion clinics.[24] On the same day, she followed her party in voting against the introduction of weekly COVID-19 testing for NHS and social care workers.[25]