Knight served as a Leicester City Councillor for Castle Ward and Leicestershire County Councillor for Evington Division from 1976 to 1981. He was MP for Derby North from 1983 until the 1997 election, when he lost his seat. He returned to the House of Commons in 2001 after successfully contesting the East Yorkshire seat. As a backbencher, in the 1980s, he succeeded in amending licensing law in England and Wales by doubling 'drinking up time' on licensed premises from ten to twenty minutes, a concession that was welcomed by the industry and drinkers alike. However the 2003 Licensing Act ended standard permitted hours and provides for an unspecified drinking up time determined by the licensee's discretion. He is in favour of bringing back capital punishment and spoke out against the Apartheid government of South Africa during the 1980s. He was deputy Chief Whip under John Major between 1993 and 1996 and Minister of State for Industry at the Department of Trade and Industry from 1996 until the Conservative defeat at the 1997 election. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1995, entitling him to the style "Right Honourable". He served under Michael Howard as a shadow minister for Environment and Transport until 2005. In the 2005–10 Parliament, he was Chairman of the House of Commons Procedure Committee and on four other House of Commons select committees: the Liaison Committee, Administration Committee, the Committee on Modernisation of the House and the Standards and Privileges Committee. He was re-elected unopposed to the chair of the Procedure Committee in 2010. He has successfully piloted two of his Private Members Bills into law. In 2011, he was successful in taking through Parliament the Estates of Deceased Persons Act 2011, a bill to make the distribution of estates fairer. He rejoined the government in September 2012 as a Senior Whip and Vice Chamberlain of the Royal Household, a position he held until October 2013. In 2018 he introduced his second Private Members Bill, the Parking Bill, which mandates the Government to introduce a statutory code of practice for the operators of private car parks, to require transparency and good practice to ensure that motorists are not treated unreasonably. The Bill was passed by Parliament and became an Act in March 2019. Knight strongly supports amending the smoking ban in pubs. He is a Eurosceptic and is in favour of Britain leaving the EU. Knight has argued in Parliament for "double summertime", which would see the clocks go forward by two hours during summer. He is Secretary of the British American Parliamentary Group, one of the largest and most active all-party groups at Westminster. An avid motorist, he is critical of initiatives seen as 'anti-car', such as congestion charging, pedestrianisation schemes, speed humps and some 'park and ride' proposals. He is Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Historic Vehicles Group and successfully called on the Government to exempt historic vehicles from MOT tests. In 2007, he was named as one of the 50 most influential people worldwide in the Historic Vehicle Movement. In 2011 he was shortlisted as the ‘Industry Champion of the Year’ by the International Historic Motoring Awards, for his work in supporting the historic and classic car movement. In 2009, The Daily Telegraph reported that Knight had claimed £2,600 in expenses for "driveway repairs" at his constituency home, though Knight stated that his cars were kept separately and paid for out of his own pocket.
Personal life
Knight is a classic car enthusiast and owns a number of classic cars. He plays the drums and is a founder member of MP4—the world's only parliamentary rock group. The others are fellow MPs Kevin Brennan and Peter Wishart and former MP Ian Cawsey. Knight has backed several other artists on the drums in live shows including George McCrae and Fergal Sharkey and, in the studio, he played drums backing KT Tunstall, Steve Harley, Ricky Wilson and David Gray on the charity single "You Can't Always Get What You Want" released in December 2016 by Chrysalis Records. He has written six books, mostly on the subject of political quips and insults.
