ePolitix.com profiles Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie as he joins the Commons Treasury select committee.
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An extremely able economist and former adviser to Nigel Lawson and John Major, Andrew Tyrie emerged from the back rooms to succeed Anthony Nelson in Chichester, safe for the Tories even in 1997. He made it a little safer in 2001, against opposition evenly split between the Liberal Democrats and Labour. His majority slipped very slightly in 2005 but his vote share went up. He has been an assiduous campaigner on local issues, particularly health.
Once seen as a pro-European, now a moderate eurosceptic, he ran Kenneth Clarke’s campaign for the leadership in 2001 – though interestingly not in 1997. He had to wait more than six years for a frontbench job, but was a natural choice for the Treasury select committee where he served for three years.
He had a spell on the frontbench from 2003 to 2005 as a shadow minister in Oliver Letwin’s economic affairs team. But after a year as shadow financial secretary and another as shadow paymaster general, he returned to the back benches to campaign on extraordinary renditions, the so-called torture flights.
He set up and chairs an all-party group on the subject to pursue allegations that the CIA was using UK air space to transfer terrorism suspects to countries where they were tortured.
The son of a furniture dealer in Essex, he was born in 1957, and went to Felstead School. He read philosophy, politics and economics at Trinity College, Oxford, moving on to the College of Europe at Bruges and an MPhil in international relations at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
After such a glittering academic career it was a bit of a comedown to be press spokesman for BP, but he was soon head of the economic team at Conservative Central Office, adviser to the Ministers Patrick Jenkin and Richard Luce, then to Nigel Lawson as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his successor John Major until 1990.
He returned to academia for a year as a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, before becoming senior economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, responsible for former Yugoslavia. He helped the BBC World Service explain capitalism to Eastern Europe.
He was active in the City of London Conservatives, fought hopeless Houghton and Washington in 1992, and was turned down for several other seats before being selected for Chichester.
He strongly supported the enlargement of Europe but wants less Government meddling, lower taxes, and less regulation from Brussels. A dry Thatcherite on economics, he supported Peter Lilley and then William Hague for the Party leadership in 1997.
But he went over to Kenneth Clarke's as his campaign manager in 2001 and supported him again in 2005. He did not say who got his vote after Clarke was knocked out.
Gentle and persuasive, he has been very active on economic matters in the Chamber. He warned against humbling the Serbs over Kosovo, and has spoken on flood defence and Gibraltar. In his first Parliament he served on thepPublic administration committee and the committee on the consolidation of Bills and sat on the 2000 Finance Bill committee.
He has been an active thinker on constitutional reform, a strong advocate of a smaller and wholly elected House of Lords, and has written pamphlets on this and on economic and European matters.
In 2000 he published Mr Blair's Poodle, urging reforms to the House of Commons, and saying the prime minister should be called before a special committee once a month, an innovation adopted, though only twice a year, by Tony Blair.
He was voted the Spectator's Backbencher of the Year 2000. The citation called him the year's most rugged individualist and a man who, thanks to his understanding of tax and finance, could be earning gigabucks in the private sector. In 2001 he revealed leaked letters between Tony Blair and the Hinduja brothers showing a friendly relationship.
In 2004 he published Pruning the Politicians, a call to cut the number of MPs by 20 per cent to 550, which he said would save £25m a year. He also wanted to cut the number of ministerial jobs, modernise procedures and halve the size of the House of Lords. He has attacked the numbers of government special advisers.
A year later he got his chance to advance his ideas when he was appointed to the select committee on constitutional affairs (now Justice). He was a member of the executive of the backbench 1922 Committee for a year.
He has urged the political parties to raise their finances through small contributions from mass memberships rather than large donors or trade unions.
He argues for these reforms on an all-party group on constitution, Parliament and citizenship, and also holds office on groups on debt and personal finance, Macedonia and golf.
He is a good golfer, single and a member of the MCC and Chichester Yacht Club.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd