John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling MP)


Sir John Paul Stanley is a British Conservative Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Tonbridge and Malling from 1974 to 2015.

Education

Stanley was educated at two independent schools: at Copthorne Preparatory School near Crawley in West Sussex and Repton School in the village of Repton in Derbyshire, followed by Lincoln College at the University of Oxford, where he read Modern History. He also studied at Syracuse University.

Early career

Stanley was at the Institute for Strategic Studies from 1968 to 1969. He worked for Rio Tinto-Zinc Corp Ltd from 1969 to 1979.

Parliamentary career

Stanley contested the Newton seat in 1970. He was first elected to Parliament at the February 1974 election, prior to which he had worked for the Conservative Research Department as an advisor on housing policy. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher from 1976 to 1979, during her time as Leader of the Opposition.
He was made Minister of State with responsibility for housing at the Department of the Environment following the Conservative victory at the 1979 general election. Four years later he was moved to become Minister of State for the Armed Forces in the Ministry of Defence. Following the 1987 general election Stanley was moved to the Northern Ireland Office, once again as Minister of State, but left the government front bench in 1988 and has remained on the back benches since.
He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1984 and is mainly interested in defence and foreign policy, having sat on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee since 1992. He was knighted in 1988.
He was re-adopted as the Conservative party candidate for his constituency in 2008 for the 2010 general election, when he was 68 years old.
In March 2012, Stanley announced that he would stand down at the next general election.
In early 2014, The Independent reported that Stanley had received fees worth thousands of pounds for consultancy work for one of the big City investors who were granted priority access to shares in Royal Mail plc, which the Coalition government had decided to privatise.

Personal life

He married Susan Giles on 21 December 1968 in the City of London, they are now divorced. They have a son and daughter.